The creative director of Watch Dogs: Legion has revealed that the game's permadeath feature is completely optional and can be experienced on any difficulty level. Watch Dogs: Legion is a hotly anticipated title with a deeply ambitious gameplay conceit, set to be released in October 24th.
Watch Dogs: Legion is a fascinating game. It boldly offers players the ability to play as literally any character they encounter in the streets of its dystopian, take on the city of London. These random citizens aren't just playable on select missions but throughout the entire game; every part of Watch Dogs: Legion, including cutscenes, can be experienced as anyone. The technical implications of programming unique moves and stats for every citizen of London are baffling, especially when one considers the truly outlandish character designs that have already been shown. The plot must be tricky to navigate as well, since there's so many possible variations for every single cutscene and story beat. Establishing an emotional link between the player character and the events unfolding around them must be nigh impossible if everyone could be the player character.
To further iterate on the inclusion of every single London citizen as a playable character, Ubisoft is also adding permadeath to Watch Dogs: Legion. This was revealed when the game was first announced, back at E3 2019, when the player character died in the middle of a tense firefight and the action quickly shifted to a different character somewhere else on the map. Thanks to creative director Clint Hocking, fans now have more knowledge of what to expect from permadeath in the game. In a recent AMA on Reddit, Hocking confirmed that permadeath is a completely optional setting. It can be applied to any game of any difficulty, even easy, or turned off altogether.
This raises a few questions about how the mode will be integrated. In the aforementioned E3 announcement, fans saw one player character's death used as a story beat and an emotional moment that was used to recruit a different player character. It seems unlikely that that level of specificity in story developments will apply to every character. It's now pretty hard to believe that a character's death can have such an impact on the rest of the story, especially if they might not die at all.
Watch Dogs: Legion is a very ambitious title, and that could be good or bad. The idea of jumping from person to person in an ongoing mission to liberate London is a very tempting one, and the broad wealth of player characters on offer certainly sweetens the deal. The reveal that permadeath is optional does sweeten the deal quite considerably, as it makes the game more accessible for more casual players who might not be interested in a game where every plucky London citizen they try to recruit dies a horrible death. If Watch Dogs: Legion can deliver on its intriguing premise, it'll be a game unlike any other, and it'll certainly be one players talk about for years to come. If not, it could fail so hard that not even turning off permadeath will be able to save it.
Watch Dogs: Legion will be available on October 29th, 2020, on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
Source: Clint Hocking/Reddit