nyleken

I actually don't mind the concept of having a battle belt. Actual SOF operators use them in real-life all the time anyways. They just seem a little too empty, IMO. The Crye AVS Loaded from the store is the worst offender by far. The belt is completely empty!

I've always been interested in seeing a Risk-esque conquest mode for Ghost Recon ever since Wildlands transitioned to an open-world format. Looks like Ubisoft is implementing a similar idea that might breathe some new life into the game. More of this, please. Not stuff like Frontline.

Maybe they should add a first-person mode to Breakpoint. That's like the one thing I can takeaway as a positive from the Frontline reveal. Ubisoft has access to a wide variety of high-quality assets.

Yeah, not a great showing for the 20th anniversary of the franchise. I wouldn't declare it the death knell of the series, however. It's pretty clearly a project developed by one of Ubisoft's B-teams, given the liberal reuse of Breakpoint assets (with little in the way of modification!). I imagine we'll see a proper mainline title down the line. As to whether the next main entry will be worthy of the title of Ghost Recon... well... we'll have to see. Despite how oversaturated the genre is, Ubisoft's greatest strength is in creating open world shooters. It's one of the things I'd actually say they're better at than most of their competitors. They're just not willing to move out of their comfort zone and innovate in that regard. Wildlands and post-launch Breakpoint were steps in the right direction, but they suffer from Ubisoft's unwillingness to deliver anything but comforting power fantasies. Their games are just too easy, nowadays, and they clearly know this. Far Cry New Dawn was a genuine if underwhelming attempt to address the lack of difficulty scaling in Far Cry games. A lot of the post-launch support for Breakpoint revolved around introducing hardcore, tactical shooter-oriented features into the game. Just to clarify, I'm not particularly optimistic about the next mainline Ghost Recon, either. Ubisoft will probably play it safe and make it an enjoyable, if middling open world shooter. I just hope that along the way, they'll remember every once in a while that they're making a Ghost Recon game.

I hope Microsoft makes it backwards compatible for the next-gen Series X|S

I regret selling my old Xbox. Ghost Recon 2 seemed pretty neat. Last Ghost Recon game to use the Red Storm engine, I take it?

Breakpoint, no. Wildlands, sure. Not the greatest story but having US SOF screw around in South America is very, very plausible. I don't know if you've read Sean Naylor's Relentless Strike but there's definitely some good stuff in there for inspiration (and I'm only 13% done with the book), such as Delta testing out new tech like cams mounted on aircraft or how JSOC's SMUs are organized.

I would definitely love to see Ghost Recon 2 (the Xbox ver.) make its way to the PC. If Halo 3, 4, and Reach can make it, why not Ghost Recon 2? As far as Ubisoft in general is concerned, I genuinely think they have quite a few decent game designers still hanging around. Clint Hocking is probably one of the more notable ones, leading the development of Chaos Theory and Far Cry 2, two fan favorite games. He's now leading the development of Watch Dogs: Legion, which looks to be quite a bit of fun! So Ubisoft definitely has the talent laying around, it just remains to be seen whether they can make use of them effectively. I would definitely love to see Hocking design a Ghost Recon game.

Impossible. 😉 I suppose I could ask whether you've made any changes to your mission script framework.

I personally wouldn't bother with it. HUD elements exist for a reason, and the current one is pretty minimalistic already.

Even for that era, I might have to give 1999's SWAT 3 an edge. https://youtu.be/y0PUb_3Kt24?t=166 Not perfect, but the designers went out of their way to make indoor recordings of all of the weapons featured in the game, including ones with Gemtech suppressors.

If I was going to use real world combat footage for sound reference, I would just simply slap a DVD case really hard against a table and call it a day.

They've cancelled the development of the next Raid, too. It seems they've finally figured out their vision for the game and that's good news!

I agree, Ubisoft should really consider cleaning up the Ghost Recon lore. That way we won't have to deal with arguments about who the Ghosts are. Granted I still sort of want them to be Green Berets, doing what Green Berets do best. Hell, I even think an open world Ghost Recon game where you nurture and assist a guerilla force would be pretty neat. Ubisoft loves having dynamic elements in their games, why not a Ghost Recon game with a dynamic campaign that reacts to your actions?

This reminds me of how messy the Ghost Recon lore is. People over at /r/ghostrecon still debate over whether they're actually still Green Berets or not! Here's my headcanon: the Ghosts were initially formed out of elements of the 5th SFG to field test the Land Warrior system in a direct action capacity (we don't see the Ghosts doing a whole lot of UW or FID, the traditional niche of the Green Berets). After that is where it gets tricky. We know from Weaver and Fury that they take operators from different branches of the military as both are from DEVGRU, but Weaver was also made a Master Sergeant, which suggests the Ghosts are still primarily an Army unit. Eh, I don't know. Nomad mentions that he's from "Ghost Recon" during the R6 crossover mission, which sounds pretty lame. I've always thought of the Ghost moniker being a nickname.

Cool game, but there's legitimately no narrative reason for Nomad to be conducting all these missions by himself. The very first time we step into Erewhon, we literally see two other Ghosts who are clearly not injured and are capable of helping him out. I'm really hoping that the AI teammates come back soon.

Unfortunately, the general public associates Rainbow Six with Siege and that's going to drive the franchise's development.

Good to see their return but I wouldn't be surprised if there won't be a significant upgrade over Wildlands. They're a post launch addition after all. Already seeing some people be upset over their return, though. Worst take I've seen is how making Breakpoint a solo experience would've been an "innovation" and ensure that Ghost Recon isn't "strictly just a tactical shooter."

https://gamingbolt.com/rainbow-six-brand-director-proclaims-solo-campaign-for-series-is-dead Time to look elsewhere for your traditional Rainbow Six fare. And by elsewhere I mean you only have Ready Or Not and Ground Branch to look forward to.😢

Extremely impressed by the NVG visuals. Maybe Ubisoft could take a couple of notes, eh?

I'm still blaming the people who desperately wanted the option to turn the AI off in Wildlands. Ubisoft should've stuck to their guns and never acquiesced. They probably figured that since "most" people hated the AI squad in Wildlands, the playerbase would be fine without having any in Breakpoint. As a bit of a silver lining I hear that the narrative reason for the coop Ghosts being present is that another group of operators came in to reinforce Nomad. If so, that means Ubisoft at least left the possibility of an AI squad being implemented later while still fitting the game's overall narrative. Maybe during the single player campaign you get the AI team back after the prologue, I dunno.

Good find on that Crye CAGE chassis! Seems to be the first gen version, no?

Agreed. I think Future Soldier was the most Ghost Recon game we've ever got since you could go invisible, like a ghost, and do some form of reconnaissance. 😋 On a more serious note, features like the bivouac, the serious injuries, and buddy carry are things that would complement a squad AI extremely well. I'm still of the opinion that their reasoning behind removing them is complete BS.

Not much of an MMO raid if it's still a 4 player mission, lol.

As I've said before, the whole "lone survivor" theme they've got going is directly at odds with everything else we've seen in Breakpoint and only applies to the solo campaign. Was the playerbase so harsh on the Wildlands squad AI that they've elected to get rid of them altogether? I remember how adamant they were about not giving players the option to disable them since that would go against the squad-based gameplay they were striving for. Jump forward to Year 2 and they give players the option to disable them. Looking back at some of the complaints, a lot of the instances that were noted are usually the result of player error. The squad AI literally cannot be seen by enemies unless you give them a move order or are engaged in combat, so I'm generally skeptical of cases where they ruined somehow stealth infiltrations.