Although it was recently delayed along with a couple of other Ubisoft games, Watch_Dogs Legion remains on many player’s most anticipated games lists. A sequel to 2016’s well-received but financially underperforming Watch_Dogs 2, Ubisoft Montréal has passed the reigns of franchise they created to a new studio: Ubisoft Toronto.

Previously leading development on Starlink: Battle for Atlas, Watch_Dogs: Legion will be the second major Ubisoft game led by the team. With high profile designers like Clint Hocking (Far Cry 2, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory) and Liz England (Sunset Overdrive, Scribblenauts) at the helm, the team is very excited about the direction of the new instalment in the series.

Many people’s first exposure to Watch_Dogs Legion was the granny assassin who delighted audiences at E3 2019 driving hype for the game’s “Play as anyone” feature, but some have questions about how the game’s story will work with this new system.

So at EGLX last month, we sat down with Team Lead Narrative Designer at Ubisoft Toronto and Dames Making Games co-director Kaitlin Tremblay (@kait_zilla) to talk about her role on Watch_Dogs Legion, the hype surrounding the game and what we can expect.

Several of these questions were pulled from our Discord server which you should go check out if you want to join a community of game developers and fans focused on the Canadian scene. Here’s the interview, which has been lightly edited for clarity.

[Stephan] How much of the story in Watch_Dogs Legion builds off Watch_Dogs 2? Some people in our Discord hadn’t played or finished Watch_Dogs 2, will they understand what’s going on in Legion when it starts?

[Kait] Watch_Dogs Legion is set in a near-future London, so it’s kind of its own story. You don’t need to have played Watch_Dogs 1 or 2 to understand what’s going on in Legion.

[Stephan] Will we see more of the meta-narrative stuff with ctOS and the surveillance cities popping up all over the world?

[Kait] Yes, so ctOS and Bloom are a big part of our world in London and so you will see ctOS everywhere and Dedsec still uses ctOS. Those threads still exist but we are exploring a different story and a different context.

[Stephan] I’ve heard “post-Brexit” mentioned in some of the game’s marketing, but at the same time, Ubisoft spokespeople have said the game isn’t trying to be political at all. How do you walk that balance of trying to make an apolitical game set in a political context?

[Kait] So what we’re exploring with Watch_Dogs Legion is how to build a resistance movement made up of everyday people in response to things like authoritarianism. What we’re looking at is the contexts and the situations that exist globally, the problems and all these things that feed into creating this setting where authoritarianism and mass-surveillance can take root.

When you’re building a piece of speculative fiction you’re looking at different pieces and different facets in isolation and using that to set a context so that we can then explore the consequences of it. What we’re looking at specifically is what motivates people to join a resistance movement, and so we’re really focused on, obviously with play-as-anyone, how people respond to various contexts and consequences.

[Stephan] So what are some of the motivations for joining a resistance?

[Kait] There’s so many! I don’t want to spoil, because this is a lot of the fun of the story.

[Stephan] What’s your favourite one?

[Kait] I can’t spoil any! I don’t want to because they’re so unique to the people that you see and you find and how they interact with the world. The stories of how people resist are so particular to that person, and I don’t actually know what people you’re going to find in your game. And so people will have different reasons, and they’ll be different people that I might not actually know you’ll find in your game just yet.

The reasons run the gambit, everybody in the world has something that they care about enough that would push them to join a resistance movement and we really wanted to explore the breadth of that.

[Stephan] Players really loved the characters in Watch_Dogs 2 and they felt really fleshed out. Some people are worried there won’t be the same fleshed-out characters in Legion if you can be anyone in the world, so how do you create those personalities players will remember?

[Kait] We’ve put so much love into the characters in Watch_Dogs Legion. They are full people with full personalities and voices and ways of existing in the world and full identities. They are actual characters and so we’ve created this composite way that you build a person that looks at all the different aspects of what a person is, right, it’s how they dress, how they talk, where they’re from, who they are, their personality. All of those build together to create unique people that I’m confident people are going love.

[Stephan] Are there going to be characters that all players interact with? Maybe some main staples we’ve seen in the series before?

[Kait] We can’t answer that right now, but what I can say right now is that we have allies and villains in the world that every player will get to see and experience.

[Stephan] How did the team feel about the Spec Work controversy when that was announced with JGL and Hitrecord? A lot of people were critical that soliciting fan work for content in the game with the chance of getting compensated might not be the best thing and that led to #nospec trending on Twitter.

[Kait] That’s outside of the realm of what I’m able to talk about today.

[Stephan] Fair enough. What’s your favourite new feature in Watch_Dogs Legion that’s not in the first two games?

[Kait] Play as anyone! Being a writer/narrative designer I’m genuinely hyped on this system that exists. How you can take anybody in the world and make them a hero character who is the star of your story. It gives a chance to explore people who may not have been a hero before or that you may not think of as being a hero. And everyone can be a hero so the fact play as anyone is really drawing on this idea is something I’m super excited about.

Every character will have different abilities and backstories.

[Stephan] With Ubisoft Toronto leading the development on Watch_Dogs Legion has there been any more pressure versus when the studio is assisting on other games?

[Kait] I can’t really speak to that with this being my first Ubisoft game, but we do collaborate with other studios and it’s been a really wonderful collaborative experience. For myself, getting to learn from so many other devs who have had different experiences and have different skill sets than I do. So on a personal level, I’ve really benefitted from this collaborative process. I can’t really speak for the studio as a whole.

[Stephan] What’s the one thing you wish everyday people knew about game design and game development that they don’t?

[Kait] There are so many things… It really takes a village. Everything is such a team effort and it’s really made up of so many different people working on different parts of it. You might not know everybody’s name or you might not follow everybody on Twitter but it really is an inherently collaborative process made up of so many different people’s talents. It’s the thing I love most about making games as well, is getting to work with so many different people.

Features

Interview with Watch_Dogs Legion Lead Narrative Designer Kaitlin Tremblay