Today, Ubisoft are announcing a reworking of Ghost Recon Wildlands. It’s an interesting and slightly odd concept. Not quite a remaster, not quite a patch. Included within is a new mission storyline and a selection of technical and quality of life improvements. In an era of heavy remasters and reworks, I think the Ghost Recon team have hit a sweet spot.
The modern Ghost Recon games have a narrow fantasy: be that bit in Clear and Present Danger, sneaking around the jungle, sniping and knifing and leaving without leaving a trace. Wildlands I think comes closest to that fantasy, in a landscape that is frankly, startling.
First of all: the new stuff. There’s a bleak new storyline set sometime after the original game, that sees the team returning to Bolivia to track down and assassinate a new cartel threat. Named Last Rites, it’s a significantly harder experience. From the first minutes you’ll face high-end and armoured enemy soldiers, and a twitchy Unidad that will bring helicopters to anything louder than a knife fight. It’s clearly built with veterans in mind.
Speaking of veterans: a bonus Predator mission has been reinstated. Released as a piece of limited time DLC, you can get your Arnie on again deep within the Bolivian jungle.
Together, there’s enough extra play in the package to justify its worth.
Then there’s the quality of life and community led change that deepens the game. Your first experience of these games is one of escalating chaos, helicopters that clip trees, SUVs toppling over on the way to a mission. In a group setting – if you can find a set of friends to play in the game’s excellent and seamless co-op modes, that calamity is deeply hilarious.
But it’s not really where the heart of the game lives. The quality of life work that the team have put together pushes deeper into realism. Most options give you a way to make your life significantly more difficult, and shorter. A reloading toggle lets you choose between magically restocking your clips, or each clip maintaining a specific level of bullets. You can choose how effective the respawn mechanic works, or how many primary weapons you carry. This starts as a hard game, and it can get much, much harder. The calamity of co-op is replaced with a quiet sense of caution.
The engine itself has also been improved, but you may have to squint to see the difference. To be perfectly frank, the detailed improvements in visual quality are there, but I feel like we’re in diminishing returns, particularly when the original game looked so good.
It’s such a deep lean into the fantasy, not quite ArmA, but closer and closer. Ubisoft know this terrain and craft it so well; mountains that feel like mountains, long rivers and roads that let you drive and lose yourself. And they understand the toolkit. Marking your targets with a drone and quietly ordering your team-mates or friends to pick off enemies one by one will never get old. This reworking leans hard into what already works.
The Ghost Recon: Wildlands Last Rites update is out now, Thursday August 6, and it’s free for all players who own the game. There’s also a free weekend available from August 6-10 for both Wildlands and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint through Ubisoft Connect. Plus, you can claim a free copy of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier to keep on the platform if you get it by Thursday August 13, and there are more sales ongoing as well to celebrate the franchise’s 25th anniversary.