The world premiere of the newest Ghost Recon game, Breakpoint, took place on the ninth and gave valuable insight into story, new game mechanics, and the environment in which its all taking place within. The premiere included a cinematic trailer, and first look at in-game alpha gameplay. The Information on the story has been comprehensive both by giving background for the story as well the story that the game itself follows.

The environment is situated on the archipelago of Auroa, which was shown to contain one large island with two medium sized islands around it and a large amount of small scattered island chains. The islands were shown off in the gameplay reveal and have been said to contain “11 unique biomes.” Ones that were showed included mountains, jungles, snowy mountains, deserts, fjords, and even a volcano. The parts of the environment that were shown off looked beautiful. The archipelago is owned by world renowned Jace Skell, who is an engineer dedicated to developing drones to better the human race. There are drones for every occasion and application: medical drones, pollination and farming drones, surveillance and military drones. The archipelago is filled to the brim with these drones, and they end up causing a lot of trouble.      

     You play as Nomad, yes, the same Nomad that was played in Ghost Recon Wildlands. Tasked with infiltrating Auroa after contact is lost, your helicopter and two others are attacked by swarms of drones disabling and causing the helicopters to fall from the sky. On the ground, your adventure begins; you find out what has been going on. Ex Ghosts have taken over the islands and are hell bent on hunting you down; they call themselves “The Wolves.” This time you are the prey. After taking control of the island, they weaponize the drones there by mounting all sorts of nasty armaments. Surviving these drones isn’t the only new challenge that comes with Breakpoint.

A new injury system was also revealed. Wounds no longer will heal themselves over time. Instead injuries will now both slow players and will need to be healed using some sort of medical item that can be crafted or found in the world. Several new additions have been made to the old stealth system, too. Now when a player’s character is up against something, like a wall or tree, they will “adapt” to it so that they are pressed up against it. In this stance you’ll be able to lean around objects and corners. “Prone blending,” as it has be dubbed by the developers, will allow players that are laying down to cover themselves in whatever brush or mud they are on, making themselves invisible to enemies and allowing for a quick escape or the setting up of an ambush. Something that was immersion-breaking in Wildlands has been fixed in Breakpoint: moving bodies. Not being able to move them in Wildlands was a general pain. Stealthily eliminating an enemy and having to leave them where they died always felt like something that should’ve been addressed. Breakpoint will now allow the carrying of dead enemies, hostages, and injured teammates.

The gameplay that has been released so far hasn’t shown enough to allow for proper criticism but even so concern has risen over several issues. The biggest and most glaring issue is that to play Breakpoint an internet connection will be required at all times. This means people that don’t have good internet will be unable to play without taking a performance hit, ruining immersion. This will also make it so that if the servers are down, you’ll be out of luck and unable to play. Some youtubers and video game journalists were able to view more of the game than what was revealed, even before the games announcement.  Most of their commentary was positive. One thing that hasn’t been confirmed by developers but was brought to light by the creators that saw the game was a color-based tier-ranking for weapons. This would mean that two M4A1 rifles could be exactly the same but, due to their tier, do different amounts of damage. This could or could not be a feature, but if it is, it will only undermine the realism that the game is attempting to achieve. Another feature that has been confirmed that wasn’t well received from the community is the complete removal of the AI teammates that were part of the Ghost Team in Wildlands. They were memorable characters and will be missed in Breakpoint.

Other than a few concerns, the game looks like it will have a good amount of new features added to it, including a beautiful new map full of new enemies and adventures. The next round of information that will be released the second week of June during E3. Let’s hope Breakpoint delivers as advertised.