Any hope that Ubisoft’s overhaul of Ghost Recon: Breakpoint could save the game was shattered with the unveiling of the politically charged Resistance live event. The event will run from July 16th to the 29th and feature a ragtag group of people taking on a highly advanced military force, and presumably not being immediately slaughtered for their effort.
I imagine Ubisoft envisions this live event as being topical to current affairs. That by tapping into the riots plaguing the U.S., that have had the Democrats call on the national guard to quell will somehow bring a resurgence to the game’s user base. Instead, what it appears to be is what the LARPing revolutionaries envision themselves as appearing, and comes across as supremely cringy.
You have a multicultural group lead by a white woman charging at a far superior equipped and armed force as if it will result in anything other than them being mowed down. Pragmatically some of the weapons being used against them are capable of firing hundreds of rounds per minute, and that’s not counting the entrenched weaponry. This charge will end about as well as it did for the Africans in the Battle of Ulundi, where the British armed with two Gatling guns suffered only ten casualties and 87 injuries in a battle that saw their opposition suffering from nearly 500 fatalities and over a thousand injuries. Military tactics and superiority is a thing.
Ubisoft also announced before the show that with this event will come the AI teammate update. Reportedly the AI will feature dynamic actions that will mimic that player’s strategy. If the player is opting for a stealth approach, the AI teammates will do their best to remain undetected. On the other hand, if players are going full Rambo, they’ll do their best to keep up. Players will also be able to issue commands for their AI teammates to regroup, hold, ceasefire, go-to location, and go hot.
Updates like this are not going to create the kind of turnaround stories many other live-service titles have enjoyed. One is supremely cringy, and the other is playing catch up with standard genre features that should have been available on launch. A fact that isn’t going unnoticed, nor unspoken by the community.
