Watch Dogs Legion used real political podcasters to deliver in-game talk radio

Watch Dogs Legion may be set in future London but it's not short on contemporary celebrity cameos. Ubisoft themselves announced before launch that you can find Stormzy in Watch Dogs Legion, but players have now spotted another cameo collection. Political podcast "Oh God, What Now?" have provided their writing and voices to some political analysis over the radio in Legion.

A clip of a familiar voice has been shared around. It's journalist Helen Lewis dissecting the rise of fascism in Legion's tech-y future London.

For all that Legion is meant to be set in some near-ish future London, Lewis' radio segment sure feels eerily current.

"Unfortunately one of the things we're very bad at as humans is recognising different things when they don't look like previous examples. So I think in pre-crisis Britain we had an idea that when fascism came it would look again like the 1930s. It would look like a single, charismatic leader. It would look like jackboots in the street and huge flags. But it didn't look like that. It looked like social media groups. It looked like poisoning the well so that no information could be trusted."

Hello darkness, my old friend!

Lewis isn't the only one involved in Legion. OGWN say that Ubisoft approached them last year to create in-game political podcasts, which were created by several other contributors. Journalist James O'Malley has shared another clip from the game: a fictional show called BuccanEar that he was involved with writing, which sounds like it's voiced by Tash LC.

RPS's Watch Dogs Legion review says that this kind of earnest, political commentary is appreciated, even if it's often at odds with the way Legion plays: like a Guy Ritchie romp starring Jason Statham and pals, cockney hollering and all.

"I will say this up front: Watch Dogs Legion actually manages much greater political coherence than I was expecting," Nate says. "I think it abstracts the struggle against fascism a little too far into Saturday morning simplicity [...] But fuck it, it’s at least unapologetic about which side of history it wants to be on, and there’s little bet-hedging here for the sake of being ‘apolitical’. So on the whole, good job."

Good job indeed, Legion.