Even that godawful 'hench' is also totally accurate.Īside from looking utterly gorgeous and in the process, comparing very favourably with the New York City conjured up by Insomniac Games' 2018 offering Marvel's Spider-Man, the city itself is beautifully designed and an absolute delight to explore. Whether it's the landmarks - most of which, including the 'Camden Lock' railway bridge over Chalk Farm Road, Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace, have undergone painstaking and faithful recreations - or the soundtrack that features Wagner, Fatboy Slim, Stormzy and almost everything in between, or the grey clouds and beautiful puddles, or even the fact that you drive (most of the time) on the left-hand side of the road, the experience rarely, if ever, feels inauthentic or out of place (a couple of accents that border on parody notwithstanding). And that's the second thing that grabbed me after I was done with the game's prologue and got into the story proper: It all feels right. Despite all that, all of those activities just feel right in Watch Dogs: Legion. For now, here's a whistle-stop tour:Īlright, so driving through the streets of London or taking in a quick game of keepy-uppy to the sounds of Three Lions (by Baddiel and Skinner, and Lightning Seeds) is extremely on the nose, but then so is navigating through the back alleys of Camden Town to the sounds of Belfastian punk rockers Stiff Little Fingers. Moving from the sounds to the sights, I personally don't believe there's been a better video game depiction of London, but we'll get to that soon enough. Ranging from subtle southern lilts to Irish-tinged brogues and from articulation originating from the north of Hadrian's Wall to typical British (South) Asian twangs, the soundscape of Ubisoft's London is a great mix of the sort of pronunciations you'll encounter all over the city, including some that will make you wonder if the developers are indeed 'avin a right larf. Staying with accents, and much like London itself, Watch Dogs: Legion offers up a whole variety of them as you get deeper in.

Not the most ideal of starts, and made worse by the gratuitous use (twice in the first hour alone) of that damn word 'hench' in the big-and-strong context.įortunately, it's all uphill from there on.

Of course, there's a northern James Bond-type as whom you play in the prologue mission, but the first couple of hours largely inflict upon you accents that seem to have been inspired by Dick Van Dyke's turn as a chimneysweep in the aforementioned musical. Why this unprecedentedly early digression though? It's because one of the first things to strike me about the soon-to-be-released Watch Dogs: Legion was the first few accents you come across - many of which assail the eardrums like Mary Poppins-shaped bullets.

When does watch dogs legion come out