While a lot of attention has been paid to Watch Dog: Legion's lack of a singular protagonist, the game has garnered some praise for its use of audio logs to flesh out the world building. These audio logs come in the form of episodes of fictional podcasts that players can collect over the course of the game and listen to while driving.
Audio logs are a popular device in video games to deliver supplemental world-building information to players. They often contain information that isn't vital, but contextualize a setting, a person, or mission the player is on. The format audio logs can take varies depending on what works for the story. Batman: Arkham Asylum, for instance, included recordings of patient sessions at the famed criminal psych ward; Bioshock had audio diaries recorded by various citizens of the city. The newest God of War even had a play on audio logs in the form of stories told by talking head Mimir as Kratos sailed about the world.
In Watch Dogs: Legion, players can collect audio files that contain episodes of fictional podcasts such as The Bug and BuccanEar. While audio logs in most games are a few minutes long at most, the podcasts of Watch Dogs: Legion are several minutes long a piece. In many ways, Ubisoft has done a great job with these audio logs. They further examine the world and issues set forth by Watch Dogs: Legion. They can be listened to as players drive in a car from mission to mission, letting a player multitask. Players can access any episode they've collected from the main menu, and every episode has a transcript in case the player would prefer to read the material instead of listening to it.
Watch Dogs: Legion's Podcasts Might Be Bugged
Where Watch Dogs: Legion fails on the audio log front is a problem of its own making. Podcasts can be listened to in a car, but players are often only driving from Point A to Point B for a minute or two at a time, if that. Getting out of the car to, say, recruit an NPC to DedSec, stops the podcast - and getting back into the podcast restarts it completely. Watch Dogs: Legion's audio logs are several times longer than players typically spend in their car, meaning players sometimes hear the beginning of an episode several times.
It's unclear if Ubisoft intended podcasts to function this way or if it is a bug. When asked by Kotaku, an Ubisoft spokesperson responded "We're aware of these issues and are looking at addressing ASAP." Until a fix is patched into the game, however, players of Watch Dogs: Legion driving from borough to borough will unfortunately have to brace themselves to hearing the same schtick over and over again every time they get into a car.
Source: Kotaku
Watch Dogs: Legion is on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Google Stadia, and PC. The game will also be a launch title for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.