Watch Dogs: Legion’s Multiplayer Delayed

Sometimes I love reviewing games. I can’t help but love a great game and cherish calling out a bad one. Every now and then I’ll play and review something, then I will play a bit more and want to talk about it further. Only once have I played something while reviewing it, praised it highly, and when I’ve gone to play more, I’ve found issues in the bucket load. Since I reviewed Watch Dogs: Legion, I’ve had a copious number of crashes, to the point where I’d nearly call the game unplayable. In the last week and a half (maybe two) I’ve not touched the game at all. I am/have been leaving it to update and possibly fix the issues of repeated crashes.

With the number of issues across multiple platforms, Ubisoft Toronto has decided to delay the upcoming multiplayer mode for the open-world London-’em-up. The game was released almost a month ago simultaneously on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and this strange thing they refer to as “Stadia,” whatever that is. Not only that, but the game also released on Xbox Series X/S and Amazon Luna on the 10th of November, with the PS5 release on the 12th. To simply put it for those less technically-minded, Legion is big and you can be anyone, but that many systems will all have different issues. Because of that, the game breaks a lot and in many different ways.

“Since the launch of Watch Dogs: Legion, some of you continue to have technical issues preventing you from enjoying the game.” As the statement opens with, going on to add: “The dev team is committed to fixing these issues and will not stop until everyone can experience the game as intended.” They continue on to say that update 2.20 will be coming to all platforms this week, with noted performance and crashing issues for many systems in the patch notes. Though with that it is noted, “As part of our commitment to fixing the game’s issues, we’ve decided to delay the Online mode of Watch Dogs: Legion to early 2021.”

Instead of launching as was intended in December, the team is looking to stabilize the single-player and further test the multiplayer before launch. For some, I know that is disappointing. However, the alternative is simply a broken game left untouched. I hold a strong conviction that while delays are troublesome for our own possible “hype” for said game or game mode; I’d rather see the game working properly than not working at all. Personally, I never had as many issues until days after the review was published and after 25-30 hours of play.

I am oddly interested in what some of the online features will have in store for Legion, as free-roam does have an interesting game built in. Since you can (of course) play as anyone in London, it could bring a far more interesting hunt-style game between friends. It could be similar to how you would hack other players in Watch_Dogs (1) and attempt to stay hidden from the player you are invading.