February 8, 2025

Short Rounds! Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance: We are Legion

Lloyd “Gus” Sabin, 22 January 2025

I can’t think of a better person to take a quick peek at We Are Legion than me: I have been a long-time fan of the Terminator movies – even the recent ones – and I hate people. And in We Are Legion (DLC for the original Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance game) the player takes control over the Legion – the super AI hell bent on destroying humanity.

Full disclosure: I have not played the original Dark Fate game yet, but it is not necessary in order to enjoy We Are Legion. Granted, at first the gameplay here in We Are Legion is frenetic – not overly complex but very fast paced. The game is also extremely well put-together.

click images to enlarge

Legion is a pure RTS, with scripted missions. However, the player can go about winning individual missions in whatever way they choose. Victory comes by capturing nodes on great looking tactical and fully-rotatable and zoomable maps. As the player stitches together victories against the different tribes of humanity, they advance through the campaign. Player units can also be carried over from mission to mission, and even upgraded with different weapons, if they survive.

There is also a campaign map, designed to give the player an overall sense of introductory geographic context and purpose to each individual mission: ‘You are being deployed to X, and this is Y.’ 

The player does have control of the mini-map found in each tactical mission, and the mission maps are beautiful hellscapes of the Terminator’s post-apocalyptic world war. My first few hours with We Are Legion were spent in the desert southwest of the United States, which rings true to me since the first two movies were set in California and Mexico, where a very pregnant Sarah Connor fled to at the end of the very first film.

The environments the Legion finds itself fighting in are made up mostly of dry, tan and brown scrub, dusty riverbeds, slapdash villages made of rusted junk and debris, and massive factories, oil fields, warehouses, utilities and ruined towns. Everything is destructible in these environments too.

Human vehicles and structures, whether they belong to Founders, Integrators, Marauders or some other human faction, are also destructible, and capturable, using the correct Legion units. Damage modeling is awesome, and as initial contact evolves into combat, the player can watch as different parts of different vehicles and weapons systems fly apart as the fighting intensifies.

Playing as Legion is as awesome as it sounds. If, like me, you grew up with the original two Terminator movies and remember Kyle Reese’s combat flashbacks, you have a lot to look forward to in this DLC. Slitherine took everything we loved about those short scenes in the war against the machines in the films and blasted it up to 11…scenes we would have went nuts for in the movies are scattered liberally all over We Are Legion.

Legion units include sentient UAVs, human-like light infantry terminators, REV-6 heavy terminators, and even robot dogs. On the heavier side of the spectrum are a series of different heavy wheeled vehicles with different weapons load outs, walkers and even tanks, just like in those short movie scenes. Each have their specific uses and all can be destroyed if not used correctly. There is also an encyclopedia that can be referenced for more information on all units as they are encountered during the game. 

Additionally, there is Legion-narration throughout the entire game. It is very well done – maybe too well done. After a few missions the different ‘voices’ of legion started to become somewhat disturbing as the narrating AI coldly figured how best to wipe out whatever was left of humanity on the map. Human chit-chat can also be heard over comms, many times simply panicking as your Legion units appear over a bluff or advance on a position. Voice acting here is very well done, to the point of eerieness…or maybe I am just a little softie.

We Are Legion is not difficult to learn either. For my first few missions I played on the ‘Normal’ setting and found it almost too easy. As the player captures energy points on the map, currency is awarded to purchase supplemental units, in addition to the units carried over from the previous mission. On easier settings this can really add up and a few times so far I was unstoppable against the humans. Difficulty did ramp up a bit in the third and fourth missions as the maps grew and the objectives became more complex. Difficulty is also adjustable in the Options menu at any time.

Slitherine has done a great job with We Are Legion, and it is certainly one of the best games to earn use of Terminator licensing. While playing, I could not help but think how great a game they could produce would be, using what they have done here, in some real life historical conflicts. Yes, WWII has been done 1000 times over, but a game in the style of We Are Legion set in Stalingrad or Kursk or really anywhere on the eastern front of WWII would be amazing. Maybe something to hope for in the future?

In the meantime, players can’t go wrong with We Are Legion‘s dystopian future. For about $12.00 you get an exciting campaign full of well-fleshed out lore, the chance to play in skirmish mode and multiplayer functionality. It is an excellent compliment to the original human-centered campaign of Dark Fate – Defiance, and if you are always rooting for the villains in movies, you will find a lot to like in the ice cold logic of annihilation in We Are Legion. 

Grab it before worldwide AI becomes sentient and sees all of us as the threat.

 


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