Ghost Recon Goes the way of the Open World. Should it?
I used to like Ubisoft games. Honestly, I did. Assassin’s Creed 2? Nigh unto perfection. Far Cry 2? Brutally difficult and swamped with frustrating glitches, yet I kept coming back for more. The triumvirate of Tom Clancy franchises- Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell- they all had my money and my time. Yes, I used to like Ubisoft Games.
But things, as is in their nature, change. Video games change, often out of necessity. The game market is in a constant state of flux. Games often change to suit market trends or stay relevant. Just look at Call of Duty. This year’s Infinite Warfare will be the third straight installment in a futuristic sci fi setting. Why? Because sci fi is, or was, a trending property in the game market.
The same holds true with open world settings. Sandbox games are nothing new. The concept dates back all the way to the 1980s, with early games like Mercenary or the original Wasteland. Originally reserved for MMO’s like World of Warcraft, or the medium-transcending Grand Theft Auto, open world has gradually come to permeate the game market. At this past E3, no less than a dozen upcoming open world titles were previewed. These include Mafia 3, Dead Rising 4, Mass Effect Andromeda, and Watch Dogs 2. Yet Ubisoft seems to have a deadlock on the concept. Most of their triple A releases, including Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Watch Dogs, and The Division, are open world. Now Ghost Recon is slated to follow the same path with next year’s Wildlands. Ubisoft promises a unique open world for players to explore. But I think they might be wrong. Ghost Recon should not have gone open world, because of the problems inherent with the open world genre.
Ubisoft’s World
If you’ve played an Ubisoft open world game within the past half decade and change, there are certain features you come to expect. For example, view points! You have view points in Assassin’s Creed, and radio towers in Far Cry (up to Primal, at least.) Both serve the same purpose: to reveal parts of the map to the player. Their aesthetic difference is a matter of convenience and nothing more. Same with collectibles, be they Assassin’s Creed’s feathers, journal pages, or propaganda posters, or Far Cry’s journal pages or propaganda posters…hey, wait a minute…
All jokes aside, Ubisoft has a formula that they stick to in their open world games. It’s not a bad formula; it fills their world with things to do. There are side activities, collectibles, distractions in abundance. But the formula has been used in countless other open world games. And Ubisoft has done little to improve or change the formula since Assassin’s Creed 2 or Far Cry 3. Minor tweaks like seafaring in Assassin’s Creed or animal taming in Far Cry: Primal don’t modify the experience in any meaningful way. If you took those away, players would be hard pressed to differentiate these titles from earlier entries in their respective series. The Division is a little different with its appropriation of MMO concepts into a shooter. But it also has its own problems with the mess that is The Dark Zone.
Taking a look at the features promised in Ghost Recon: Wildlands, we see several familiar entries. Third person tactical shooter with FPS option? An industry standard. Different kinds of terrain? Day/night cycle? Side missions? Sounds familiar too. Experience points? Loot system? NPC interactions? Like The Division, eh? Ubisoft is certainly checking all the right boxes. But from this list of features alone, Wildlands sounds less like a unique IP and more an abstraction of what an open world game is supposed to be.
The Problem with Open World Games
With the risk of repeating myself, I used to like Ubisoft games. But after a half dozen Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry games, I see their open world formula for what it is. It is a static and repetitious series of systems. And Ghost Recon: Wildlands has not shown anything new or different or otherwise game-changing. In fact, knowing Ubisoft’s history of downgrading their games (Watch Dogs and The Division, I’m looking at you), there could be even less to see when the game launches next March.
If the criticisms presented in this article sound general, its because of the flaws inherent to the setting itself. There’s a lot of freedom to be had in open world games, true. But freedom to do what, exactly? There are a limited number of systems to interact with. Eventually, the story is completed, all side missions done, all collectibles collected. What’s next? You have the freedom to go postal on the world, sure, but what’s the point? Where’s the challenge, the endgame? There has to be more than just raising anarchy or grinding for loot. But the current formula of open worlds are big open maps with a set number of systems to interact with.
Dostoyevsky once said, “Freedom is incompatible with happiness.” A similar principle may apply to gamers. Gamers like having an objective, a goal to focus on and work towards. Be it maxing that level cap or completing that mission, there is always that need to push forward to the next goal. And once that goal is reached, maybe players could use the systems the game is built upon to devise their own goals, and their own objectives. I’m talking about that new fangled term “emergent gameplay,” playing the game in ways developers did not know were possible. The problem with open world games is that their “freedom of choice,” built upon overused and static systems of play, stifle that sort of creativity. If Ubisoft really wants Ghost Recon: Wildlands to be a unique experience, then they shouldn’t just copy and paste their open world formula onto the Ghost Recon label. Instead, they should brainstorm how they can turn that formula on its head. Make a new formula, and redefine the open world shooter, instead of rehashing its greatest hits.
And for the love of all that is holy, no more feather collectibles, please.
RSS