Ubisoft Will Reportedly Try Relaunching Watch Dogs: Legion With a Director's Cut

Ubisoft will attempt to relaunch Watch Dogs: Legion next year via a revamped Director’s Cut, it’s been reported.

Legion launched back in 2020 to a somewhat tepid reaction, and the once-promising franchise has subsequently been rested, with no all-new game believed to be in development. But there is a push to do more with Legion early next year, Insider Gaming has reported — something that IGN has also heard through its own sources.

Watch Dogs: Legion divided fans by ditching the series’ single-protagonist focus, and instead allowing you to play as any NPC from its virtual recreation of post-Brexit London. In practice, though, that meant playing as one of various archetypes (builder, hooligan, spy) who could be killed off if you failed missions.

Later DLC added Watch Dogs 1’s Aiden Pearce and Watch Dogs 2’s Wrench as playable characters, before an Assassin’s Creed expansion attempted to reignite interest with a fun but non-canonical crossover featuring a descendant of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate’s Jacob and Evie Fry.

What could Watch Dogs: Legion Director’s Cut contain? It seems likely to expect the above content to be included from the off, and perhaps more of a focus on the series’ more recognizable faces, rather than that ability to play as anyone — but time will tell.

Watch Dogs: Legion creative director Clint Hocking abruptly parted ways with Ubisoft earlier this year, despite being in the middle of leading development on Assassin’s Creed Hexe. Subsequently, Hocking said the experience of leading a large team within Ubisoft had been like working while “flaming barrels [are] falling down from a construction site,” akin to a scene from the arcade game Donkey Kong.

This month, Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot acknowledged the fact that Watch Dogs hadn’t been named alongside its other major franchises as a focus for the company following its recent restructure, but said it was still considered “an important brand for the future.” In the meantime, it remains unclear what is happening with the long-planned Watch Dogs movie project that wrapped production two years ago and had reshoots last year, but still lacks a release date.