I loved the games #Watch_Dogs and Watch_Dogs 2 for many reasons. However, I had very mixed feelings about the third entry in the series, #WatchDogsLegion.

One of the reasons was that I felt the game was totally walking back on a lot of the authentically progressive and somewhat leftist writing and art of the previous two games.

In Legion, a shady cryptofash private security company has taken over London by way of corruption and data-driven mass manipulation. We play as the resistance.

However, incredulously, the entire resistance revolves around getting the (then) Queen of England back into office, and reinstating the original Met Police, the cops. Our hard-hitting radical #antifa slogans are the likes of "Have you seen our regent about?".

Back then I rolled my eyes so hard, thinking that if this was real life, there's no way a serious radical anarchist resistance group would suddenly be cheering for the regular cops and the return of literal monarchy.

But now, I have to apologise.

Because now I see American Dems and progressives cheering for the US police and hoping they'll do something against ICE 'agents'. The Black Panther Party marching with LEOs.
Dems cheering that regular cops are 'at least properly trained, unlike ICE', or that ICE under Biden was some kind of righteous humanitarian organisation deporting criminals, has killed my soul several times over.

Sorry, Ubisoft. You lot were ahead of your time. You've portrayed liberals perfectly fine.

#WatchDogs #ACAB #ICE #USpol #USA

Wild replaying Watch Dogs: Legion in the year of our lord 2025

Walking through the city, looking around, going "Yeah, yep. Uh huh." every five seconds

Listening to in-world podcasts, "Mm-hm, yuuuuuup"

#watch_dogs #fascism #surveillanceCapitalism

I recently started playing through #watch_dogs again and man, it's bizarre walking around Chicago and overhearing random people who

1. Are aware of the ways FLOK I mean CTOS invades their privacy and
2. Give a shit about it

Ubisoft aggiunge 49 obiettivi a Watch Dogs su Steam, dopo aver fatto lo stesso con altri titoli come Far Cry, Ghost Recon e Assassin's Creed. Nonostante le nuove uscite, Ubisoft continua a supportare i giochi meno recenti, come dimostra la patch a 60 fps per Far Cry New Dawn. Ancora nessun annuncio per Watch Dogs 2 e Legion. #GiochiPC #videogiochi #Watch_Dogs #gamingnews

👉 https://www.absolutegamer.it/i-nuovi-achievment-steam-di-watch-dogs-sono-una-buona-scusa-per-rigiocare-il-classico-ubisoft/

Rumor: Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs series reportedly “Dead and Buried”
https://www.futuregamereleases.com/2024/04/rumor-ubisofts-watch-dogs-series-reportedly-dead-and-buried/

#futuregamereleases #News #ubisoft #Watch_Dogs #Watch_Dogs_Legion

Are #Watch_Dogs and #Watch_Dogs2 worth playing/buying on a sale?

Edit: Guess I'll get them. Sigh.

WATCH_DOGS was way ahead of its time. Everything that happened there (except some types of hacks like mass blackouts) has practically happened already.

• A privacy nightmare of a corporation. In the game it was Blume, now we have Google and Facebook.
• Intercepted text messages: In game, you can spy on ppl's text messages. Now we have a woman arrested for seeking an abortion via whatsapp.
• Hacking ppl's bank accounts via phone. In-game it was automatic, but now we have phishing attacks, blackmails, even AI generated kidnapped voices.
• Facial profiling: In-game we had instant profiling, but in China and Hong Kong we have facial scanners and social credit scores.
• Getting private details on someone: In-game it was all by Blume, but now we have cookies, super cookies, trackers, and insurance companies have access to it all.
• Privacy invasions: In-game you had to hack Blume routers, but in reality IoT devices are extremely easy to hack, and you can hack Smart TV cameras (why do they have cameras and microphones, anyway?), Alexa devices, baby monitors and even internet sex toys AND get their usage history.
• Police persecution of whistleblowers: In-game we had Raymond Kenney, here we have Julian Assange being hunted overseas with bullshit charges.
• And then we have Dedsec and Anonymous, but ironically that's the least accurate thing: Anonymous is in decline right now, while it was at its peak when the game was developed.

It still amazes me how close the game portrays our current reality. This game was fucking prophetic. The only thing it missed was the rise of nazis and the trans panic over the US.

#privacy #WATCH_DOGS #Cyberpunk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgkj9vs0UZg

We love your new profile pic. That's a great haircut!

Congratulations on the new job. A 25% raise. Fantastic. You deserve that wide screen TV.

We just saw that status change. We're so happy you found your soulmate.

Your kid's grown up so fast. She walks to school all by herself. That intersection in the picture behind her? We know that place. It's a safe neighborhood. You don't even need to lock your door.

WAKE UP. Stop authoring your own tragedy.

The most fascinating thing about this video is that it was released in 2014, way before scandals like Cambridge Analytica came out. Facebook was on its peak.

They were already warning us about the privacy dangers of social media.

Sometimes I wish we could get together and start releasing some of these videos, but cryptographically signed, and releasing them to the world.

We need a new V. We need a new Max Headroom. We need a new Anonymous who we can trust.

#WATCH_DOGS #Privacy

I've been enjoying Watch_Dogs: Legion more than I expected. It's not a particularly good game per se but the way the NPC system works really helps immerse me. The clothing customisations have excellent texturing but barely any variety, which is frustrating.

Still, it's doing my brain a load of good and that's what I bought it for. By which I mean it's sufficiently compelling to keep me playing and actively relaxing, something I'm bad at.

#videogames #watch_dogs

So I figure I should open up with my favorite obsession in #videogame narratives, and that is #Ubisoft and their strange interconnected multiverse.

Now I say "multiverse" because despite multiple games having very blatant connections to each other, they also have very obvious contradictions that imply that these two properties can't exist in the same exact universe.

Some spoilers for Ubisoft games ahead, for fair warning:

The easiest example is #AssassinsCreed and #Watch_Dogs, where-in Assassins Creed 4 has a pamphlet advertising the villainous tech of the Watch_Dogs series, CtOS and Watch_Dogs has a final Convoy side mission where you are contracted by a group calling themselves "The Brotherhood" to take out the lead of Abstergo Entertainment from Assassins Creed 4.

Seems pretty cut-and-dry, right? Well Watch_Dogs 2 throws a wrench into that by having Ubisoft exist in-universe and having them be the developers of the Assassins Creed series, despite Assassins Creed 4 establishing that Abstergo Entertainment were the developers of the AC games in the AC universe, meaning that while these two games have elements that exist in both games, they can not possibly exist in the same universe.

That alone doesn't prove that there's a multiverse though, which is why I'd like to turn the next most blatant crossover that is also fairly recent, and that is #FarCry New Dawn. Far Cry New Dawn has an interesting feature called Expeditions, a feature which I could obsess over in an entirely separate post, which let you got to smaller maps that are set around the US to raid supplies. One of these Expeditions is set around a large crashed aircraft, which turns out to be the airborne base used by Sam Fisher in #SplinterCell Blacklist. For those who don't know, Far Cry New Dawn is set after a global nuclear war in a post-apocalyptic super-bloom US, an event that never happens in the Splinter Cell games. Notes found around the expedition location actually set the time in the Splinter Cell timeline when the timeliness diverge, which would be in the middle of the book set after Blacklist. Also in these notes, another group, The Division, is mentioned, which are US based special agents that are activated in times of turmoil in the US, and are the main characters of The Division series of games, which do not have nuclear war break out, instead having a global disease outbreak be the activating reason of Division agents, showing a clear divergence in these timelines as well.

There are also many smaller crossovers, Sam Fisher has many crossovers in the Tom Clancy series, there are mentions of Rook Island, the setting of Far Cry 3, in Watch_Dogs Legion, Rabbids toys appearing in various other titles, and of course the Far Cry 3 DLC Abstergo bunker you can explore.

I'm certain there are more than this, but these are the main ones I always bring up first if the topic comes up. Please feel free to share your thoughts about this possible multiverse, any details I may have missed, other works that have similar interconnections, or just your own niche video game obsession!