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[IbizaPocholo]

Rumor: Ubisoft May Be Quietly Retiring The Watch Dogs Series

A Youtuber theorizes that Ubisoft may be finished with the Watch Dogs franchise using evidence from recent departures and development strategy.

gamerant.com

YouTuber JorRaptor has put together a theory that suggests that Ubisoft may be finished with making Watch Dogs games after reception to the Watch Dogs: Legion was tepid at best. He also took a look at job role personnel at Ubisoft and noticed that senior members of the Watch Dogs development team have either left the company or have been moved to other games. At least seven senior developers that worked on Watch Dogs are now scattered in the wind. Anyone left with the company has moved on to other projects.

The franchise has its fans but with Watch Dogs: Legion not taking hold after moderate gains with Watch Dogs 2, Ubisoft may be ready to cut the cord on this franchise as it looks to focus on bringing any of its other projects to market.

 

[FunkMiller]

The problem isn’t Watch Dogs. The problem is Ubisoft.

 

[STARSBarry]

Man that's Ruff.

 

[Tarnpanzer]

I really liked about these games, that they weren´t as overloaded with missions/collectibles as other Ubisoft-games. U still had a lot of things to do for completion, but not nearly as much as the latest Assassins Creed games for example.

And Legions was really bad in comparison to 1 and 2 because of the random protagonists. The DLC with set protagonists was very good in comparison.

 

[Craig of War]

The problem isn’t Watch Dogs. The problem is Ubisoft.

You dead wrong on this and im gonna call you out for it
Watch Dogs 1 & 2 were pretty good wile Watch Dogs Legion was not
That 2 good game 1 mediocre your hate & bias toward Ubisoft is showing lol

 

[FunkMiller]

You dead wrong on this and im gonna call you out for it
Watch Dogs 1 & 2 were pretty good wile Watch Dogs Legion was not
That 2 good game 1 mediocre your hate & bias toward Ubisoft is showing lol

Oh yes. Ubisoft are absolutely fucking awful. We really all shouldn’t be buying their games anymore.

 

[Chukhopops]

Shame, I actually liked Legion. It was the typical Ubi formula but the hacking and gadgets were fun, the Black Mirror-style story was the best out of recent Ubi games and there wasn’t too much bloat. The rotating protagonists were a good idea but they were too afraid of using it fully, it was too easy finding one broken character and keeping him all the way through.

And of course WD2 was amazing.

I think Ubi is in a bit of trouble overall and might be restructuring.

 

[VanCityGamer]

I think this isn’t surprising, but is still disappointing. There aren’t very many AAA open world games that take place in cities. GTA, Saints Row, and Mafia are the series that come to mind? And look at how infrequently those release. Losing Watch Dogs is unfortunate.

 

[TransTrender]

Oh no! What an iconic franchise!

 

[Craig of War]

Oh yes. Ubisoft are absolutely fucking awful. We really all shouldn’t be buying their games anymore.

I have been playing Ubisoft games for 20 plus years now
Again you sir are dead wrong

 

[Warablo]

Watch Dogs had its own thing going for it, but seems like they tried to change the style with each entry. I enjoyed the combat and dark tone of WD 1. WD 2, while the combat wasn't as impressive the world was nice, style was more woke and quirky. WD Legion has the NPC recruiting mechanic that is nice but leads to weird story telling, and everything is way too techy/samey in my opinion.

I think it was a decent IP.

 

[Nydius]

The problem isn’t Watch Dogs. The problem is Ubisoft.

This. Watch_Dogs could have been great but it's just another tiresome, formulaic, Ubisoft open world formula.

Personally, I rather preferred the darker original Watch_Dogs over the over-the-top, a bit too hipster Watch_Dogs 2. Legion was just... forgettable. A good idea on paper, lacking in practice.

I have been playing Ubisoft games for 20 plus years now
Again you sir are dead wrong

I can't tell if you're being facetious or not.

If not, you've got some serious bias going on because it doesn't take much effort to critically examine Watch_Dogs, Assassin's Creed, and Far Cry and realize they're all the same damn game, just with different skins. At least Immortals Fenix Rising tried to change up the formula somewhat with some Zelda-esque puzzling and the Waldorf and Statler style banter between Zeus and Prometheus.

 

[lh032]

why quietly? no one gives a crap about watch dog.

 

[kraspkibble]

watch dogs 2 was such a fun game. the first game was honestly not too bad. it had issues but for the first entry it was enjoyable and had me excited for a sequel. i think a lot of people wrote it off because of the graphics downgrade and because its ubisoft. Watch Dogs Legion was straight up trash. i still kick myself for buying that.

its a shame if this is true but i get it. i think it had a lot of potential but as someone else said the real issue is Ubisoft. they turned everyone against them with that e3 demo and it seems they learned nothing from WD2 when working on Legion.

 

[Valt7786]

Kind of a shame if true. The idea of Legion was really cool but whatever randomiser they used needs a few tweaks and they need less hipster/wokeys on their character design team. A true next gen version of it could have been realy neat.

 

[yazenov]

Good. Those games sucked.

 

[Craig of War]

I can't tell if you're being facetious or not.

If not, you've got some serious bias going on because it doesn't take much effort to critically examine Watch_Dogs, Assassin's Creed, and Far Cry and realize they're all the same damn game, just with different skins. At least Immortals Fenix Rising tried to change up the formula somewhat with some Zelda-esque puzzling and the Waldorf and Statler style banter between Zeus and Prometheus.

If their all the same damn game then by your stupid logic
Bloodborne & Demon Souls & all the Dark Souls game & Even Elden Ring
Are the same damn game right

 

[Zeroing]

Ok.

 

[MidGenRefresh]

Legion is actually quite playable now that DLC allows you to play the entire main story using protagonist from the first game. It also looks super nice on PC with RT and DLSS.

 

[FingerBang]

I only played Watch Dogs Legion and it's probably the worst Ubisoft/Open world game I've ever played.

 

[Sybrix]

The problem isn’t Watch Dogs. The problem is Ubisoft.

100% Correct.

The first game had some really cool features and had a lot of potential.

Ubisoft in their predictable development of any of their games fucked it right up.

 

[JerryinSoCal]

I really liked Watch Dogs 2 a lot, they just needed to up the animation quality and make the melee combat deeper. Legion was fine too but it got a little goofy for me.

 

[Beer Baelly]

RIP Aiden Pearce

 

[Saiyan-Rox]

I enjoyed Watch Dogs (all of them) legion was my least favourite only because it felt disconnected since you didn't have a main protagonist and the story was obvious.

Oh and the voice acting was incredibly bad.

That being said the DLC bloodlines was amazing and I was kinda hoping we'd get another game with Aiden or Wrench as the main character.

 

[balls of snow]

Not good enough to hang with Far Cry and AC. New ip required.

 

[kanjobazooie]

This (WD1) is one of those games where I didn't understand the crazy hype it got before and after release, and when I played it I still didn't see it.

Maybe because I'm not into the hacker culture/genre.

 

[Rykan]

This is one of those games where I didn't understand the crazy hype it got before and after release, and when I played it I still didn't see it.

Maybe because I'm not into the hacker culture/genre.

Are you talking about Watch Dogs Legion or Watch Dogs in general?

The first Watch Dogs was one of the first next gen games announced and shown. In fact, it was shown before the next gen consoles were even announced. I believe it was announced as a PC game, but we all knew that was because the PS4 and XboxOne were not revealed yet.

Watch Dogs probably takes the cake as far as Ubisoft bullshit trailers are concerned. While all of Ubisofts trailers in this time period were fake (Rainbowsix Siege, The Division etc) Watch Dogs was by far the worst offender. It looked amazing. Of course, the actual game never looked anywhere near that good and thats why the series never fully recovered from that.

 

[kanjobazooie]

Are you talking about Watch Dogs Legion or Watch Dogs in general?

The first Watch Dogs was one of the first next gen games announced and shown. In fact, it was shown before the next gen consoles were even announced. I believe it was announced as a PC game, but we all knew that was because the PS4 and XboxOne were not revealed yet.

Watch Dogs probably takes the cake as far as Ubisoft bullshit trailers are concerned. While all of Ubisofts trailers in this time period were fake (Rainbowsix Siege, The Division etc) Watch Dogs was by far the worst offender. It looked amazing. Of course, the actual game never looked anywhere near that good and thats why the series never fully recovered from that.

I was talking about the first game. I remember being disappointed that the game didn't live up to the overblown hype people built around it. I expected more form it.

It was fun, but not as revolutionary as it was made out to be.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

Not much of a loss. UbiSoft will crank out a new open world IP with ease.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

I liked all of them, 1st being the serious one that still more impactful and decently hard at Realistic difficulty that you can die in one shot by the enemy. All of them are great and fun but all of them are very different and don't feel like sequels.

 

[Tommi84]

Watch Dogs 1 was awesome with it dark and gloomy vibe. Second was getting into 'yo,yo, over-the-top hip-hop funky style',but was still pretty good. Legion,though? Ugh,let's forget about it.

 

[nominedomine]

I couldn't stand the first game so I droped it really fast. I dont even know how many more came out after that.

Open world games are really hard to get rigth, specially when you limit them with some uninspiring IP.

 

[crunchyBiscuits]

I liked 1 and 2. Didn't play Legion because I wasn't sold on the NPC recruiting mechanic (preferred to play as one character or multiple fleshed out ones)

Sad to see it's going out with a whimper instead of a bang

 

[OmegaSupreme]

Watch Dogs was never good. As someone who played 1 hour of the first game my opinion is indisputable.

 

[Shmunter]

They should do a Tom Clancy style stealth game. Call the character Sam or something.

 

[swarley64]

Wow, we may never see that iconic hat again

 

[Starcheif]

The first game was horrible so I never played any of those games again.

 

[Topher]

I liked Watch Dogs 1 and 2. Legion was a joke. They had a good thing going with Marcus in WD2. Why they didn't continue with that I have no idea....oh wait.....we are talking about Ubisoft.

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

Watch dogs 1 was great. They should've stuck closer to that formula. I hope they leave us with a patch or update to Watch Dogs 1 resolution at least if theyre going to move on. Recognize that game and give us a way on console to not have to play it with such low resolution.

 

[jigglet]

Huh. Didn't Watch Dogs 3 only come out like 2 years ago. These sort of games tend to be on 3-5 year dev cycles. We wouldn't hear anything this early, and it's perfectly normal for dev teams that are literally 300+ people in size to regularly churn through people on an almost weekly basis. They come and go to different teams and projects.

Non-news.

 

[adamsapple]

The second game was the only fun in the franchise.

 

[Captain Toad]

You dead wrong on this and im gonna call you out for it
Watch Dogs 1 & 2 were pretty good wile Watch Dogs Legion was not
That 2 good game 1 mediocre your hate & bias toward Ubisoft is showing lol

Nah, you wrong.

 

[ahtlas7]

I was so put off when the first one came out and ran so horribly. Finally deleted and never touched again.
Skipped 2
Played 3 during a free weekend. After a couple hours, it got deleted. I had no idea wtf was going on and didn’t care. Driving around London was fun though.

 

[GustavoLT]

The problem about open world city games is that there is a GTA to compare!

 

[SteadyEvo]

You dead wrong on this and im gonna call you out for it
Watch Dogs 1 & 2 were pretty good wile Watch Dogs Legion was not
That 2 good game 1 mediocre your hate & bias toward Ubisoft is showing lol

Correction. 1 was outstanding and it was all downhill from there.

 

[Hezekiah]

Only played the first one which was decent. Were the others better or worse, or is it purely about the tepid reception?

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Fun fact: Watch Dogs 2 was the first and only time I legit felt sadness when a video game character died.

 

[NeoGiffer]

Man that's Ruff.

 

[fatmarco]

I mean in hindsight, Watch Dogs 1 was a really good basis to build a franchise upon.

A dark, gritty and grounded world with hacking and espionage in the middle of a famous and real city. While the first game wasn't executed as well as it could have been, the systems they had a solid foundation for the sequels (much like how Assassins Creed 1 was for its sequels).

Unfortunately they took the series in all the wrong directions and went way too silly with the franchise across the board, whether it was their story, their character designs, their art and their gameplay.

If they do ever bring it back I'd pray it was with a completely new developer.

 

[FearlessBelgian]

Problem for this licence is his level of wokeness... From good game with absolute 0 wokeness in the first game to one of the wokest game with Legion... Im honnestly happy that the last game was a total failure.