Day two of E3 and boy has it started with a bang. After rushing in this morning I headed straight for the Ubisoft booth and booked in for all my appointments. This is one organised company and immediately sent me to my first appointment. Hands on with Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, including a follow up interview with Roman Campos Oriola, lead game designer on the game from the studios in Paris.
I will begin with my impressions of the game and then in a post that follows, give you the low down on what Roman had to say. So hit the jump and let’s get our Ghost Recon: Future Soldier on.
The demo kicks off in Nigeria, where South African mercenaries are patrolling the village. Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you, South African mercenaries. The only way I found this out was that as your Ghost team approaches the village, a character forcing one of the village inhabitant onto his knees speaks fluent and in some ways Americanized Afrikaans. I had a good laugh and then focused on the mission at hand.
Ghost Recon: Future Soldier has taken a huge step since the last game in the series. It is clear from the get go that Ubisoft has spent a lot of time getting this one right. It all flows so well and as I approached the group of mercenaries on a dock ahead, my squad leader instructed me to take aim (laser site and all) and wait for his go. We engaged our cloaks, took aim and five bodies fell.
This sense of team work is brilliantly felt right from the start and as we continued I learnt that the old mechanic of being able to tell your units where to go and what to do was out, and that your team is now smarter and more responsive than ever before.
It was a bit of a downer personally, as I enjoy commanding a unit and setting up the kill how I want it to go down, but after a few minutes with this new system it really does work very well.
We continued deeper into the village and I was instructed that by pressing the triangle button I could enter the Ghost vision. This allows the Ghosts to see nearby enemies through objects. As a example, a enemy was holding a hostage behind a door, I would never have known he was there it if wasn’t for the Ghost vision.
Once activated this also serves as a way of informing your team mates of where the enemies are and they react accordingly.
The game pushes the player to be more aware of his surroundings, allowing you to jump from cover to cover, use new ways of sneaking up on enemies using the Parrot Drone and most importantly, introducing a whole new in-depth, highly detailed way of customising your weapons that features Kinect compatibility.
For more on the game check out my in-depth interview with the lead game designer, Roman Campos.
Last Updated: June 8, 2011
