Watch Dogs: Legion Will Be Free To Play This Weekend

Watch Dogs: Legion, Ubisoft’s open-world hacker game, will be free-to-play on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC starting March 25, the developer announced today in a blog post.

The trial will allow you full access to the game’s open world. While you can complete Legion’s critical path in less than 20 hours — plenty for one marathon of a weekend — don’t get any ideas: The free trial won’t let you progress past the campaign’s “Skye Larsen” mission, which happens midway through the game.

You’ll also be able to test out the recently released multiplayer mode, which, while sporadically entertaining with friends, is underwhelming if you’re playing with strangers. Earlier today, the multiplayer received its first tactical operation (think: cooperative raid-like multiplayer mission), but you won’t be able to give that a spin in the trial. You’ll only be able to play the brief co-op missions and the Spiderbot Arena mode.

Ubisoft’s blog post says the free period ends on March 29, but a video uploaded to YouTube says it’ll end on March 28. (Update 8:02 a.m. AEDT: In a statement to Kotaku, a Ubisoft spokesperson clarified that Legion’s free trial ends on May 29.)

Beyond today’s free trial, Ubisoft detailed the summer road map for Watch Dogs: Legion:

• Next month, Mina, a new hero, will join the game, but will only be available to those who own the season pass.
• In May, the game’s multiplayer mode will receive a second tactical operation.
• Two new competitive modes — Extraction and Invasion — will also become playable in May. It’s not immediately clear what those modes will play like. Hopefully they feature actual people, rather than spiderbots.
• June will see the game’s first major expansion: Bloodlines. It will feature two characters from previous Watch Dogs games: Aiden Pearce (the first game’s humourless protagonist) and Wrench (your DJ-masked comrade from Watch Dogs 2). Season pass owners will be able to play as both.
• In August, season pass owners will be able to play as Darcy, a member of the Assassin order from Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series.