(continued from Section 1)

The thermoptic cloaking device in action. Ghost

"30K" cloaks and sneaks by the unsuspecting guards just around the corner. One thing I noticed, the cloak seems to flash and flicker a lot, which is kind of a nice touch, proving that it's not going to render the Ghost completely invisible.

A scope with facial recognition software. Sweet. It also pulls up information regarding the contact and later in the trailer, flashes the "terminate" instruction.

Kerenski getting eliminated. Center of mass shot. But did you catch what happened next? I don't know what kind of bullets they're using but check out the following three screen shots.

Some kind of HE round? The developers have gone on record discussing different kinds of ammunition. Perhaps this is the first demonstration.

The Russian ground drone, previously discussed.

The Ghost's ground drone retaliating. I'm guessing this is the view that the Engineer sees through the optics attached to the helmet. Assuming the Russian ground drone is targeted, you see where I got the Hammer Class from.

It's interesting to note that not only does the drone track with whatever the Engineer is looking at, but apparently if you dispose of the Engineer controlling the drone it will also disable the drone. In this picture, you'll notice that the Engineer to the right of the drone is falling down. If you watch the trailer, the drone and Engineer sink to the ground exactly in sync with one another. Apparently the drone has no fail safe mode and can't operate independently, or so it would seem.

I know this picture isn't all the clear, but its one of my favorites. These are truly "future soldiers". (Notice the bipod or what looks like a bipod on the soldier on the left).

Well, the mystery behind the Attila tank is solved. It's Russian. Here is one that is being targeted by the Ghost using their shoulder mounted rocket launcher as demonstrated in the following pics.

Mission accomplished. The 4 man team is leaving the area and one by one they cloak (which is interesting because the various magazine article's suggested only the Recon class would have the thermoptic camouflage and not all of these Ghosts were Recon class).

CONCLUSION

My assessment is the video was spectacular and was an interesting approach by Ubisoft to promote the video game. While the video is only roughly 2 minutes in length, it certainly came with a cost. My guess, a steep cost. While most publishers promote their game with screen shots and in game trailers, a live action video of a future title is certainly a unique initiative.

That being said, the die hard old school Ghost Recon fans are going to cringe and hate it. Clearly both trailers have displayed the significant reliance on technology and for some, that's a huge turn off. I think a majority of the people that I have communicated with are very much interested in the potential that Future Soldier is displaying.

//SIGNED//

Scott Mitchell, futuresoldier@ghostrecon.net