Image via Zainah Yousef/The DZSH Group
Ghost Recon Wildlands was released back in 2017 and was developed by Ubisoft, with most of the development taking place at Ubisoft Paris. The title, which is part of Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy Ghost Recon games, is an open world third-person tactical shooter with heavy emphasis on: nonlinear gameplay, team-based cooperation, and tactical stealth.
Ghost Recon has always been considered a pretty big deal in the tactical shooter genre. I actually discussed the evolution of the Tom Clancy Ghost Recon games over on our main YouTube channel. You can watch that video below, if you’re interested:
Moving on from that point, Ghost Recon Wildlands takes place in the country of Bolivia as a group of Ghosts fight against a cartel by the name of Santa Blanca. The cartel is led by a brutal boss named El Sueno.
The Santa Blanca cartel is growing in power and continues taking over regions of Bolivia, but the government establishes the Unidad, an elite special forces group to take down Santa Blanca.
However, the Santa Blanca Cartel is just too powerful. Several Unidad members and leaders were bought by the cartel in a corrupt grab for more power.
After a DEA Agent named Ricardo Sandoval is murdered by the cartel when his cover is blown, the US sends in a fireteam of Ghosts to Bolivia to take down the cartel. That’s where you come in as the player-character named Nomad.
Ghost Recon Wildlands has easily become one of my favorite games I’ve played ever, and its gritty, intense nature is precisely what keeps me coming back to this game. It’s amazing, and I can’t wait to break it down and why you should play Wildlands in 2023.
Background on Ghost Recon Wildlands
Ghost Recon Wildlands sets you in an open-world where you must systematically go through sectors of the world and take down the Santa Blanca cartel by fighting off cartel heads and other important individuals to the functions of the cartel.
In its beautiful tactical nature, Ghost Recon Wildlands gives you many avenues and ways to approach missions, cartel strongholds, villages and more. You can drop in with a helicopter and parachute your way down. You can just move in the old-fashioned way on foot. You can also drive a car to the certain locations.
The map is pretty large, so there are multiple ways to get proper transportation. There is a fast-travel option in case you want to cut down on time while you’re playing and just get to the cool action stuff.
Visuals Are Fantastic in Ghost Recon Wildlands
So, first of all, let’s talk about visuals. This game is beautiful. The nature, the map, and the animations are great. I think that it nailed getting the essence and atmosphere of what I’d expect in an action-packed video game about special operatives fighting against the cartel.
Customization is awesome in Wildlands. You pretty much have an open canvas to design your character as you want and it’s great. You can pick between either a male or female Nomad and then you customize the face, the hair, the eyes, and some other visible features. You can then select what outfit pieces you want and you can mix and match to make an outfit that fits your desire.
So, when I was customizing my Nomad character, I was visualizing an original mercenary group I came up with for my books called Blackridge. Blackridge in my books does often utilize just standard camo and civilian gear sometimes, it depends, but one of the iconic looks in concept advertisements I came up with is the blackout stuff. So, in my fashion of trying to recreate my PMC, I just made all my characters look like they’d be part of it. And now, I have Blackridge in Ghost Recon Wildlands.
Anyways, there’s also some special outfits that you can use as well. There’s an Assassin’s Creed costume, which I thought was pretty cool since you can play as a tactical Assassin, which is an Assassin’s Creed game I’ve been wanting forever. Knowing Ubisoft, I will never get that, so it is what it is. But at least I can play as an Assassin in Ghost Recon Wildlands, right?
The Open World and The Story
Once you load into the game, you get a cutscene of the most American movie plot ever–nothing wrong with that because I love American action movies more than literally any other movie type out there–and you’re basically told to get the job done no matter the cost.
I’m going to say that I was really impressed by the voice acting in Wildlands. I honestly really liked it and I think that it’s good. Not much else I can say here.
In terms of music and ambience, I think that Wildlands does that great as well. It nails the sort of suspense that you’d expect from a game set in a location where the cartel has dubbed itself the controller of the region.
I think that as much flak as Ubisoft gets for its open-world games, which I agree can be sometimes very overstuffed for no reason, one thing Ubisoft knows how to do is make a map look nice.
I mean, this isn’t the first open-world Ubisoft game I’ve played where I couldn’t help but admire the map and the quality of the setting. Look at Assassin’s Creed Origins and Odyssey, which are two very beautifully designed games in terms of visuals and ambience.
The Gameplay is Amazing
Moving onto some more gameplay-related stuff. Ghost Recon Wildlands is basically the first tactical third-person military shooter to be set in an open-world, which I think really redefined the genre of third-person tactical shooters. It being the first, I think it set a pretty good precedent that can be built off of for future titles.
You get the weapons that you probably expected—guns, guns, and more guns. I’m just kidding, but obviously in a military tactical shooter, you want to be able to use guns.
There’s a variety of different guns that you can use throughout the game and you can collect some as you go. I personally prefer using an assault rifle with a submachine gun or sniper rifle and a pistol as my load out.
I know some people prefer only using a single rifle and a secondary, but I think having a few other guns is helpful when you’re pinned in a situation or you’re being overrun by cartel members.
In regards to gunplay, I personally really liked it. There wasn’t really a learning curve or anything, but that might just be because I’ve been playing a lot of Ghost Recon Breakpoint lately, so that could be it, but I didn’t find learning how to master the different weapon types very difficult or complicated.
I typically play over-the-shoulder when I aim my gun, but I also sometimes switch to first-person if the target is a really good distance away from me. If I’m using a sniper rifle, I definitely want to have it in first-person, otherwise it’s very complicated to use and inefficient when you’re just trying to snipe your enemies.
It’s Tactical AF
Now, because this game is a tactical shooter, it’s not going to be as simple as Call of Duty where you just run around and shoot things. Though, Call of Duty has been trying to go for more tactical stuff lately, which doesn’t bother me.
You need to position yourself in a way where you have the best vantage and the best ability to fire hell on your enemies, which can be difficult if you’re being overrun or there are many enemies on all sides.
That’s why the teammates can come in handy. Because Ghost Recon Wildlands is a team-based tactical shooter, you can either play with your friends in co-op or you can just use the AI teammates the game gives you by default.
The Missions and the Map Structure
When you load into the game, there are story missions and there are side missions. The story missions can be played without you playing the side missions, but if you are a completionist, you probably want to play the side missions, I’d assume.
The map is split into sectors, with each sector having a person of interest involved in the cartel that you need to eliminate. This is actually a pretty similar structure to what was seen in Far Cry 5, where you had a map with several regions that needed to be liberated. This same principle applies to Wildlands.
I think that the system works pretty well for an open-world, but it is a bit cliche for Ubisoft since almost all of their main big titles seem to involve taking out some evil group in specific regions. But, if it wasn’t fun, I wouldn’t be playing the game. It’s just repetitive, but if you go for story more, I guess it’s not very repetitive.
That’s a pretty common thing I see in Ubisoft open world games though. They are pretty repetitive because they are stuffed in order to make the world seem more filled with gameplay, but a lot of the gameplay is the same. However, playing through the main story is pretty fun so I went for that first in my initial play through.
Driving in Wildlands wasn’t the best driving mechanic I’ve ever seen in a video game. Other Ubisoft games did the driving thing a lot better and I think the driving was much better in Breakpoint than Wildlands. However, it’s not like completely horrific and terrible that it makes the game impossible to play.
The Story is Decent Enough
In terms of story, I think that the story is decent enough for a video game. I don’t think it’s really the best story I’ve ever seen and I think other video games and media handle the cartel a bit better as a concept, but for a game focused on being mainly an open-world tactical shooter, the story was enough to keep you engaged and interested. If you’re a fan of things like Narcos and all that, I think that you’ll enjoy the story.
I suppose the most interesting part about it is showing how the cartel came to be and the impacts the world of crime has on innocent people. It’s pretty sad when you realize that this and significantly worse than this happens to people every day. You can disconnect from reality when you play a video game, but the video game doesn’t neglect showing you some brutal stuff, so it’s hard to forget that it’s not just a game-concept.
I should probably mention here that the story is likely not Tom Clancy’s original idea because Ubisoft bought the rights to use his name on games, but that doesn’t mean that the stories in the games are based off of Clancy’s ideas.
Overall Thoughts and Conclusions
Either way, I think that Ghost Recon Wildlands is a fun game. It delivers to you what it promises: Third person tactical military shooter in an open world where you fight to free parts of Bolivia from the Santa Blanca cartel. That’s pretty much the premise of the game and that’s what you get.
If you’re thinking of playing Ghost Recon Wildlands, then I say go for it. Don’t hesitate. The game is genuinely fun and if you enjoy tactical shooters, you’ll really like this one. Your ability to engage with this game is pretty high and there’s a lot of fun to be had with it.
Overall verdict: 9/10
Where to Buy Ghost Recon Wildlands
- Xbox Game Pass (Just need to subscribe to Game Pass)
- GameBillet
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Zainah Yousef
Zainah Yousef is the author of The Fallen Age Saga and specializes in gaming, social media advice, and reviews. She's been writing all her life and she probably won't stop anytime soon.
