2023-06-10 17:19:39
By: Samuel M | 10-06-23
It seemed like yesterday when Ghost Recon Wildlands was surprisingly announced at one of the many Ubisoft conferences as part of E3. 2017 It marked the return of one of Tom Clancy’s best-known series, and no one would imagine that it would mark a before and after for the franchise.
Since its inception in the early 1990s 2000, the first installments of Ghost Recon appealed to an audience that was looking for a realistic experience, with a command of soldiers specialized in different skills to face threats on a global level. And although the idea of team play was maintained for years, Ubisoft would later try to adjust to the trends that games such as games put on the table. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) to make it more cinematic. So, we had deliveries like ‘Ghost Recon: Future Soldier‘, which at the time was severely criticized by the most veteran fans, but time gave it its deserved place.
Wildlands marked a new departure point, as it took the classic elements of four specialist soldiers in an open world terrain trying to accomplish a series of objectives, but keeping one important factor: the stealth. The threat this time took us to Latin America and Bolivia being the main focus, a place taken over by the bravest narco of all known as ‘El Sueño’, who found a way to seize power after a series of deals with the government to allow you to move as much of the drug as possible to different countries, yes, even Peru.
The mission of theGhosts‘ is to destabilize the entire operation of ‘El Sueño’ and be able to liberate Bolivia. Surely the story might seem like the classic narrative of ‘good gringos, bad latinos‘, and yes, I can agree with them, but what they built around is what genuinely gets you. The area of Bolivia where the game is set shows us the part of the countryside, with mountains and humble houses that portrays a population that does not stop in their daily life, despite being aware that drug trafficking dominates them completely.
During the trip you end up meeting a rebel faction, led by Pac Katari, a revolutionary who promises to help us defeat ‘The dream‘ and as we do them favors like destroying antennas, stealing supplies and hacking things, we’ll start receiving the help of an army of Bolivians willing to give everything for their country.
To a certain extent one can feel very immersive in the world when you take seriously taking advantage of the silence and knowing how to play as a team. It is true that the developers also gave you the chance to complete it on your own (with the members of your team controlled by AI) but the real experience is playing it with three friends; not only because there will be laughter, but also because of better coordination.
Of course we can also go the way of shooting without a silencer when stealth is not an option, but you will end up facing a wave of enemies, and even another faction that dominates Bolivia known as ‘Unit‘; some paramilitaries with better equipment than the drug traffickers of Santa Blanca.
Ubisoft in recent years has been characterized by increasing its open world games, with the idea of keeping the player busy in the coming months, and although the idea has come to work in several company titles; eventually there has been a weariness as has happened to Far Cry with its sixth installment and even to Assassin’s Creed itself.
Ghost Recon Wildlands It took me back to the time where ‘Ubi’ still took the time to plan very well how to make their open world games feel really fun and not get repetitive. I love that concept of taking down the minions of ‘El Sueño’ to eventually go to the final boss and be able to turn it around. But not only that, since along the way we are deviating with side missions, and even meet well-known characters from the Tom Clancy series.
The scenario set in Bolivia is taken care of in detail, and although they have probably taken liberty to create certain areas, it is very well achieved that the areas where the drug bosses are located feel so differentiated. For example, there is a place where we will only see an extensive wasteland with enemies deployed in small camps to be able to annihilate them with a sniper rifle. The threat is always latent in the game, even when you travel by helicopter, since you can end up shot down by an enemy missile.
‘Nomad‘ is your main character who you can change appearance and even gender, giving you the freedom to put the outfit to your liking, unlocking costumes as you go, unlocking weapons, among other things. The variety of weapons is enormous, with statistics so that you can review which one you should take for each mission.
How perfect is it? Of course not. Ghost Recon Wildlands also suffers from the classic bugs that Ubisoft has accustomed us to in several of its video games, and it has happened to me that many times the game closed unexpectedly or even my character ended up falling off an endless cliff. If we continue to get strict, many times both the enemy and friendly AI do not respond well, being very easy targets.
The ideas that Ubi had with this game worked very well, and he would have been delighted if the franchise had continued in the right direction. Unfortunately things didn’t end up going well when the sequel came along, Breakpoint, which ended up being a commercial flop for having been released in a hurry and falling far short of what made Wildlands great. Since then, we have not returned to have a delivery of the saga. Hopefully soon we will have some news about it. they are already 22 years of the franchise and while a battle royale was embarrassingly attempted to ‘celebrate’ the anniversary, it ended up being cancelled.
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