Tea Time with Bagley: Invasion and Extraction

Welcome back to Tea Time with Bagley, our article series where we deep dive into features, stories and everything else with our dev team. Today we have Game Designer Clément Bachellerie, Associate Game Design Director Levon Zakharchenko and Online Director JP Cambiotti talk to us about the newly added PVP modes.
To start things off, for those that have not played it yet, what is Invasion?
Invasion is a new mode that allows you to drop into an unsuspecting player's game to install a backdoor and hack their data - or to be the target of such an invasion. For the Invader, the goal is to complete the data transfer without being caught. If you do get caught, you've got to run! As the player being invaded, your goal is to find the hacker before the timer runs out and the hack is completed.

Invasion is a fan favorite, how excited was the team about the opportunity to bring it back to Watch Dogs: Legion?

As fans of Invasion ourselves, the team was super excited to work on this mode for Watch Dogs: Legion. There was a fun design challenge in keeping the essence of the original mode that fans knew and love while updating it to be coherent with Watch Dogs: Legion's new game mechanics, like Play-as-Anyone.

Speaking of, how does Play-As-Anyone play into Invasion?

This time around, when the hacker gets detected, they can take control of any nearby character in the city and go back into hiding. It makes for some interesting scenarios where you can loop back into the hide-and-seek portion of the gameplay a bit longer than before.

Sounds like this will need some sessions to master, do you have some tips for players wanting to dive into Invasion?

While we’re sure the community will have many interesting tips to share soon, here are a couple to get things started: As the person being invaded, be sure not to fire your weapon at just anyone as this will attract a response from the police. Keep it cool and look for a character that doesn't act like the others. Profiling them will reveal if they're the hacker.

For the Hacker, the basic tip is always the most relevant. Be sure not to injure the player you're invading, or you'll lose the match.

We also have a brand-new addition to Watch Dogs: Legion. What can players expect from the Extraction game mode? How does it work?
Extraction is a 1v1v1v1 PvP Free-for-all game mode, where players will reveal bags with crypto-drives, capture them and deliver them to defined points in London. The game mode covers a big part of the city, and it generates a new route every match.

When a match begins, you will see an objective to reach a place where a crypto-drive is located. But you also need to keep your eyes open because your competitors will do the same for the other spawn points! Once the location reached, you need to defend yourself from the other players until a crypto-drive is revealed. Then you’ll have a backpack with crypto-drives on your character that you need to deliver to a defined location. Other players will of course try to stop you! So, use hacks to block their vehicles, shoot them if you are on foot & use your character abilities to survive. Players need to deliver the crypto-drive several times until the game declares a winner.

What are some tactics players can take advantage of in Extraction to secure a win?

To have an advantage in this game mode, you need to be prepared and equip all of your operatives with the proper gadgets and weapons. As DedSec, you’ll also be able to use the unique abilities of your characters – for example Beekeeper’s bee Swarm - gadgets and hacking! So, make sure your Online DedSec crew is on point and swap things around after a few sessions to improve your chances!

What’s the best way to use Play-As-Anyone in Extraction to gain on their opponents?

When your current operative is neutralized, you can pick another one from your team. But of course, some of the operatives are not as effective in PvP as others, so choose wisely and experiment with their abilities.

Adding more PVP modes to Watch Dogs: Legion was something the team has been planning on for a while now. What were some of the opportunities you wanted to take advantage of when implementing Invasion and Extraction? Any challenges that stood out for the team?

When we saw how much some players loved just exploring near-future London, we knewthat adding chase-based gameplay to the city would let players leverage their knowledge of the city . When you're hunting down a player, knowing the shortcuts to take and intercepting them is a lot of fun. Both PVP modes are using London as the main attraction.

And one of our biggest challenges was to adjust the balance of various operatives and make each operative as meaningful as possible.

Thank you very much to the team for giving us an insight into Invasion and Extraction. You can experience both new modes with our latest Title Update 5.5. With this patch we also released Watch Dogs: Legion of the Dead on consoles, so if you haven’t tried out our new zombie mode, now’s your chance!

For the latest news and updates, make sure you follow us on our social channels @WatchDogsGame. We’ll see you in London, DedSec!