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Ubisoft May Be Quietly Retiring The Watch Dogs Series

Aion002

Member
That's a pity if true.

I like 1 and 2, while the 3rd one didn't grab my attention when I played the demo, I will probably buy it when is cheap enough.
 

OldBoyGamer

Banned
Just bought it last week for £12.

I really enjoyed the start. Has a massive 007 vibe to it. I can’t help but feel if they’d have kept that vibe it would have been a much better game. Instead they slid into Ubisoft open world games design so fast I’m not excited about returning to it.

I was so looking forward to exploring London but even that has fallen a bit flat for me.

So I’m not surprised at all they’re probably going to kill it off.
 

OldBoyGamer

Banned
Problem for this licence is his level of wokeness... From good game with absolute 0 wokeness in the first game to one of the wokest game with Legion... Im honnestly happy that the last game was a total failure. :)
The over woke tone is definitely problematic because it has led to very generic characters.

Having said that Watchdogs devs appear to struggle when it comes to interesting characters.

W1 the main protagonist was a really unlikeable douche. W2 was a group of unlikeable wet blankets. And W3 everyone is hyper generic and yeh, super woke.
 

Gambit2483

Member
Only played the first one which was decent. Were the others better or worse, or is it purely about the tepid reception?
Watch_Dogs 2 was actually a nice step up from the original. They seemed to be headed in the right direction.

Then Legion came out, which was way too unfocused with its take on a non protag, missing features and some actual worse looking visuals and physics.

You should try The sequel. Stay away from Legion
 

Fbh

Member
I didn't hate 1 as much as everyone else.

It didn't live up to the initial hype but I actually thought the combat and mission design were pretty good for this type of game (way better than GTAV at least).

I would have liked a sequel in the same style but with expanded hacking and a good story. I've always read WD2 is good but I always found the change in style from serious to Tumblr hackers off putting.
 
Wheeellllppppp.. Sad to see ya go, have fun in retirement.....

Splinter Cells coming back now right Ubi? Ubi?

giphy.gif
 

yurinka

Member
They may. And they may not.

He also took a look at job role personnel at Ubisoft and noticed that senior members of the Watch Dogs development team have either left the company or have been moved to other games. At least seven senior developers that worked on Watch Dogs are now scattered in the wind. Anyone left with the company has moved on to other projects.
7 senior devs out of 6484 people credited in the game credits of Watchdogs Legion means nothing. And even less in a company like Ubisoft where they had different teams working on different games of the same IP at the same time during a lot of years.

Fun fact: First time I knew about Watchdogs 2 and Legion was when WD2 still wasn't announced and as Ubi worker I attended a meeting where one of the other atendees was a guy who was working on "Watchdogs 2 and 3 (back then still wasn't called Legion)".

They may stop working on WD, at least for a while. They have a lot of announced big games coming plus at leaset some more like obvious unannouced sequels. So it would make sense to put some IPs like WD, Ghost Recon or The Crew to sleep for a while and to move people to help in big ass projects like BGE2, Avatar, Star Wars, AC Infinity or the next The Division and also help other projects like Skull & Bones, Roller Champions, Mario & Rabbids 2 and pretty likely the unannounced but super likely to be announced next Far Cry or the next big Rainbow Six. And well, some other minor projects like more new IP, crosover stuff and remakes, plus mobile stuff.

They have a shit ton of projects in the works, at least announced ones. So I'd understand they'd stop making WD stuff at least for a while. And then if years later someone asks for another WD they can consider it.
 
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UltimaKilo

Gold Member
The issue are these video game companies being so risk-averse these days to creating new IPs, unlike the 90's and early 2000s. They find something that works and beat it to death.

One entry in a series every 7-10 years is perfectly fine.
 

Warablo

Member
I think you gotta get the hacking upgrades to really open up the Watch Dogs gameplay uniqueness. You can clear objectives without even setting foot into places.
 
Every Watch Dogs game has felt like they've tried to reboot the franchise from the previous one. I don't fully buy into this rumor because I see WD as their experimental series to throw things into to see what sticks.

Now, if you told me Splinter Cell or Prince of Persia were dead and no one at Ubisoft is ever going to work on either franchise, I'd believe you.
 

Rockondevil

Member
1st and 2nd were a good start to a new franchise but then Legionw as very meh.
I'd definitely play another if it was closer to the first two.

Quite enjoyed all the hacking of objects, cameras, etc.
 

Bridges

Member
I felt so burned by Watch_Dogs 1, an utterly unremarkable experience that didn't live up to an once of the hype around it.

I did learn valuable lessons from it though, I don't pre-order anymore and rarely get Ubisoft games. I've heard 2 is great but never got around to it. From the outside looking in it seems like the series never found its identity, each game seems tonally different from each other.

I will not miss these games but I'm sorry to those that will. At least you'll still have Assassin's Creed and Far Cry for your Ubi open world nonsense.
 

retsof624

Member
They did so good with the second one only to throw all of that away with Legion. That game is a piece of shit.
 

Stuart360

Member
To be fair they did well to get to three games. The second game underperformed apparently and talk of a third game just didt exist until it was revealed out of the blue with a new focus, The third game sold badly though from what i can tell.
The first game was the only game that sold really well, but it released at a time where new gen owners were a little starved of games.
 

TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
Never played any of these. First one looked alright, but similar to a cat next to a marching band, I got spooked and ran when the GraphicsGate thing happened.
 
i didn't play much of WD1 or Legion, but WD2 is a really solid game. What i played of WD1 was pretty decent. City was a little generic but it had decent side activities. I played it after WD2 so the hacks felt like a step down a little.

Legion's map kinda sucked. And what i've seen of the campaign wasn't interesting. But the NPC gimmick was really impressive imo
 

wipeout364

Member
I enjoyed one and two but they were both a bit underwhelming in terms of overall plot and story. Watchdogs 2 had a few interesting ideas but in the end was a bit bland.

I have said it before but I really think Watchdogs should have been an open world Deus Ex/Blade Runner with a setting 100 to 200 years in the future with a dense city environment. I think this would have been a huge differentiation from GTA which watchdogs is compared with and in the comparison always falls short.
 
D

Deleted member 471617

Unconfirmed Member
Good. Watch Dogs 2014 is still the best game in the series because you get to feel like you're a vigilante and still has the best story/characters and supporting cast. Watch Dogs 2 had a gorgeous world and more refined gameplay but the story and characters all sucked. Watch Dogs Legion had a beautiful world but the concept of switching characters wasn't good and in turn, made the story and characters mediocre. Aiden is still the best protagonist. Granted, he wasn't the most interesting character but he was a charcater I could take seriously. Marcus was too much of a joke as was his friends and the characters in Legion were basically non-existent. So if true, im happy this series may be done. Also, if sacrificing Watch Dogs means that Immortals becomes a franchise, bye bye Watch Dogs!!!
 

Kssio_Aug

Member
I still remember that extremely fake gameplay reveal of Watch Dogs 1, that looked pretty great and character seemed quite badass. The end result was completely opposite, and the main character was silly and forgettable like no other.

But I still enjoyed some of the gameplay at the time. Not enough though, since I didn't bother with the next titles.
 
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AmuroChan

Member
Unpopular opinion, but I enjoyed WD 2 and WD 3. I don't care about the story in these games, but the sandbox and gameplay loop I found to be quite enjoyable.
 

K' Dash

Member
I really enjoyed 1 and 2.

Never played Legion, not because I don't want to try it, I just don't have time for sprawling open world games anymore. I work full time from home, back to college getting another major, and have a baby girl now.

Actually my Series X sits unplayed for at least 2 months now.
 

Griffon

Member
Funny, I'm not consciously boycotting Ubisoft, yet I realized that I haven't bought nor played a game of their in almost 10 years (last one was Black Flag, it was nice).
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
I was excited for the first one until I played it and pretty much every mission was the same.
 
Well, it was clear they didn't know what to do with it after the first one.

Better to explore new IP. The concept was neat and the first game had promise. The second game was admittedly really good aside from the ludo-narrative dissonance with the main cast being happy-go-lucky normal college students in the cutscenes and then rampaging murderers in-game. Legion was a mess concept and story-wise.

Watchdogs should have been a futuristic GTA with hacking as the main theme. The devs should have been more creative with the hacking mechanic and sequels should have made the cities way more technologically advanced, with robotics and AI-driven vehicles everywhere, so that the game gave you more tools to play with in-game.

The third game making the big feature "it's a rogue-like" was a huge fucking mistake. What fans wanted was a simple but compelling story with an interesting MC, in a world that let us hack and play with all sorts of technological gadgets. Not, "you can play as a British lollypop lady wielding a shotgun"... what the fuck has that got to do with the main hacking theme?

Lost Planet 2 should have taught them that you cannot tell a compelling story when you don't have the continuity of perspective of a MC.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
Watch Dogs is a interesting series.
Mainly because if you go from the first game to the second & Legion it paints the last ten years and the future 😐
 

Blade2.0

Member
Ubisoft needs to stop trying to make everything an open world GaaS game. There's a reason watch dogs 2 was better received, it actually fucking ended.
 
Mediocre is the best we can expect from Ubisoft. I'm sure they'll come up with a new open-world copy/paste RPG lite GAAS to fill the void.
 
S

SpongebobSquaredance

Unconfirmed Member
Give me Rayman 4 and I will care.
 
Nice troll attempt but be warned i am a avid player of Ubisoft games for 20 plus years i know what the hell i am talking about when it comes to Ubisoft so unless you have more to say than just 1 word or so i suggest to move along or you'll be embarrassed with facts & logic
You just embarrassed yourself by admitting to be a hardcore Ubisoft fan for 20 years.
 

FunkMiller

Gold Member
Splinter Cells coming back now right Ubi? Ubi?

I very much doubt we'll ever get a new SC game, because they are single player games with a heavy emphasis on stealth, and that is not a format you can easily monetise through multiplayer, live service or microtransactions.

Ubisoft decide on what games they want to make based on how much money they can squeeze from players after the initial purchase. Nothing else appears to matter to them, and their attitude is an absolute cancer on the industry.
 
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