Ubisoft Announces Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, A Sequel to Wildlands

Ubisoft announced Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, the sequel to 2017's Ghost Recon: Wildlands, during a livestream reveal event today.. Here’s everything we know:

• The title is meant to refer to the game’s central theme of desperation, not, sadly, the Keanu Reeves film Point Break.
• The new setting is the Auroa islands, a private compound owned by Jace Skell—the CEO of Skell Technology, which specializes in autonomous drones and artificial intelligence.
  
• Like in Wildlands, you play as callsign Nomad, trapped behind enemy lines as your mission to get Skell’s drones under control after something causes them to go awry. You will not, unfortunately, be able to import your Nomad from Wildlands.
• The Auroa Islands are an extremely video gamey setting, with every kind of environment a game should have. You know: mountains, swamps, a snowy region. There’s even a volcano, something that took Fortnite eight whole seasons to add. Terrain in these regions matter—rocky terrain will cause characters to slide and stumble, and a new prone camo system will allow you to blend into the mud and dirt any time you’re near some.

• Alpha gameplay footage shows off the highly cooperative, open-ended gameplay from Wildlands with new touches, like a tech torch for breaching fences and brutal new takedown animations.
• Classes are introduced in Breakpoint and you can swap between them at any time. Each class will have class-specific abilities. Four will be available at launch, with more to come.
• Cutscenes will offer dialog choices, but they’re only for flavor and won’t affect the narrative, or how missions unfold.
• The Ghost you create is shared between all modes: Solo, Cooperative, and Player vs. Player. (This time, PvP is included at launch.)

• Every four months, a new major expansion episode will launch, including the very first raid in a Ghost Recon game.
• In a fun surprise, the villain is Cole D. Walker, a former Ghost introduced in last week’s Operation Oracle DLC as an ally to your squad in Wildlands. He’s got his own small army of spec ops soldiers called Wolves, and they’ve taken over the Auroa archipelago and Skell’s drones.
• Breakpoint introduces camps, called bivouacs. Players can set up bivouacs anywhere on the map, allowing them to treat injuries, customize your squad’s loadout, and even check the weather forecast and advance the time of day until your ideal conditions arrive.

• At a recent preview event, Kotaku was able to play through a version of the gameplay demo shown, and learned a bit more about Breakpoint’s aggressive post-launch plans, which will include new story content, seasonal “events,” and raids, which were described as “hyper-difficult, highly replayable,” exclusively co-op experiences.
• Does that sound a lot like The Division 2? Is the Ghost Recon team worried about that? I asked Nouredine Abboud, Breakpoint’s executive producer, and here’s what he said: “ The answer is very short and simple: One, if we deliver two games, it’s because we believe in them. But if I look at them just as product, I believe they are strongly different games”

• Abboud also noted that, like Wildlands, which teased The Division 2 and had a Splinter Cell crossover, there’s potential for more Ubisoft cross-pollination in Breakpoint: “We brought The Predator to Wildlands, so it doesn’t mean that we have limitations.”
• The game launches October 4, 2019 for Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC.