Watch Dogs franchise is ‘dead and buried’ but Far Cry isn’t says Ubisoft insider-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

Watch Dogs: Legion – the last of its line (Picture: Ubisoft)

A battle royale spin-off for Watch Dogs has apparently been cancelled, as Ubisoft allegedly gives up on the series in favour of Far Cry.

Back before the launch of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, Watch Dogs (or rather a PC-based demo of it) was the face of the new generation, shown off before the new consoles were even announced by Microsoft and Sony.

When the game was finally released, in 2014, it was rather underwhelming, but the 2016 sequel was very good and definitely the highlight of the series. Especially compared to 2020’s disappointing Watch Dogs Legion and its hackneyed portrayal of London.

Legion also managed to squander the potential of its main gimmick, of being able to play as any character you meet, and nothing has been heard of the series since. And according to one proven Ubisoft insider you probably never will again.

Writing on Twitter, in French, regular Ubisoft source j0nathan stated that ‘Watch Dogs is basically finished at this point. The flop of Legion destroyed the licence’s projects (including a pretty original battle royale).’

That’s not exactly hard to believe, after the critical and commerical failure of Legion, but this is the first mention of any kind of spin-off battle royale game.

Ubisoft has long been obsessed with creating a successful battle royale though, so it’s not surprising to learn that it was trying to leverage one of its existing brands to try and make a new one.

What was ‘pretty’ original about it is not stated but perhaps it used the same play as anyone gimmick as Legion. There’s a good chance we’ll never know though and probably the only chance of seeing anything Watch Dogs related again is if the series takes a long enough hiatus that people start to miss it.

Ubisoft seems to be employing a similar approach to Far Cry, as while Far Cry 6 wasn’t as big a failure as Watch Dogs Legion it did underperform and seemed to suggest that the series may have reached a natural end.

There have been rumours of a seventh mainline game though and j0nathan recently caused controversy with a needlessly obscure tweet hinting about the game.

Relaying rumours via easily misinterpreted riddles has become fashionable amongst some leakers recently and many took j0nathan’s to mean that Oscar winner Cillian Murphy would be in the game, just as Giancarlo Esposito was in Far Cry 6.

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He later clarified that’s not what he meant. Although he never said what any of the clues were meant to represent, although there does seem to be a nuclear bomb theme going on with two of them.

The timer set to 72 hours seems to be a reference to a previous rumour stating that the game is based around trying to rescue your family within 72 hours, which runs for 24 hours of real-time in the game, only pausing when you’re in a safehouse.

Even if that is the game’s main gimmick the setting hasn’t been revealed yet, and it’s unclear whether its far enough along for Ubisoft to announce at its next preview showcase in June.

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