Delays
Watch Dogs: Legion launched without the multiplayer option with the promise to release it by the end of the year. That seemed fine by me because that gave me the time to finish the single player story before diving into the multiplayer world.
Ubisoft didn’t make december, however, so they announced a delay to somewhere in February. I’d finished the single player story by then and I was really looking forward to the multiplayer update. They didn’t make February, either, unfortunately. But hey, if they needed the time to make something great, I was happy to bide my time.
Then, in April, the update was there. I wasn’t as eager to play it as before because it’s been almost half a year since I finished the game. My friend had even removed the entire game to safe some space on his Playstation. We agreed to install and update the game again and give the multiplayer a shot. We had better not…
Starting multiplayer
So here we go. Selecting multiplayer from the title screen, you get some options and a list of your (in my case Playstation) friends. However, when trying to invite my friend I discovered we both need to complete some sort of tutorial mission first. The game doesn’t really tell you that, except for the red colored mission title beneath the free roam option.
No sweat, most games require you to complete an intro mission before they let you go your own way. So once chosen the free roaming option (which is a little bit a misleading title when starting multiplayer for the first time), I get spawned in a game session with three random other players. Wait, what? Why couldn’t I start a session with my friend? No big deal, just finish the mission quickly so we can play together.
Introduction mission
I’m asked to recruit someone of the street for my team. It’s been some time since I played the game so both me and my friend are a little confused how we’re supposed to do that as the game provides absolutely zero instructions. Apparently, Ubisoft thinks we all played the single player campaign right before starting the multiplayer game.
Because we’re clever, we soon figured out that we need to save some to our recruits before we are able to actually recruit that person. In contrary to the single player campaign, recruiting cost those blue diamant shaped thingies (technique points, I think). So I want to recruit Bob the Builder right from the start because he can summon cargo drones. Super handy. The game said “no”. I needed 20 technique points to recruit him and I only had 10. Why doesn’t the game explain me this? Did I miss something? I was forced to recruit some lame guy (which also cost a few technique points) to continue with the mission.
The next part of the mission was driving to some building and download some data from a guard somewhere deep inside that building. Why? I don’t know. It certainly is no tutorial because nothing is explained. I hack some cameras and manage to download the data fairly easy. My friend, however, was less lucky. The camera trick didn’t work for him and he ended up taking over a drone and flying it through the building to get near the hackable guard.
Quite some time later, we both completed the mission and were ready to take on the game together. The social screen in the menus, however, still said we needed to complete the intro mission before we were able to join each other’s session. Luckily, there’s an option to bring up the friend list right from your console and send a game invite from there. That worked. We were finally in a game session together (and two other strangers).
Co-op mission disaster
We looked at the map and saw there were multiple solo events and one co-op mission available. The co-op mission, it is! Next problem: when starting the mission, you can choose to either invite everyone in the session, or to start alone. No option to start the mission with only the two of us. Since the game left us no choice, we invited everyone in the session and started the mission. More misery followed…
We get spawned near a guarded building and the mission is to do something undetected. Of course, we immediately get spotted by a guard and a mission failed message pops up on screen. We respawn and suddenly see two other players running toward the guards. Mission failed again. We both quit the mission because we don’t want to play with other random players.
We end up in separate game sessions. In my session, the police is hunting me for some reason and I’m killed. I’m forced to choose another character, one the police apparently also is on the lookout for because they immediately start shooting at me again. In the meantime, my friend figured out we can start a private game session. He created one and invited me (through the console friend list because the social menu in the game still wouldn’t let us).
Now we were in a game session together with no other players. We start the co-op mission again and this time, we get spawned in the middle of the mission where two other players were gunning down drones on the roof of the building. Utterly confused, we quit the mission. Diving into Google, we find out all co-op missions are always public, even when you’re in a private session.
Don’t play the multiplayer
How could Ubisoft screw up a game this much? With all the experience they have from The Crew and the Ghost Recon games, what went wrong? Watch Dogs 2 had a fun multiplayer, why not build forth on that? It’s the single player that saves them, because that is what I bought this game for in the first place. For those who are thinking about buying Watch Dogs: Legion for the multiplayer: DON’T.
