Ghost Recon Breakpoint is dead

 Alas, poor Nomad.

Wet your cloth of mourning upon your crown and lay on it on the ceremonial cradle, then in your grief ascribe that which will be your last words to Breakpoint, for I fear it has passed our realm to the otherside of The Dream. Though difficult and fraught it's life, ever did the Breakpoint cling it to it's faithful, assured in their loyalty to a visage tarnished. But twisted and broken as that body was, not perseverance, not faith, nor an ill-timed, and likely ill-intentioned, NFT transfusion, could fix its beaten form. A teachable lesson to us all that love can only carry us but a part of the way, and sometimes there truly is nothing more our bony mortal hands can do. So as it was born, so shall it depart; Breakpoint, in ignominy. Its being now here interred, to monument another paved stone on Ubisoft's path to utterly and totally destroy the legacy of the late Tom Clancy.

Yes, you interpreted my Blasphemous-addled words appropriately; Ghost Recon Breakpoint is leaving the cycle of updates that had kept it somewhere approaching a 'live service' for so many years; thus officially killing the game's future. This gives it roughly the same amount of life under a support structure that Wildlands enjoyed, and yet somehow this one feels more dismissive; even pitiful, in comparison. I suspect that feeling comes from the way that Ghost Recon Wildlands managed to squeak out two whole DLC campaigns and even something of a positive reputation before it went out. Also, Wildlands left us with absolutely zero downtime due to the fact it was supported directly up until Breakpoint launched, with the last update even containing a special mission thread which acted as a direct prequel to Breakpoint. (Which in itself is a little odd given that it implies that Nomad's team was active in Bolivia for a full three years after they canonically defeated the cartel, and for no particular reason. Don't those people have families to go home to?) Breakpoint, on the otherhand, leaves us a pariah.

We know for the moment that a new Ghost Recon game is indeed in development, with Kotaku managing to nab the project codename as 'Over'. (Which happens to coincide with an NVidia leak from a while back, so double confirmation.) But whether or not that game is due to be announced this year, it won't get it's red carpet debut filed away at the end of Breakpoint's life cycle which is a shame because I thought that was the literally coolest use of this 'Live service' mania that we've seen so far. I mean sure, Borderlands 2 actually did the exact same thing and with a DLC pack that was considerably more substantial than Wildland's... but Borderlands 2 was kind of a Live service too if you think about the way it was supported. Kinda... sort of... In fact, I'd say Borderlands 2 was the first Live service! I'm getting off track- my point is that Ghost Recon fans are going to be dry for at the very least a few months, and it's a shame things have to end this way.

Breakpoint had a rough start; I think that's something we can all agree with. After a year of marketing which I considered to be decently successful, (They fooled me at least) the game launched to largely scathing reviews that picked apart the story, the gameplay loop, the content stretch and, most lamentably, the crappy attempt at recreating a looter-shooter here. Yeah, for some asinine reason (>Cough< Because Destiny nets 500 Million a year >Cough<) the team decided to throw random stats and levels for conventional firearms when it made no sense within the context, ("Why does this M4 shoot harder than that M4?") lacked meaningful depth that such a system demands, (like set bonuses and transformative specified keywords) and proved so detrimental to the core experience, that the team themselves had to cobble together a looter-free mode in the game post-launch for everyone's sanity.

And then there was the microtransaction store. There's this trend going around that some of the more nefarious studios have been pulling, and if your game is spotted with your hand in this cookie jar, it's my humble opinion that you and your game is automatically branded the worst and should be disparaged for the rest of it's active life cycle. I'm talking the art of creating a microtransaction store with pay-to-win crap and then disabling it for the first few weeks of play so that all the reviews won't spot it and factor it into their scores, before slapping it on and hoping to ride the backlash wave unscathed. I cannot convey how utterly disgusting I find that- it's beyond blatantly bonkers, it's downright consumer hostile. I despise games who do this, and of course Breakpoint can count itself upon that thankfully lean list.

All of that crippled this game at it's launch, and the unlucky team who was saddled with keeping this heaving beast breathing were up against a wall with their trousers down. But they stuck with the job, and with a lot of updates and patches, some good some bad, they desperately managed to claw back some vague respect from the community. The Breakpoint community wasn't exactly thriving, and it never would be after the dog's dinner that Ubisoft made of the launch month, (Great job Yves, you bumbling buffoon) but they'd reached a point of mutual respect with those that remained. And then Ubisoft reared it's moronic head around the door to ruin everything through turning Breakpoint into their NFT guinea pig.

You have to understand something here for a second. The relationship between Tom Clancy fans and Ubisoft proper isn't fraught- it's totally cut. TC fans pretty much equate Ubisoft to the devil when considering their handling of Tom Clancy's brand, for the way that they keep trying to prostitute out his name for an easy buck on their terrible cash grab wastes of space. You've got their Fortnite clone, Tom Clancy's Frontline, (received so badly it's beta was delayed) Tom Clancy's XDefiant, (ridiculed until they removed Tom Clancy from the title completely) and you've got the new Splinter Cell. (A disaster waiting to launch, we all know in our souls.) What I'm trying to say is that we are pretty much enemies of one another at this point, and so you'd have thought it would be in Ubisoft's best interest to reach across the isle. But instead they threw Molotov's over that bar.

Bastardizing Breakpoint into an NFT shill game is literally the only thing in Ubisoft's power they could have done to hurt their game's reputation more than the whole 'hiding the premium store' debacle. It's as though they were actively trying to find the worst idea they could think of in order to sink Breakpoint even worse than it already was; to drive the game to and past it's own breakpoint. No one, not even the developers of the game, could understand what Ubisoft was thinking with this strategy, because if they wanted to try something bold and new, you'd have thought they'd put a new game out. Instead they took a practice that the whole world hates and threw in a game that was battered already. I honestly, truly, do believe that someone high up at Ubisoft had a bad experience with Tom Clancy once and has dedicated his career to ensuring the TC name is little more than mud in the industry. And knowing what we know about the gutterslime that patrol Ubisoft head offices; I think that's a pretty plausible theory, honestly.

Today the heads of Ubisoft have won. Breakpoint is to be discontinued and seen off unceremoniously so that efforts can move to how the team are going to ruin the next Ghost Recon title. And you know what? I never even got the chance to buy Breakpoint. I, and many others, who loved Wildlands for it's extremely flawed package; avoided this game like the plague and like that chance encounter you let slip by, now it's all just too little too late. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your Songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on aroar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chap fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that.