Ubisoft has made a pediatrician who happens to be a pedophile a playable recruit in Watch Dogs: Legion as part of what we can only assume is an embarrassing developmental gaffe.
The game, which released on October 29 and has served up overheating problems on the Xbox One, employs a new recruiting system that allows players to make just about anyone a playable hacker. Character recruitment is one of the title's biggest presentations and users can basically welcome any randomly generated character into protagonist faction DeadSec.
The word Legion in the title points to the ability to recruit civilians who help in the fight against villainous corporation Albion, who possess a stranglehold over a post-Brexit London. While nearly every NPC presents a recruitment opportunity, players certainly weren't expecting a sex offender to be one of them.
Watch Dogs: Legion lets players in on various tidbits and a bit of a backstory when they come across potential recruits and, courtesy of a spot by Twitter user Andy Borjas, it appears Ubisoft's recruitment system could use stronger human intuition when it comes to matching backstories and occupations. As you can see in the photo below, there's a pediatrician whose antecedent history involves a relationship with a patient.
Given that pediatricians typically take on minors as patients... you see where this is going...
This is all very laughable but is also very wrong and was certainly avoidable, especially for Ubisoft, whose name has been dragged through the mud with accusations of abuse. Surely, this is something the game's devs could have prevented with very little effort - they could have just left such professions out of the game altogether.
Aside from that, the game's profile reader has garnered some pretty positive reviews. Players can also unlock the "Deep Profiler" ability for 25 tech points, which is acquired during missions in various locations on the game's London map. The Deep Profiler is thought to be a "big deal" as it's quite the upgrade on the profiler offered in the two previous Watch Dogs installments.
Watch Dogs: Legion is currently available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Google Stadia, and PC. It will also be available for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on launch day.
Source: Andy Borjas