Nine years ago today, Ghost Recon Wildlands was launched, by far the most successful title in its series, as well as the fastest selling title in the Tom Clancy’s franchise.
Ghost Recon has been a futuristic series since its inception, and it continued the theme of futuristic warfare until 2014. After it is free-to-play the game Ghost Recon Phantoms went infamous and was shut down, Ubisoft made a total U-turn. They ground Ghost Recon and turned it into open type gameand that move was very successful for them.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands was launched on this day in 2017 as a tactical shooter for 1-4 players. The game was set in Bolivia in 2019, where several regions were ruled by him the Mexican Santa Blanca cartelled by the wicked El Sueno. As part of Operation Kingslayer, the land was liberated by a four-member Ghost team consisting of Nomad, Midas, Holt and Weaver. In a typical video game plot, lower-ranking cartel members were first dealt with in order to get to larger fish and finally to the leader himself.
Virtual Bolivia was then one of the largest worlds that Ubisoft created, divided into 21 regions. Deserts, jungles, mountains, cities – there was everything and all of it could be visited on foot, land vehicles, air transport, ships, etc. The player also had an unlimited amount of parachutes at his disposal. Wildlands was played from third person most of the time, but there was a first person aiming option.
Virtual Bolivia was then one of the largest worlds that Ubisoft created, divided into as many as 21 regions.
The game didn’t get great reviews upon release, but the audience responded well to the changes in the Ghost Recon series. That’s how Wildlands came to be the fastest selling Tom Clancy’s game in historyand ultimately the game was played by more than 15 million players, significantly more than any other Ghost Recon game. It is also interesting that this was the first project he worked on the Serbian branch of Ubisoft in Belgrade, founded in 2016.
Thanks to good sales results, Ubisoft had for Wildlands two-year support of additional content. First came two DLCs called Narco Road and Fallen Ghost, followed by Special Ops and crossover. One day, the alien bastard Predator came to the Wildlands, later Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell, and then some operatives from Rainbow Six.
Ultimately, the game received a direct sequel in 2019, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, which launched in the fall of 2019 and turned out to be one of Ubisoft’s biggest flops. Later, a multiplayer game in the Ghost Recon world was planned, but it was canceled after a bad reaction from players. A new Ghost Recon game is currently in development, but Ubisoft is still keeping it under wraps.