Ubisoft Must Really Want You To Buy The Watch Dogs: Legion Season Pass

Watch Dogs: Legion's Bloodline, a season pass expansion, will let gamers play as Watch Dogs protagonist Aiden Pearce, as well as other characters from the series. The kicker: the whole single-player campaign will be rewritten for Pearce's character, according to a Reddit AMA with Ubisoft's Lathieeshe Thillianathan. One Reddit user asked what playing through the game with Pearce would be like. Thillianathan replied, "Aiden will be treated as another member of the team. We are writing the full single-player story again with Aiden's personality. When you replay the main missions again, Aiden will be integrated into all the original cinematics."

Watch Dogs: Legion will let players recruit any non-playable character (NPC) to DedSec, a rebellious hacking collective. That means players can take control of a taser wielding grandma, a drone riding construction worker, a magician who can hypnotize enemies, and anyone else walking the streets of London. When Ubisoft announced four special operatives for the Bloodline expansion, it was unclear how they would fit into the gameplay loop, especially since Pearce is an already an established character in the Watch Dogs universe. 

Now it's clear that Pearce won't just be a skin, but will instead be a re-creation of the character players know from the first game. That means Pearce will be added into cutscenes and, most likely, have gameplay attributes specific to his character. This raised another question on the topic of customizability, since NPCs can be dressed up to the player's liking. Thillianathan spoke on this too, saying, "once [the returning characters] are on your team, you can customize them as you wish." That's right, Pearce is leaving his brown trench coat and black ball cap behind. 

In the first Watch Dogs, released in 2014, Pearce was a vigilante who hacked into the Central Operating System (ctOS), the futuristic surveillance system covering the entirety of Chicago. This allowed him to control traffic lights, look in on anyone's conversations, take over surveillance cameras, and even blow up steam pipes. One day his actions went too far, which resulted in the assassination of his niece. Throughout the rest of the game, Pearce uses his skills to track down the killers and fight take down the big brother, ctOS. Pearce also showed up briefly in Watch Dogs 2, linked to some uncovered dead bodies. Marcus Holloway, the lead character in Watch Dogs 2, helped Pearce escape from prison.

Bloodline will also add Wrench, a side character from Watch Dogs 2 who dons an electronic mask; Mina, a character with mind control abilities who was subjected to transhuman experiments; and Darcy, a member of the Assassin Order, which should excite Assassin's Creed fans. Thillianathan did not say if these characters will get the same treatment as Pearce, but some other details were revealed during the AMA. The Bloodline characters will enter the game a little after release in 2021, and — just like anyone else in the game — can be killed by way of Watch Dog: Legion's permadeath feature. Other tidbits from the AMA explained that online recruitment is not linked with single-player recruitment, microtransactions are solely cosmetic based, invasions return, and permadeath will not be included in online modes at launch.

In other news, Watch Dogs: Legion will include other recruitable characters, such as Alan Murphy, an old man who is well-skilled with the usage of firearms but he can die at any moment. Some other characters include Viktor Lysenko, an alcoholic who takes less damage when he is drunk; Sue Taylor, a lawyer who can increase the likelihood of crew members being released from jail; Jada Wokama, who is skilled in 3D printing; Peter Cox, a Pyrotechnics expert; and Alan Mwamba, a M16 agent. Thillianathan said only a small amount of recruits have been revealed and "there is a lot more to discover."  

Along with the Bloodline DLC, gamers will receive a number of special items if they pre-order any special edition of the game. The gold edition, coming in at $109.99, gets the player a steel book and three days of early access. The next step up is the $129.99 Ultimate Edition, which gives the player everything from the previous edition, along with the Urban Jungle pack, and four weeks of VIP status. Lastly, the $189.99 Collector's Edition grants players an exclusive steel book, stickers, a poster, and a skull mask statue.

Watch Dogs: Legion releases on Oct. 29 for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia. The Xbox Series X/S versions will launch with those consoles on Nov. 10. The PlayStation 5 version arrives later on Nov. 24.