Ghost Recon Breakpoint
it’s a military shooter. To reinforce the idea
of being in a desperate survival situation
– that you’re not a bulletproof ’80s action
hero – Breakpoint introduces a few
interesting new features, including the
ability to sustain injuries. If you take a
bullet in the leg you’ll limp until you can set
up a bivouac in the wilderness, craft a
bandage, and heal it. Or if your arm is
injured, the steadiness of your aim will be
negatively affected.
In the open world these injuries will be
relatively easy to fix, but in the thick of a
firefight they could be a big problem.
The way the characters move has also
been tweaked to add to the sense of
struggle. Additional weight and
momentum has been added to the
movement controls, making climbing up
steep slopes and across rough terrain a
chore for the Ghosts. This will eat away at
their stamina – a meter you’ll have to
manage as you traverse the world. Luckily
there are plenty of land, sea, and air
vehicles to commandeer if you don’t feel
like walking, including a much larger
selection of high-tech military vehicles –
something many Ghost Recon fans felt
were sorely missing from Wildlands.
I get a feel for the game myself in a
brief 15-minute co-op demo, which sees
the Ghosts infiltrating a modern-looking
office building to extract a scientist. We
begin by tossing our drones into the air
and scanning the exterior of the structure,
tagging enemies, and deciding over our
headsets what our plan of action will be.
We decide to go in stealthy, and I use my
sniper scope to pick off a few lone
enemies who are out of sight of their allies.
We move slowly towards the building
together, avoiding civilians who, although
harmless, can go into a panic and alert
nearby enemies to our location.
We move methodically through the
building, picking off guards, until we reach
the upstairs office of our scientist.
During a conversation with her, I notice
that there are dialogue options – another
example of the game’s increased story
focus. They aren’t wildly different,
however, which makes me wonder just
how much scope for role-playing there will
actually be. I press a button to rescue the
scientist, which involves Nomad swiftly
Knocking her out with a punch and
slinging her over his shoulder. Was that
entirely necessary? It felt like an animation
that would play when you take down an
enemy, not a civilian you’re supposed to
be taking care of.
Incidentally, this is one of the new
features in Breakpoint. Bodies can now be
picked up and moved around. This will be
useful for stealth, letting you shift fallen
enemies out of the way of nosy guards.
But it also works for your teammates in
co-op, letting you ferry them to safety
before healing them. Not exactly a
revolutionary feature, but it should add
an extra layer of interactivity and depth
to the stealth aspect of the game, and
make dealing with injured allies in co-op
a lot easier. Breakpoint has been designed
with both co-op and singleplayer in mind.
Interestingly, if you play solo there are
no AI squad-mates – you team up with
a drone instead.
Just as we’re about to whisk the
snoozing scientist away to safety, the shit
hits the fan. Despite our stealthy
infiltration, the dreaded Wolves show up.
But I was a little disappointed with them.
They can kill you in a couple of hits, which
forces you to stick religiously to cover, but
other than that, they moved and fought
exactly like the other grunts we’d killed
earlier. I mean, they look intimidating with
their hoods and masks, but I didn’t get the
sense that I was battling some elite special
forces group – just regular soldiers with a
cooler aesthetic. I think things will get
more interesting when you fight the
lieutenants, who have unique powers and
personalities similar to Metal Gear Solid
bosses. But I didn’t encounter them here.
INTEL INSIDE
Moment to moment, it doesn’t feel that
different from Wildlands. The planning
phase of the mission, the infiltration of the
office building, all felt very familiar. I did
like the increased weight of the character
movement, however. And the promise
that mission objectives will have to be
discovered by following intel, rather than
marked on your map, sounds intriguing.
Breakpoint has some interesting ideas,
but it also feels like a game designed to
tick as many boxes as possible: crafting,
survival, open world, co-op, and so on. It’s
so all-encompasing, in fact, that it’s hard
to pinpoint what Breakpoint will do better
than any other open world game. But
maybe I’m asking too much of a military
shooter like Ghost Recon.