A bit of a relationship, even, such that when I later lost Garba on a core story mission, I sent McCleary to finish the job as a tribute. That delightful subplot, down to the characters’ names and biographical details, was all emergent within the game, responsive to my choices and mistakes, and it gave McCleary and Garba a little more depth in my eyes. If you want to see the very best of the best for your platform(s) of choice, check out Polygon Essentials. When we award a game the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the title is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive or fun - and worth fitting into your schedule. Polygon Recommends is our way of endorsing our favorite games. This time, Garba parked the electro-fist for a more discreet cloaking device. Then, her distraught friends kidnapped him, and I had to bring in Emeka Garba, a 23-year-old Tom Haverford-ish reality TV fameball, to save McCleary. Unfortunately, she was killed in the blast. This time I charged up an electro-fist, a one-hit KO, to obliterate the lone goon guarding Anderson. The core gameplay loop of Watch Dogs : Legion - sneak around, get the drop on the goons, stroll out triumphantly - is enjoyable enough that I was happy to do another rescue in the same location where I’d done the last. McCleary easily slipped inside the gangster hideout where Anderson was being held. Anderson is also a gambling addict with bad debts, which led to her kidnapping. McCleary was assigned to rescue Lydia Anderson, a stage magician whose talent is using hypnosis to turn a foe friendly. Then Blake McCleary, my 58-year-old industrial designer, chugged a couple of eisbocks in a pub in Southwark, threw a round of darts, and went off to his next assignment for DedSec.

That’s great, but absent pre-written player characters, developing in and changed by a narrative, would that mean I’d care about no one? Play as anyone, say the marketers, touting your ability to recruit literally anyone you meet on the street to your cyber-hacktivist cause. Watch Dogs: Legion’s elevator pitch to the player gave me pause.

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