In Ghost Recon: Frontline, one hundred players are independent contractors who travel to an island measuring 4 by 4 kilometers. There they compete against other players to gather information and may even unravel a conspiracy over time. This is done in groups consisting of three contractors, each with its own class (unless, for example, you want to walk around with three snipers) and its own arsenal of weapons and tactical tools.
The goal of each game in Expedition flagship mode is for you and your team to find three pieces of information, after which you can request an extraction and escape from the island. So it’s not about killing as many opponents as possible in an ever-shrinking ring in Frontline. In fact, if a game doesn’t go as planned and if you are unable to kill others and find information yourself, you can ignore that objective and try to steal someone else’s extraction by striking at the right time . A small, tactical twist.
–
– –
Game design director Alexandru Rais emphasizes during our conversation that Frontline’s gameplay approach is ‘freeform’: “We want to let players make choices until the end of a game and give different options to come out as the winner, even if it is not going well at the beginning.” So one of those ways is being able to steal other people’s information and extraction, because with both all the bells and whistles go off to alert players in the area that another group of players is doing something. We saw that before in, for example, Battlefield 5: Firestorm.
“Collecting the information doesn’t happen overnight, so you’ll need to protect yourself and your teammates as you collect information. While you’re doing that, other players will see your location, but you can still walk around and shoot while doing so,” Rais said. According to Rais, those pieces of information are scattered “semi-randomly” across the island, with a lot of “fixed places” as well. You have to explore the three biomes and roughly twenty landmarks (such as a lighthouse) to find them. Although there is also another option…
–
– –
Every team isn’t supposed to go looking for intel like a headless chicken and ignore other teams. The actions of other teams may indicate the location of Intel, although you can also work a little more directly and question players yourself. This is not covered in the official presentation, but Rais is certainly enthusiastic about it: “If you shoot an enemy and he is still alive on the ground, you can go over to him and interrogate him. This way you can unravel the location of his teammates, but also get hints about the locations of Intel.”
There are all kinds of small actions that can bring a game of Expedition to a good end. You can also choose to thwart other teams by, for example, turning off the engine of their car, sneaking after them to obtain information, or using so-called TAC Support and skills. Little is known about those skills, except that you get one active and two passive skills, and that they differ per class. For now, there are only an Assault, Support and Scout class in the game. Ubisoft Bucharest wants to expand that offering through seasonal updates.
–
Separately, the ingredients of Frontline may not sound like the most original ideas, but it is mainly the combination and the resulting end result that should attract players to Frontline
More interesting is the TAC Support, because in Frontline you can shape the battlefield yourself with gadgets (about which little is known). You can drop all kinds of objects via TAC Support. The most striking so far is a sniper tower, with which you of course create a handy vantage point, but also draw attention to yourself. The Support class can also summon turrets, all kinds of cover objects and useful items such as ammunition and armor plates (another typical battle royale ingredient).
That doesn’t mean this has to become some sort of Fortnite light, though; you can’t build without limit and also in terms of tone Frontline seems a lot more serious. Rais: “We aim for a balance in tonality. We want the game to be grounded and not extremely crazy, but there’s room for lighthearted moments.” Rais has already prepared an example of this: “My favorite place on the island is a kind of dino park. They found fossils and built a park around them, resulting in a somewhat more airy design.”
–
– –
Separately, the ingredients of Frontline may not sound like the most original ideas, but it is mainly the combination and the resulting end result that should attract players to Frontline, according to Rais. Whether this combination will actually remain interesting remains to be seen. In any case, the shooting (in first person) looks good old-fashioned, but we haven’t seen enough actual gameplay to predict whether Frontline can compete with the greats in the genre like Warzone. Ubisoft also keeps a few things up its sleeve. There is also a Control gameplay mode, where two teams of nine players fight each other for control of certain areas, with more modes to be added later.
In any case, the way Frontline is being developed promises a lot of good, because Ubisoft Bucharest wants to do that together with the players from now on. “We’ll start with Expedition mode, balancing and adjusting the weapons and making the player control feel good,” Rais said. Step one in this journey is a PC test that will begin in Europe on October 14 and run through October 21. Player feedback will then lead to new tweaks and determine what will be added to Frontline in the future.
Ghost Recon: Frontline gets a PC test on October 14, exclusively in Europe, and should be playable on consoles at a later date. No release date has yet been announced.
– – .
