Hello and welcome to 'Smoke and Mirrors' on
AI and Games and after burning through a ton
of Mega Man games last month, I was in a bit
of a bind. I've been playing LOTS of open
world games in the last couple of months,
all largely due to a bunch of videos I'm working
on for the show. We have a multi-part series
for both Horizon Zero Dawn and Sea of Thieves
coming early next year. Each of which are
massive expansive games that play completely
differently from one another but are also
very time consuming for gathering up footage.
But then of course the Horizon Zero Dawn video
wasn't going to be ready for the originally
pegged slot of December, so I brushed off
some ready to go content in the form of Tom
Clancy's The Division, another bloody open
world game.
So in an effort to ease my pain, I found myself
playing a lot of... Ghost Recon Wildlands?
Another. Bloody. Open. World. Game.
Yeah it doesn't make sense on paper, but in
Wildlands I've arguably found one of the most
refreshing takes on Ubisoft's open world formula
not because it's a mind blowingly great game
- I mean it's solid and all - but rather that
it makes some very small yet effective design
decisions about how players explore the world
that respects my time in way that I simply
didn't realise until several hours in.
Wildlands - which was led by Ubisoft Paris
- is the most recent entry of the Ghost Recon
franchise, with the last entries being in
the Future Soldier series. This game takes
the base premise and explodes it to ridiculous
proportions. I had played Future Soldier a
few years back and really liked it as a fun
few hours to burn through. But it was all
rather linear and story-driven, whereas this
creates a massive open environment with missions
available everywhere. It enables players to
work alongside AI characters or with three
other humans, which leads to all sorts of
shenanigans.
Now I've since decided having started recording
this game for Smoke and Mirrors that it's
going to be a future case study entry, given
I want to talk about my AI companions who
effectively cheat to make the game feel more
inline with player exepctations. But what
made it a Smoke and Mirrors episode was that
given I've been getting all my friends to
play The Division and Sea of Thieves they
stopped playing Wildlands with me, I've wound
up playing Wildlands a lot more by myself.
So given I'm playing the game a lot more myself,
I'm paying attention to what I'm doing a lot
more instead of just messing around - I'm
not gonna lie I'm pretty much the rogue element
and kinda Leeroy Jenkins pretty much anything
when playing with my friends. As a result
I've realised that within this game is an
open world where the rewards of completing
missions and the overall story structure are
a lot more interesting. One of the larger
issues I have with the open-world format - and
not just Ubisoft's - is how often the core
story is the least interesting part of the
game. Many of the side missions are more fun,
varied and allow for greater player agency
and expression than the main story. Assassin's
Creed III was the epitome of this problem
for me: where everything became so tightly
scripted in story segments that it denied
you having any real fun with it - and it's
obvious that the franchise is trying its hardest
to get away from that now. Plus it's funny
because I recall complaining about the generic
Ubisoft formula in my Smoke and Mirrors episode
on Far Cry Primal, but then that game was
also challenging those issues in some regards.
Primal had you follow complete quest lines
from members of your clan that didn't feel
as ancillary as they have in previous Far
Cry games. In some cases they're a hard requirement
in order to complete the main story missions
too.
When I started playing the game months back
I would play it for a few hours at a time
and often with friends. Now I've found it's
a great game to boot up for a short session
when on a coffee or lunch break. Chip away
at that progress indicator and move on. This
is largely because Wildlands tries something
a little different: the whole game feels a
lot more uniform in the distribution of missions
and completing side missions is a continually
useful activity towards your overall progression.
I feel like I'm achieving something every
20 minutes or so and the game is giving me
something in return that will actually help
with progress: new weapons, new attachments,
skill points, medals and resources for upgrades.
The game breaks up the main missions across
all of the core figure heads of the Santa
Blanca cartel, with the leader El Sueno at
the top of the pile for you to take out. But
in order to get to him and his last line of
defence, you need to systematically destablise
his criminal enterprise. So each region of
the map has missions for a specific cartel
enforcer as well as side missions that often
better support the rebels you are aligned
with and ultimately give you more resources
for upgrades and the like.
This distribution means that you seldom have
to travel far for something to do and even
if you do, you can isolate a region of the
map that looks like it's rich with missions
and collectibles to clear it out. It's strangely
respectful of your time as a player who is
short on time, despite how ridiculously big
and unncessarily demoncratised they made that
overall story progression.
This tied with the fact you can easily boot
the game up from suspended like I do on my
Xbox One - meaning I skip all the loading
gubbins when I start it up - is fantastic.
I'm pretty sure it didn't do that at launch
and they fixed it up with a patch. It's great,
it's created this wonderful 30 minute loop
whereby I boot the game up on a break, take
out an enemy convoy and smash through a mission
or two for the regions Santa Blanca leader
and then I can walk away feeling like I got
something done only to boot the game up again
for another run at it a few hours later.
But bringing it back to the main game: the
balance of the AI behaviour and systems is
such that it's kinda brutal at times. Things
can go wrong very quickly as enemies detect
incoming fire, dead bodies in proximity or
just spot you out in the wild if you just
leave yourself exposed or are not fast enough
to consider spatial context. This isn't because
of an overtly intelligent AI system: I mean
it's running a behaviour tree architecture
that seems fairly robust, but it's actually
kinda flimsy at times as enemies spot you
too easily or can beeline to your location
despite sufficient events occurring in-game
to give you way. But nonetheless it's interestesting
as it forces you pretty early to start being
more careful about how you evaluate a given
combat scenario, prioritise targets and move
through the space. You can quickly pick up
effective strategies when dealing with standard
encampments as you prioritise skill upgrades
for your binoculars and the drone to help
you pick out targets and use the synchronised
kill shot. But as you move towards bigger
encampments and more heavily defended regions,
you start having jammers that deny the drone
being used, but also things like anti-air
defences that prevent you flying with an attack
helicopter or even a mortar placement that
attacks you continually once you've been spotted.
Sure, a lot of this is horrendously balanced
- especially that blasted mortar - but it
forces you to become a little more methodical
about how you attack encampments. I've gradually
got much better at moving through environments
without being spotted, at taking out whole
swathes of enemies without being noticed.
And it's quite refreshing the longer you play
that you can take down entire military bases
without being noticed and then swing in and
grab whatever thing it was you need to need
to grab. My only regret is that unlike so
many of its contemporaries, many of the missions
in the larger military installations have
only maybe two points of ingress. So there
isn't a way to sneak in sometimes and instead
you just have to kill everyone at the front
door and hope you're not noticed.
At the time of this video I'm nowhere near
finished, I managed to successfully defeat
the security segment of the cartel. Now it's
slight but it does feel like sometimes completing
certain story missions is having an effect
on the wider world. I can't say to that for
certain, but working through the security
missions had led not only to the Unidad forces
appearing to be a little more hostile than
before, but also it feels like they're attacking
the cartel more frequently. Whether any of
this is actually occurring as a result of
in-game systems is a bit of a mystery to me,
but nonetheless it helps maintain my engagement
in the game. Whether I ever go so far as to
complete the entire game is another question
entirely. I know that by eliminating two of
the four cartel branches that opens up the
chance to take the fight to El Sueno. I may
well do that, or just continue to pick apart
the world in my spare time. Either way, it's
not going to be something I finish soon. I've
been playing Wildlands on and off for about
a year now, but it's only been in the last
few weeks have I really returned to it and
invested some proper time with it (it's a
recurring problem, given I'm frequently distracted
by games I need to play for the main show).
But yeah, that's my thoughts on Ghost Recon
Wildlands. Something of a flawed gem, but
definetely something people will engage with
nonetheless. Whilst it would simply add to
the existing deluge of open world games, I
would like to see this one grab a sequel at
some point. It feels like this is the first
attempt at something more ambitious and many
of the gameplay systems need some refinement
and tuning to take it to the next level. Plus
a larger appreciation for world systems that
operate within it.
Let me know what you think of Wildlands. I
can totally appreciate it won't please everyone
and some people will bounce off it real quickly.
But these games find firneds in the strangest
of places. That's it for this months Smoke
and Mirrors, thanks for watching AI and Games
and be sure to check out the case study on
thw Wildlands companion AI when it goes live.
