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December 18th, 2020

packbat: A bat wearing a big asexual-flag (black-gray-white-purple) backpack. (nanowrimo09)
Friday, December 18th, 2020 03:51 pm

In the past two weeks, two different gaming journalism YouTube channels have put out videos on Watch Dogs: Legion and its "Play as Anyone" system: "Playing as Anyone in Watch Dogs: Legion" (33:10, auto-generated English captions only) from Errant Signal and "How Watch Dogs: Legion Works | GMTK Most Innovative 2020" (13:29, manually captioned in English) from Game Maker's Toolkit. Both of these videos come to the same conclusion about the system: it's technically impressive, but it doesn't have a meaningful impact on the player.

9:26: And since it's kind of the defining trait of Watch Dogs: Legion, I think it's worth looking at the "Play as Anyone" system and what the game gets out of it. Because it's not clear to me - given the final product - what the "Play as Anybody" system is really trying to accomplish.

- Chris Franklin a.k.a. Campster, Errant Signal

8:08: But the thing is - and this bit is quite important: none of this actually matters. One of the most critical questions that Ubisoft had to answer with Watch Dogs: Legion was not "how do you make a game where you can play as anyone" - but instead, "why should anyone care?"

- Mark Brown, Game Maker's Toolkit

I'm leading with this, but neither video leads with this (the leading numbers in each blockquote are a timestamp), and the way they don't lead with this is interesting.

981 words )