Watch Dogs: Legion NPCs Follow Set Schedules, Which You Can Spy On

By all early indications, Watch Dogs: Legion is shaping up to be a particularly ambitious take on the open-world genre, giving you the ability to play as any NPC in the city of London. However, the game's focus on NPCs doesn't end there.

According to a recent Game Informer cover story, all of the inhabitants of the game's digital London follow their own set schedules. Players will be able to use an upgrade to their tech called a "deep profiler" to access this schedule, which will make it easier for you to follow their every move and recruit them to your hacker collective. The story gives a specific example of a player using the upgrade to delve into a woman's calendar, knowing when she'll go to marriage therapy, when she'll relax with her cousin, or meet with her lawyer.

Watch Dogs: Legion is far from the first game to feature NPCs that follow an hour-to-hour pattern--highly influential titles like Shenmue and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask popularized the concept--but Legion is likely doing it at a much larger scale. The cover story suggests that players will use this information to understand how individual citizens view the organization of DedSec, allowing you to come up with strategies to pull them over to your side. Legion may offer a multiplayer mode with a higher player count than its 4-player co-op.What exactly that means remains to be seen.

Watch Dogs: Legion is slated to drop on October 29 for PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One. It will also launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X when those consoles come out this holiday season. You can check out our Watch Dogs: Legion pre-order guide to learn about the bonuses and editions available.