I’ve started, then deleted, several posts regarding Ghost Recon Breakpoint. At the time of this writing, I have well over a hundred hours put into it. Despite the vocal majority critically panning the game and writing it off as a technical disaster, I actually enjoyed it.
Was it the best game I’ve played recently? Of course not. Was it even the best Ghost Recon game? Not even close. But the gameplay loop was solid, despite the internet discourse, and there was an inherent thrill to traversing the terrain on foot, even if the “behind enemy lines” premise fell a bit flat. It’s hard to feel like you’re isolated and alone when you’re literally walking through well-manicured lawns clean laboratories filled with civilian scientists.
But I obviously enjoyed the game, but this write-up might sound like I’m tearing it a new ass. Just because I like it doesn’t mean I’m going to excuse it from its weird design decisions and its head-scratchingly disappointing step back from its Wildlands skill tree.
Some of the criticism though, I can’t help but feel, was part of the hate train. For example, I’ve seen some say the game looks bad, graphically. That’s silly. The game actually looks quite good, at least while playing on my Xbox One X. There are admittedly some areas that didn’t get quite as much attention to detail, but as far as open worlds go, it’s still a looker, and to my surprise, there was actually quite a bit of variety in the villages, settlements, etc. Sure, assets are re-used, as is typical for open world games, but I never felt like I was going through cookie-cutter locations. It seemed the opposite, in fact. As I traversed the island and became familiar with it, I came to recognize a lot of the locations by sight. If I had been through a certain installation before, I knew it, not because it was highlighted on the map, but because I recognized the area. I can’t say the same thing for a game like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, where it felt as though I was going through the same villages over and over.
Interestingly enough, there are a lot of unique areas on the island that I felt were under-utilized, including cool locations like an abandoned water treatment plant that could’ve made for an excellent mission. I only found it while wandering the island aimlessly, long after I completed the main story.
It was obvious from playing the game (for far longer than any reviewer did, I can assure you) that the development of this game was a rocky one. There are so many systems that just don’t do anything. You can break down gear to get “gear parts” that are literally not even used in the game. The skill tree doesn’t really seem to make much of an impact, and I was really disappointed to see that my drone never really upgraded. Having to slot “perks” was dumb, because after you equip the ones that let you carry more ammo, do more damage to drones, and become harder to detect, you’ll never go with anything else. There’s no reason to, as the perks don’t really make as much of a difference as you’d think, and none of them grant you extra “abilities” like how Wildlands allowed your drone to snipe, explode, or blast an EMP. You can upgrade it to allow night vision and infrared, neither of which you’ll use very often.
Likewise, as most reviewers pointed out, the Gear Score is all but useless. It merely acts as a glorified Age Verification, to make sure you don’t enter the raid until you’ve played the game “enough.” It’s rubbish, though. I can tell you right now, there’s nothing you’re doing at gear score 239 (where I currently sit) than you are at gear score 50. The game play loop doesn’t change. In a way, that’s good, because it’s that familiarity that’s kept me with the game for so long. It’s like a comfortable pair of shoes at this point. At the same time though, it’s silly that you’re asking players to put in a good 20 or 30 hours before you let them do something that they’re already doing. It’s not like an MMO where you have to have your tank/healer/dps character established before you put other people’s lives in your hands. It’s here that I feel the requirement was inflated to encourage the sale of “boosters,” which is unfortunate.
The story isn’t anything remarkable, but in fairness, Ghost Recon as a whole has had pretty dull storylines, filled with political and military b.s. that doesn’t mean anything to anybody. It was just an excuse to shoot bad guys. The interesting twist here (if you can call it that) is that you’re the outsider on the island, not really liked by anyone. The rebels think you’re meddling, and the civilians just want you to “stay out of their space.” I honestly would’ve preferred to just have everyone hate me, because then it would’ve heightened the tension any time you would’ve come across a settlement. Instead, you’ll go trampling down mainstreet without a care in the world because there aren’t any red blobs on the map. It would’ve been far more interesting if there were loyalists in the crowd, or at least those who were afraid enough of the Wolves to stay on their good side by reporting your location. A “friend or foe” dynamic would’ve shaken things up a bit.
I think that would’ve been better than the overhead drone. The flying drone is easy enough to hide from, just drop to the ground and roll around and lay there until it passes over. The problem is that it always seems to pop up at the worst possible time. I’ve had it appear as I lay sniping on a rock cliff (can’t go camo), creeping through the swamp (can’t go camo), or in the middle of a conversation with an NPC. The last one there is infuriating, because these people just don’t shut the fuck up sometimes. I’ve come across an NPC with a side-mission icon, initiated conversation, only to see the drone icon pop up. There’s nothing more fun than tapping furiously through line after line after line of dialogue of this unimportant person yapping endlessly before the drone spots you. I waited the entire game to be able to get a Javelin or some other heat-seaking, laser guided rocket that could take them down, but nope. You’re stuck with hiding until it leaves.
They did do some things better this time around. Despite being smaller (I don’t care what they say, Auroa is definitely smaller than Colombia) there are a fewer cookie-cutter locations and the terrain just looks much more natural. Traversing Auroa is far more enjoyable. Another improvement is with the enemy A.I. While not exactly mind-blowing, different enemies will resort to different tactics, as noted by the icons over their head. There are guys that will hide and send drones after you, snipers that will stay back in cover and pin you down, guys that will radio for backup (take them out first), commanders that will (supposedly) organize everyone, and shotgun wielding grunts that will rush your location. Getting pinned down in Breakpoint isn’t a good thing, and each situation will require a player to recon an area and decide which bad guys they have to take out first. This is a step up from Wildlands where everyone was pretty much the same.
Another improvement over Wildlands is that if the shit does hit the fan, the player is more than capable of coming out on top. There is no janky “infamy” meter a la Grand Theft Auto, and a firefight can begin and end in a location without the wider world ever knowing. One of the most frustrating things about Wildlands was the military’s seemingly endless supply of attack helicopters, and if you ever reached that level of infamy, it was easier to just let yourself die and respawn than to try to fight your way out of it.
The gunplay, fortunately, is pretty solid, and the gunsmith offers a decent variety in customization, though ultimately you’ll probably have a favorite setup and you’ll stick with it. The lack of heavy artillery is a bit disappointing, but I suppose the Behemoths wouldn’t have been nearly as imposing with a javelin sitting on my shoulder. Not that it matters once you get the hang of it.
Overall, I still enjoyed the gameplay loop, and Ubisoft has committed themselves to “fixing” the game. We’ll see what that looks like when it hits. Will it be a re-invention of the game, tempting me to put another hundred hours into it, or will it just be a few tweaks here and there, with a “hardcore” mode for survival nuts? Even the patches and time-limited events like the Terminator have been delayed, so I think the real question will be if it comes out before they lose even their most devoted fans.
I, for one, am chalking this one up as done. I want to keep playing, and I probably will off and on, but with the Battle Rewards having been suspended (for now), there’s no reason to do the faction quests, and the aforementioned Terminator event is MIA. Even the single raid that is available requires a full four-player squad, so even with myself and two buddies, we’d still have to team up with a random. Why can’t we just go in with the three of us? How hard is it to make a scalable raid instance? Or hell, don’t even scale it, just let us try and take them all on. If we fail, we fail, but at least it gives us something to do.
But that’s kind of the story of Ghost Recon Breakpoint in a nutshell. For those of us who have been sticking with it, and playing it since it launched, we’re literally out of things to do. And for a game that’s obviously set up to be a “live service” that’s not a good thing.
We’ll see if this ends up being another Anthem, where they’ll delay update after update until the player base falls off and they can quietly sweep it under the rug.
Ghost Recon deserves better than that.
