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Note: This is part 1 of 2 with a second post coming to describe the bad parts of the DLC Story, I’ll provide a link to part 2, as I would like to post them both at the same time. Also warning as there are spoilers.
Abstract:
With the update I wanted to originally dissect story implications, thoughts on the missions and the likes, but I think my thoughts would be better expressed if I describe (with pictures) the best mission in the DLC and what I think the missions should be like in a Ghost Recon game as a whole, because believe it or not, one mission in this story got it right, and on the completely opposite end in Part 2 we’ll talk about the mission that is objectively horrible and is the perfect example of the issues with mission design in this game, and parts of Wildlands. I will provide a quick rundown of my thoughts overall.
Firstly, Quick thoughts on the story:
I liked it from a general premise, I think CLAW conceptually works as an amalgamation of VR technology and modern drone controlling technology used in the military, and I can see it coming to fruition in 10 to 20 years, especially with the crazy things the DARPA create in their free time. Also Sam and Midas’s involvement in the story while not perfect, is pretty good, and finally the Strategist is an ok villain, as an what if scenario of Professor X being a snoody billionaire bond villain, and it was interesting to make him Stone’s superior. I would like to really emphasize though , I really enjoyed the call backs to other Clancy properties and how the story fits decently(sort of) with it, besides Sam, Coste, and other Splinter Cell call backs, Having an Ex-Bodark Character, while his cameo is short, is absolutely awesome, and General Paxton as I’ll explain below actually feels like a spin on a character that Clancy would have written. However the issue here is it runs into what I call “Breakpointisms” with this story, as it has the exact same issues with the main story. Outside of a select few, Cutscenes and voice acting is slightly improved but still rather drab, which is fine for certain NPCs like the ones i’m going to mention here that don’t serve a purpose, but for main characters (Cough cough Wym, Dr.Ballard) it’s completely unacceptable, and I’m not expecting much, I’m just expecting at least a little care instead of what sound like first takes to me. The other issue I have is that it does the same hybrid style as Base Breakpoint’s story where you have an interesting initial set of linear missions, before suddenly breaking off into a checklist of missions that don’t feel connected at all, and are of varying quality where some are really good (Like the one I’m going to describe here), and others are horrendous, while others are just there and add nothing to the overarching story. I’d say either go fully in the route of Wildlands with having a full checklist with an overarching plot, or go full linear, as this current system is jarring to say the least. One more point I would like to say is why aren’t characters from Op Greenstone mentioned at all, You’d think Jace Skell being the main character outside of Nomad and Walker would be somewhere around this story, especially involving how Paladin 9 came on board with Sentinel, or he would have told us that Sam was already on the Island, but no, he’s nowhere to be found apparently, and Stone only gets maybe 5 minutes of screentime to add to his character. That’s overall my thoughts on the story itself, I’d say 6.5-6.9/10 or so (not that numbers really mean much let’s be real), as it is a slight improvement from the base story and much better than the lazy story in Division 2 WONY(not to mention Division 2 in general), but falls into the same traps as before.
The Magnum Opus of Breakpoint and Wildlands missions
I would now like to take the time to describe to easily what I would like to call the best mission in Breakpoint, and dare I’d say it, the best even compared to the Special operations in Wildlands like Future Soldier and OP Oracle, which were in my opinion the best missions of the post Redstorm Ghost Recons. This mission is called “Enemy within”, under the General Paxton tree of Episode 2, and I’ve seen so much innovation in this one mission, that it should be the standard for all future missions, and it actually feels like a mission from an old splinter cell game or GR game, it’s nothing like the classic “drive a truck” or drab trailing missions of normal Ubisoft standard. For a modern take, it feels like the innovation seen in a heist from Payday 2 or GTA 5, and it’s excellent.
Part 1: The Start:
The beginning of the mission starts with investigating the home of General Paxton, and you speak to the NPCs there that tell you he’s on a fishing trip, What I like about this, is that these NPCs are boring, but they know they’re boring, they get to the point, and they don’t tell you their life story or talk about their cat when you’re looking for Paxton, they’re not essential to the story, so they say their piece and move on, unlike certain side mission NPCs (Cough cough Guy that wants to f*ck a drone), you then check the intel upstairs which by the way is surprisingly detailed, and move on to the next point being the fishing spot.
Part 2: The Cave:
The Cave itself is a nice vista, but it’s nothing too new, I really like the enemy placement here, as there is no large cluster of 10 enemies in illogical locations, minus a couple enemies just staring at walls, every enemy seems to be doing something whether it’s sitting at a desk, patrolling, guarding or working on a generator. This placement is great because you can properly stealth this area, or go loud if you want to, the choice is there, but this is the least remarkable part of the cave, as seen with Innovation 1, the Vent.
Innovation 1: The Vent
After clearing the tunnel, I came up upon this door that was locked I had to think about where to go, I first thought it was a puzzle with the 2 blue cables connecting to some sort of panel like in previous missions, so I followed them around which led to nothing, and then I looked and saw the vent, I thought “Man I couldn’t get up there” since I haven’t seen crawling through a vent in either Breakpoint, Future Soldier, or Wildlands (The closest we had was some hatches in Breakpoint), but I could climb up and into it, and I was ecstatic. This is one of two showings on how small gameplay changes (like immersion mode) can completely change how a mission is played out, and while it’s simplistic here, imagine how fleshed out can become, with bases in the future having full ventilation systems the player can infiltrate through. I loved it, but that wasn’t all that was in store for this mission.
Part 3: The Base
When I entered the facility I was wowed by what I saw, this complex was sprawling, it looked insanely awesome, multiple levels to it, all interconnecting back to the control room, allowing the player to either choose either side to infiltrate, guard placement and patrol is logical to cover key areas, and it’s well defended (Looked like a base we would actually infiltrate in a GR game). I feel with the level design they were going for, it reminded me of a heist room in a game like GTA or Payday 2, and with the open ended objective of hacking the 4 panels allowing me to go in any order I wanted too, made stealth a blast, and makes this mission open for replayability since I can go in different directions, or complete objectives in different order, as I learned the guard placement, but that’s not all this base had in store.
Innovation 2: Laser Tripwires
When I first saw these, it caught me completely off guard, since this is a first for the series as a whole, and this combined with the guards on site, made the mission much more tense, and fun. What makes these great is not just they're laser tripwires, but the sheer variety of tripwires in this specific base, you’ll have some that are medium height signifying to crouch, you have others which are closer to ground level meaning to prone crawl, some move up and down, while others move left to right, and on top of all of that, they’ll mix them in, so each part of this map has a different combination of lasers to navigate. This one change alone made navigating to the four objectives 10 times more interesting to navigate, and it’s superb. Finally, this should be standard in most of the high tech facilities on Auroa like the Arrow Testing Site, and future facilities like this.
EDIT: Turns out you can also EMP the lasers to tempararly turn them off or carry a body through them, so even more ways to interact with the lasers, Whoever designed them and this mission as a whole needs a raise!
Part 4: General Paxton
What makes General Paxton interesting to me is that he’s a Republican warhawk Cold War general, who hates the communists and is willing to do anything for America to win, in a typical Clancy book this character would be the hero, in some ways he parallels to the earlier books “The President” figure (Who was Ronald Regan), but here it’s in a twist that he’s a villain, A dishonorable man who went too far, and almost sad husk of a man, who has to assert himself by trying to pull his former rank on Nomad, and at the end realizes how far he went and where he went wrong. While the voice acting isn’t superb in anyway, it’s better than a majority of other Breakpoint NPCs, as he actually has tonal shift and emotion in his voice, unlike other NPCs (cough cough Wym), and his character as a whole actually would fit in GR and by extension military shooters. Also not to mention his cutscene is actually prerendered, and not the terrible WoW dialogue cutscenes we’re used to.
Part 5: The escape
Normally, I hate forced combat scenarios, especially when I previously stealthed the entire mission and this is the one blemish on this mission, however it’s saved by one design choice, It’s optional. Unlike the last mission where you capture the strategist, which parallels a lot with what’s said above, You’re allowed to just run past the drone, who’s the biggest threat, and only have to mop up the normal human enemies, since your objective isn’t “clear the area”, but escape. The mission to capture the strategist is fantastic at the beginning, but the CLAW fight at the end completely ruins the mood, especially being that the full mission previously was to stealth.
Part 6: The conclusion
In Conclusion, I want to say this is the first mission in Breakpoint that has completely engaged and amazed me from start to end with the new innovation, the excellent base design and stealth gameplay, enemy placement, sheer amount of replayability, and even an enjoyable cutscene at the end. Not to mention, this was the first mission where Nomad didn’t do an errand like Superman once, he actually investigated and initiated his own OP from start to end. Also minimal drones in this mission so a plus!
This is a feeling I haven’t had since Operation Oracle part 1 innovated in Wildlands, and right now I’m confident to say that this is the best mission in both Breakpoint and Wildlands (Operation Oracle being number 2), and can possibly stand with the missions in Future Soldier, my favorite GR. This mission completely broke the typical mold for the “drive a truck” or do an errand mission, and it needs to be the standard for all future Breakpoint and GR missions.
But now, we must move on to Part 2 the other end of the spectrum with the grand issue of Breakpoint’s generally boring, time wasting, uneventful, copy paste mission design, and what better than the new DLC mission that completely shows it off perfectly, Spirit of the Hive…...ugh.
Link to the Original Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing
Part 2: https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthrea...ions-(Spoiler)
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I mostly agree except for the end. Finishing the cut scene and walking into a base on alert and a drone I can't even figure how they got in there kind of deflated the mission for me. It just seemed pointless. Where the hell did these guys come from and why? If on the other hand Paxton had jumped for an alarm switch in the cutscene and gotten shot for his efforts, that would have made some sense... not a huge amount as I'd still wonder where these guys came from. At least though I'd know WHY they showed up. This was what I found I didn't like in the DLC, the standard fallback to scripted waves of attackers who somehow know exactly what terminal is being activated where. The inconsistency of behavior about hacking terminals where sometimes it is routine and others where they know they are hacked and exactly physically from where and have a response team a minute away is just lazy.
This mission isn't the only one to allow for flexibility. The first mission with Sam where you need to shut down the pump station had a rooftop window access which was pretty nice. I really wish we had the capability to break windows to allow for alternative entry points. Auroa has the toughest bullet proof glass known to man.
Your main point though about creativity is on target though and there were a few instances of this. Putting the ID on the corpse for the Bodark guy. The ambush that was part of that same mission set was a good idea, really poorly implemented though. (They missed an opportunity there to use one of those under utilized cold war era bases for a fun game of cat and mouse with Nomad trying to fight his way out.)
The other two mission sets were abysmal in my eyes. Miserable characters, miserable goals for Nomad. All told there are about 20 different interactions Nomad needs to do for this DLC
First mission with Sam
- The power station - This one I liked. Having a roof top access was nice and it didn't end with a scripted wave
- Data retrieval - Also good bit of sneaking around to find a good shooting position and then avoiding the alerted base to get to the terminal.
The Lawyer
- Find her - Uneventful and a missed opportunity to make Liberty a more living city. There could have been a Sentinel team moving on her when Nomad shows up using one of those 4 story residences in the Jefferson Residence area. It could even been a Sentinel response team dealing with outcasts and the Lawyer is stuck there. One of those buildings in the Jefferson area has a pretty intricate interesting route through it that involves hopping balcony walls etc.
- Clear the data in the terminal - Not a bad mission, but could have been assigned to some other underutilized location. Spent enough time there in the terminator missions and the base campaign.
- The ambush. Good idea, terrible execution. This could really have been a more standout mission step
- Bodark. Not bad. Good stealth opportunity, nice pyrotechnics
The Ornithologist
This was the worst of the lot. Somebody at Ubi has aspirations to write cheap teen angst novels, maybe they think this is an alter ego for themselves. The only thing missing was a Molly Ringwald voice actor.
- Find Mom - get told some bs about her daughter and you can only win her trust by rescuing her daughter - the brilliant rebel drone racer... maybe she's a reflection of some star wars fantasy character.
- Rescue brat kid - brat kid is cowering and crying - you rescue her and she says "I had it under control". I so wanted to shoot her, or at least pistol whip. Why can't we have pistol whipping in BP?
- Go Get Drone card and be schooled by stupid kid as to the network key - WTF Nomad has been hacking stuff all over the place, injecting a virus into the drone program etc and he somehow thinks it is a physical key? How did this pass mission review, it is so incredibly lame.
- Go blow up towers... and she has to tell you to go get a helo to do it? FU person who wrote this. Did you really think I needed to be spoon fed that? Geez at least make a serious mission to break the control network. Lazy.
- Go see Mom and daughter fight and then have the nerve to tell Sam this kid is future potential. Yeah I really think this is some personal fantasy of some dev in Ubi.
The Bee Keeper
- Investigate residence. This was actually good. Along the lines of what I thought would have been a better start for the lawyer. Then it goes flat
- Find the dude. He sets up this elaborate process for his wife to find him, which sentinel misses and yet they still find him faster than you. WTF?
- Go Do something with the terminal. What I am not sure because you don't get anything from him, he just wipes data I assume. Supposedly he gave us a way to put a virus to deal with Claw, but no I had to use regular old bullet lead to do that. Did someone forget about this mission when they wrote the final?
- Defend the man - Completely misnamed, you don't need to defend him at all. I retreated to the multistory building and just let them get slaughtered in the stairwell. Then I had to go find a couple guys standing around on the edge of the perimeter. I'll give points for the start, but the rest was just lazy.
The General
I think you were pretty spot on I just disagree about the ending. It just seemed unnecessary and detracted form the rest of the mission. I also wasn't satisfied with just walking away, this guy should have been snatched. In addition I don't get the elaborate security system inside this base that is completely missing from the final base fight. It reminded me of the boss fight with Walker where he has this high tech capability that disappears never to be seen again - more of an X Men character than an operator....hmmm guy in wheel chair... wait is this the X Men intro for GR? Oh gawd help us.
The final mission
Majorly disappointing but not surprising given all the lead in. You knew they were gonna make you fight drones. At least they gave you opportunity to do a stealth mission before the grand finale. The shame is they have this huge multilevel base that again gets underutilized.
That's it, the entire DLC. I feel even worse now that I preordered for the season pass. Bad enough the content was so limited, but they couldn't even spend the time to make this small release really good. And in creating a new character to play the new mode in this new content it turns out I LOST content. Holy s**t. I turned that one in and hopefully they will fix that other wise I will avoid ever starting scratch with a character again.
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Yeah for me it was,Originally Posted by Steven527 Go to original post
The General being amazing,
The Final mission and the Bodark mission being really good (Minus the claw part)
The 3 beginning missions being decent,
And then the bottom 3 of the Lawyer, Bee keeper mission, and Mom and daughter being objectively terrible, with Bee keeper being the worst because of how Lazy, pointless, and time wasting it was, so It is about my rating of 6.5 since to me, about 6.5 of the DLC missions were worth playing.
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A link to Part 2: https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthrea...8#post14866988
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episode 2 has some real high points but it's not flawlessOriginally Posted by Virtual-Chris Go to original post
I beat it all solo on extreme with limited bandages and health regeneration with 1 gun and it's totally possible however there is one very difficult part that you may wan't to turn the difficulty down for
it took me 3 tries to get past that part which I won't spoil but you'll know it when you see it
overall mission design is a huge step up but there are 2 that feel like slandered breakpoint missions so they aren't good
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Well, I was being very sarcastic... as if you read those guys report, it's mostly rubbish. But I guess I will see for myself soon enough.Originally Posted by ManticButton Go to original post
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Oh Part 2 is where I sh*t on mission design, this write up was all genuine praise.Originally Posted by Virtual-Chris Go to original post
