Ghost Recon Frontline Announced

What is Ghost Recon Frontline?

Ghost Recon Frontline is a free to play, first person, “massive” tactical shooter being offered by developers, Ubisoft. Players choose their “Contractor”, a class-specific soldier whose abilities and weapon handling skills can be levelled up through experience, and take on other players in a new Ghost Recon world.

What can I expect to be doing?

There are 3 Contractors for the player to choose from for a mission – Assault, Support and Scout. Each is essentially a class, offering unique abilities to be used in game, such as the Support class being able to call in a defensive structure to be airdropped, or the Scout can have a watchtower delivered to snipe from.

For the announcement and reveal trailer, Ubisoft highlighted one of the game modes which will be available at launch, called “Expedition”. The mode is comprised of 102 players in teams of 3 competing in a large open area on a map called Drakemoor Island. The teams must try to recover intel before calling for extraction. Calling for extraction will highlight the team to others on the map, placing them in danger of being killed and having their collected data stolen.

The mode initially sounds a lot like a traditional Battle Royale game, but Ubisoft were keen to point out the differences which separates it from the ever growing crowd, even going so far as calling it “a new take on the BR genre”. First and foremost, there is no shrinking circle which forces all the players into a smaller area over time which is expected from a Battle Royale game. There was no mention of the traditional looting for weapons either. Lastly, from the look of the reveal video, it seems like a maximum number of teams can extract as opposed to being the last team standing. None of these thing sound like a “new take” on the genre though, particularly with the rise of PvPvE games that have already been around for a while. The Cycle is one game that springs to mind that shares all of these features. While Ghost Recon Frontline will not have a visible shrinking circle, the time constraint of reaching the Extraction will still narrow all of the players towards a smaller area.

The Frontline reveal also mentions another mode called “Control” which is a 9v9, points based match where teams must “control” designated areas. The smaller, more focused mode might be nice to have but its hard to see it being anything more than a side show to Expedition which is the main event. The developers do promise that more and varied modes will be released after launch.

Initial Impressions?

Initial impressions are not good but not because Ubisoft has shown anything that looks bad per se. Fans of the long running Ghost Recon series are displeased that Ubisoft has announced Frontline as a Battle Royale game with the genres market being so oversaturated. Ubisoft themselves already have a Battle Royale failure with Hyper Scape but with the Free To Play and Battle Royale markets being such a cash cow for the titles that have been a success (see Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone), Ubisoft obviously feel it is worth the effort. The Ghost Recon series has always been a tactical shooter too, so presumably the fans are not happy about the Free to Play route the series has taken along with the in-your-face gun skins and character clothing that inevitably brings.

When can I play Ghost Recon Frontline?

Ghost Recon Frontline is still early on in development with no release date announced. However, for an early preview, the PC technical test for Europe is on 14th October 2021. Register on the official Ghost Recon Frontline site for a chance to join the test.