Seeing as how yesterday I covered the mechanics behind Ghost Recon: Breakpoint and how I felt about them, I decided to dive a bit more into the gameplay this go around. I may not be the most storied Ghost Recon fan in the world, but I have played Wildlands exhaustively so I'm familiar with the journeys of Nomad's squad and Karen Bowman. Therefore I'm excited to see how this story will evolve now that the team have decided to take a more traditional, revenge-approach. This article will contain spoilers for Wildlands and the very beginning of Breakpoint.
For those who never played Wildlands, that game didn't have so much of a story as it did an overarching plot; the disruption of the Santa Blanca cartel. To that end, the main character; Nomad, and his team of Ghosts; Weaver, Midas and Holt, team up with CIA operative Karen Bowman to conduct an extra-judiciary ousting of the cartel regime. As Santa Blanca had essentially taken over Bolivia, players had to systematically deconstruct the cartel by killing off important players, distributing specific areas of business, and just making life hell for the head honcho; El Sueno. Along the way you discover that the inciting incident of this whole affair, the bombing of the Bolivian embassy, was actually conducted as a rogue action by, recently deceased, Special Agent Ricky Sandoval. That was his attempt at getting the US to pay attention to the cartel, and it worked.
The cost of this revelation is unclear, but it seems to bring peace to Karen, who went to Bolivia looking to avenge Ricky's death. (If you fail to find this nugget of information, you get the bad ending where Karen gets herself arrested by shooting down Sueno in cold blood.) The Ghosts dismantle the entire cartel single handedly but are unable to finish the big guy as he cuts a deal for immunity and is escorted back to The States. Technically, this is where the story ends, but seeing as how the game was supported with two DLC's and three events, I suppose the team went back to Bolivia to... hang around for a couple years. I dunno.
Their next adventure followed an unnamed agent (Who has the same mannerisms, voice actor and training as Nomad. So lets just call them, Nomad.) Who infiltrates a group of car smuggling adrenaline junkies (and/or actual junkies) to bring in their leader. It's as campy as it sounds and not too interesting. Then Bolivia is taken over by some paramilitary types who's only goal in life seems to be to annoy players who are reliant on the drone (moi) with their damn drone jammer units. They last in Bolivia for all of a week before being deposed. The rest of the content is kinda more crossover events than story addendums, but I think they're still fun to talk about.
The first few events were fun, wacky and short. One had you hunting a supernaturally gifted sniper in the snowy province. (This one didn't communicate solely through humming unfortunately.) Then there was the one that tasked Nomad with hunting down El Tio, a demon of sorts. (Which turned out to be a dude in a demon mask) Then there was the Predator... in Bolivia. Yup. No tricks, no men in masks. The Predator just showed up for an event. (That mission was a doozey.) After that Ubisoft got an idea when it came to presenting Wildlands. They realized that, due to it's success, it was the perfect game for casuals to be introduced to the world of Tom Clancy, so they used the game as a staging ground to introduce the Tom Clancy Cinematic Universe. Or would that be 'Interactive Universe'.
Firstly, Sam Fisher turned up to hunt down Intel on a CIA agent who defected with important info... to Bolivia. (Why everyone gravitated towards the single most dangerous country in South America at the time is beyond me.) Then there was the Rainbow Six crossover which had the Ghosts teaming up with French operative Twitch to track down the infamous Caveira who went AWOL... in Bolivia. There the team found out little snippets of Siege lore, like how the Brazilian Caveira is tracking down her delinquent brother... who is apparently Bolivian. (Huh.)
After that came a crossover with 'Ghost Recon: Future Soldier', a 2012 war game set in the near future and yet is somehow still chronologically ahead of us. That mission involved Nomad's team meeting with members of HUNTER squad, like Scott Micheal and John Kozak, and preventing the detonation of a dirty bomb. Finally, there was Operation Oracle (That's cute) which pretty much just set-up the events for Breakpoint. It introduced as to Cole Walker, established that he has a 'blame-everyone-else' problem, and introduces us to the concept of battle drones. (Thematically though, there's no way that the team would take the time to actually program a working combat drone into Wildlands. Who do you think these people are, Game Designers?)
All this sets the stage for Breakpoint. Nomad is dispatched with a team of thirty ghosts to the (fictional) archipelago of Auroa, home to genius inventor and military contractor; Jace Skell, in order to discover why the island went off the grid. Why the US government decided to deploy a Platoon of experienced tier-one operatives to figure out why Skell stopped answering his phone is beyond me. Of course, seeing as how 4 ghosts manage to turn a country over in the last game, it's only fair that this game starts off with all the helicopters being shot down and Nomad crawling out the wreckage with a 'sole survivor' badge and a whole new voice actor.
From what I have played so far (Alongside the copious amounts of interviews I have watched regarding the game.) it seems that the paradise of Auroa has come under the control of a paramilitary group called, Sentinel, who appear to harbour some, as-of-yet unknown, nefarious agenda. This takeover was assisted, at least partially, by former Ghost operative Cole Walker. (Played by and modelled after the talented Jon Bernthal) Cole is now leading a group of, almost supernaturally, coordinated soldiers that call themselves: Wolves. (Hah! Because Karen called him a wolf in Operation: Oracle. I get it!) Cole introduces himself in grand fashion once he (Super mega spoilers here!) shows up to the wreck and executes Holt. Wait, no, he survives. Was it Midas? No... it was the black one... Ah, Weaver! It was Weaver! Huh, guess the black guy does always die first... (As you can tell, I'm really torn up over it.)
With this story event, we get introduced to our first significant new mechanic, injuries. Sometimes in Breakpoint, you'll find yourself getting shot, (I know, I was surprised too.) and every once in a blue moon this will result in the character sustaining an injury. In this state you will find that the character limps about the place, is less accurate, and just becomes an all-round less intimidating opponent. To rectify this, players first need to get out of 'alert' stage (through running or hiding) and then patch themselves up, Far Cry style. (Only you won't find any protruding bones as far as I've seen.) This little feature is one the ways that Breakpoint attempt to simulate the act of battlefield survival without becoming a survival game. Although I will say, on the hardest difficulty (Which is obviously the only difficulty I'll play on.) you'll find this mechanic rarely comes into play, because you die before you can roll that crit fail.
The camp doesn't just take the place of a hub area, as I mentioned yesterday, Ghosts have a home in the makeshift community of Erewhon. (I can't imagine why they called it that, but then I can't imagine why you would move to an archipelago run my a mega-rich guy with a god complex in the first place.) Erewhon serves as the connective tissue between the single player and the multiplayer, by allowing players to meet and squad up, launch the competitive ghost war, or prep for those raids that will come out sometime after launch.
Character customization was at a little bit of risk now that players were required to put on bits of armour to stay alive. How could Nomad spend the entire game as a plaid-shirt lumberjack if he was expected to wear a ballistic vest? Luckily, Ubisoft borrowed from the idea that was popularized (and maybe innovated by, I'm not sure) DC Universe Online. Essentially, when you pick up new gear, you unlock it's visual style but you can switch that style without affecting the equipment itself. This allows you to look as badass, or as casual, as you want without opening yourself up to ballistics. Plus, it helps you to bridge the gap of mental logic that is telling me that the backwards cap I just unlocked is more protective then the ballistic helmet from a couple hours ago.
With weaponry, you have all the breadth of the first game's gunsmith options. That means the ability to throw on cool attachments, spray paint the whole thing, and individually spray paint each component. This allows you to turn that cool new rare assault rifle you picked up from that image above to the one below. (I had limited time and resources, don't make fun of me!) The new gunsmith also gives us the ability to spend some of the crafting components, (That are acquired through questing, pick ups and equipment scrapping) and spend them towards general stat improvements to that gun. (Improvements that affect all models of that gun, so you don't need to worry about wasting components on low level gear.) With the right perks and enough components, you can even upgrade your shiny gun to mark 2, which does something I'm sure, I wasn't paying too much attention.
"But what is the point of all this high level gear?" You may be thinking. "You keep alluding to some difficult threat, but how difficult can it be to fight mercs who all consistently die to headshots?" Well, first of all, high level folks walk around with bulletproof helmets. Secondly, there is much more to worry about on these islands than plain old fleshy meatbags. Certain points of the map will be highlighted with a marker to indicate that it is the hunting ground of some massive robotic titan. These beasts are huge tanks that require planning, or a whole lot of firepower, to put down. If your gear level doesn't match them, there isn't even any point approaching them. The game supports this with a message telling you how badly you messed up and what level you should be at before coming back round these parts. I know that at least one of the raid bosses will be another huge drone, (That flies!) so I think that the 'gear level' mechanic exists more for bullet spongy robots than for your common grunts.
That's just about everything that I have managed to glean from my time with Breakpoint. There is still another day of the closed Beta left, but unless they unlock ghost war by surprise, I don't think I'll see anything new. I will say that I am certainly happy with the amount of content that they have teased us with. I worked to earn those faction-tied Battle Rewards, and only just finished them after 3 days of play. I can only imagine how much more content will be available when the full reward system opens at launch. Again, this game is designed from the ground up to be a time sink, but if the core gameplay is enjoyable enough that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. As a Metal Gear nut, I never miss an opportunity to channel my inner Solid Snake, and if this game with give me endless opportunities to do so, I'm going to happily put in the time. As long as the final product lives up to the promise I've seen in this Beta (Without the bugs, hopefully) then I think stealth/military shooter fans might be in for a real treat come October. (Which is next month, good god!)
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