With the fictionalised state broadcaster GBB reduced to a propaganda arm of the government, these podcasts are framed as the true voice of the people. Nowhere is Legion's – and by extension, Ubisoft's – position on Brexit clearer though than in a tranche of podcasts that are found in the form of headphones scattered around the game world. He wields disproportionate political power, and his radio appearances decrying migrants are advertised on Neo-London's omnipresent digital advertising boards.

In what is perhaps Legion's least subtle satirical jab, the leader of Albion – itself positioned as a group of violent nationalists who have replaced the police – is a demagogue called Nigel. The actual government is in absentia, while the prime minister is derided in news broadcasts as being on another holiday. Ambient conversations from passersby will often lament the collapsed jobs market, while supplemental material in the form of collectible memos or environmental storytelling such as graffiti or resistance posters call out food and medicine shortages – very real potential problems the UK is likely to face from January 2021. Protestors have semi-permanent camps dotted around the city, decrying the loss of freedoms. European Processing Centres are rounding up and deporting – or worse – EU citizens, a move that has no clear link to the opening narrative. For Watch Dogs: Legion, the new identity is ‘no identity’, as almost every figure in its new, near-future London setting is a potential recruit for the hacker collective DedSec, the one through-line of the series to date.įast forward a few years though, and things are looking a lot more Brexit-y. 2016's Watch Dogs 2 switched to San Francisco, the home of Silicon Valley, and a more optimistic figure in white-hat hacker Marcus Holloway, while also introducing parkour elements alongside cyber skills. In practice, each instalment has struggled to find an identity.Ģ014's original Watch Dogs tried to be a gritty crime thriller, with grizzled lead Aiden Pearce snarling and hacking (mainly the computer kind, but also the physical violence kind) his way through Chicago seeking revenge for a personal tragedy.

Ostensibly, it's the franchise that casts its eye at the impact of technology on society, with a view to how it can easily be manipulated by malign forces.

The Watch Dogs series has always felt like the odd sibling of publisher-developer Ubisoft's many open-world games, struggling to carve a distinct place for itself against the historical epics of Assassin's Creed or the survivalist, one-against-insanity trials of the modern Far Cry series.

Watch dogs 3 london poster