Ubisoft art director Josh Cook and lead game designer Mathieu Berube played through about 30 minutes of Watch Dogs Legion at E3, as you can see in the video embedded above, posted by UbiCentral. The footage shows the devs playing through and narrating several different missions and using Watch Dogs Legion's three different character classes: the Hacker, the Infiltrator, and the Enforcer, giving us a better understanding of their abilities.
There's no main protagonist in Watch Dogs Legion. You begin playing as a random citizen and recruit other people to the cause by simply finding them in the world. Once you've got recruits, you see them on your map and swap between them, making it a handy fast-travel option (along with London's metro system, which also acts as a fast-travel).
The video begins with the devs playing as a Hacker granny, who is breaking into Albion looking for a blackmail server she needs to erase in order to recruit a new member of DedSec. While she's scanning the building via security camera, the dev mentions players can also scan the attributes of Albion guards. Just like any other citizen, guards can be recruited to DedSec. For the moment, though, granny uses her face-hugging spider drone ability to knock out some guards.
Things go horribly wrong as granny's subpar stealth gets her caught, but she still manages to delete the blackmail and take out a few more guards with tasers and spider drones before making an escape.
As the devs switch to their new recruit, we learn that you can also add class-based perks to your characters. We see four perks available for the Infiltrator class (more will be available in the full game, we're told): Lunge, which gives you an increased takedown radius, All-Seeing lets them tag nearby hostiles, Shockwave staggers enemies, and First Strike adds a suppressor to SMG weapons.
The Infiltrator takes on a mission by hacking into drones, first to drop an explosive crate from a cargo drone onto an enemy, and then to actually ride the drone into restricted territory. Infiltrators can also hack into people's optic nerve devices, not just to cloak themselves but to cloak the bodies they drop so they won't be seen by others. We get a look at some melee combat which includes takedowns, dodges, and finishing moves.
Finally, we see the Enforcer in a combat-oriented mission, fighting with a rifle and throwing proximity mines. It doesn't go well as the player is swarmed by soldiers, shot roughly a hundred times, and falls to the ground. At this point you'll have the choice to surrender, or to get back up and keep fighting, which runs the risk of losing your character forever to permadeath. Which is exactly what happens.
Samuel had a chance to play Watch Dogs Legion himself, and called it the most impressive demo he's seen at E3 in years.
