At E3 I got the chance with another member of the Breakfast Club and fellow Ubisoft Star Player, Cortexian, to interview Dominic Butler, the Lead Game Designer for Wildlands and Jean Marc Gefroy who manages the creative team.

The Breakfast Club, by the way, is the name for a group of Ghost Recon enthusiasts assembled by Ubisoft to give feedback to the team working on Wildlands. We’ve been lucky enough to actually play the game in its current build in Paris a couple of weeks back (Oh wow!) but more of that to come in a later Blog.

We kept the interview to questions about the co-op/single player, as the team are not able to discuss Multiplayer. I cornered producer Nouredine Abboud later on this topic, as I know a lot of people want to know about the mode, and he explained that the team don’t want to raise false hopes or aspirations that they then find hard to deliver so it is better to only say anything when they have it!

I asked first if the guys could explain what a Systemic Open World means.

Dominic: At its core it’s a military shooter set in a massive open world. An elite unit have been dropped behind enemy lines to basically cause chaos and disrupt the alliance between the Santa Blanca drug cartel and a corrupt Bolivian government. In terms of Systemic Open World it means a huge, vast play space with lots of bio-diversity and ways to play, but it’s not just about graphical difference, it’s about gameplay difference and different ways to approach the situation when you’re there. So you’re going to play it differently if you’re in the swamps, if you’re in the desert, if you’re in the mountains. It’s also about injecting systems into that world, so we have real day/night cycles. We have got civilians that’ll go to a market on a Wednesday afternoon, they’ll really go to Church on a Sunday etc, etc, they’ll go about their jobs, they’re living their lives. As a background to that you’ve got the corrupt business side where the drug dealers are making their deals and making deliveries. You’ve got tension between them and other factions in the game, the rivalries with the corrupt government and military factions

So it’s more like a vast open space that has a lot going on in it, it’s dynamic, it’s autonomous from the players so it’s happening anyway - whet here the player is there or not. And then we tell a story in that world, so rather than build a world around a story, we built what we think is a strong, interesting world, a big playground to go and toy with the different systems, manipulate the different systems with clear objectives set along the way.

AI BLUEFOX: Does that world react and mature depending on what the player actions are and what the players do?

Jean-Marc: Yes because actually, just to go back, imagine no restrictions so the world is simulation like, no restrictions means the AI should, must, react according to your logical behaviour. So if I do something, in a micro level, it must react, but at a macro level there are consequences to what you have done.

AI BLUEFOX: Will that stay persistent? So if I annoy the civilians in the very first mission I do, I start killing civilians mercilessly…..

Dominic: Yes, we’re not talking too much specifics about the evolution of the world today, but for sure we can’t have a world that doesn’t react and it’s not just based on a moment by moment, we are going to have longer term reactions; just can’t go into too much detail about that today.

AI BLUEFOX: The “Systemic” sounds as important as the “Open” to me

Dominic: Absolutely and it is for us. The “Open”, implies for me a space that I can roam, that I can go wherever I want, whenever I want …. in terms of how is that interesting to move through, what are the opportunities for me along the way; that’s a “Systemic world”.

AI BLUEFOX: So the Systemic part is what differentiates it from other Open World games?

Dominic: Absolutely

AI BLUEFOX: So the Ghosts operating in that world ….

Dominic: That and the fact that they’re doing it in co-op. For us, it really can’t be, put too much to the side “SP” {I can’t make that last phrase out from the audio} …. I know it’s an option, some people want to play solo, of course we’re going to support that, but Ghost Recon, it’s a team based game, it’s always going to be a four man squad, so even if you’re playing solo, you’ll have AI players. It’s that cooperative in the open world with a systemic nature, that it’s massive; that’s what differentiates it for us.

Jean-Marc: And basically to go back to your “audience” {I think that was the word used by Jean-Marc meaning the players} in that it is systemic, when your player, when you’re playing four players, and the fact the four player can go wherever they want, means you need to build the world and code the artificial intelligence in a way that when you shoot at trucks … in every situation {there were hand gestures here, the meaning to my understanding being that the other 3 players would also experience any consequences} and it was at start, it was really what we focus a lot on that, how to manage real AI that can leave themselves, that we can manage the big space

Dominic: With Ghosts that can approach from any time, from any angle with multiple options.

AI BLUEFOX: If you decide to play as a Single Player, because I think I’m quite interested in playing with a group of guys and on my own sometimes, will I be able to have a tactical interface where I can direct where I want the players to go? The original game had a (map) overlay where you could say, go there, that’s your fire arc, that’s your rules of engagement so you could control your AI.

Dominic: We’re not going into too much detail on the squad control right now. We’re just showing the big system games, which for sure you’ll have seen in some of our footage we do have, we’re going to have tactical maps. Of course we’re going to be able to see what’s going on, we’re going to be able to share information with our squads, the specific details of that we’re not talking about today.

Cortexian: So obviously Ghost Recon Wildlands is a massive world to explore, I’m just curious to know what can you tell us about the size of the world and what kind of Bio we can we expect to find there? I mean we’ve seen jungle, we’ve seen desert can you guys let us know what all the different zones are?

Jean-Marc: It will be big.

Dominic: Really big

Jean-Marc: I say that because we don’t really have the answer today … {the audio quality goes down here, probably because I’d turned towards Cortexian as he was asking the next 2 questions and I was recording on an iPhone so must have angled it badly. However will transcribe as best I can and get approval to put the audio file up}… it’s not that … we can’t really talk about numbers, we know we are the biggest open world for Ubisoft so far. We don’t know exactly where we can push the limit … and the second part was about the Bio, so we have 9 Bio. What is good in Bolivia, it is so beautiful, it is a country which has so many different types of environment, where we have the salas, the salt flats, where we have, we have the jungle, like in Brazil for the real jungle, but you have also the forest, you can find like in Europe all sorts of weird forest… you have the canyon with life that lives that way

Dominic: It’s funny, when people first see the palettes, the colour treatments of the different environments separately and they’re not travelling around the world, they get the idea that we’re leaving Bolivia to go to these places, but in fact it all exists in one massive open world. The nice thing is as well, the booths {where the gameplay was shown to E3 journos} hinted at it earlier, it’s not just about the visual difference, because once you go into the jungle, obviously everything becomes much more close quarters, when you go into the swamp it changes the way you play, when you get to the air in the mountains … it’s basically about offering different options for approach and challenging the player on the way that they are used to doing things.

Jean-Marc: Right, when you’re in the Jungle you can’t use the same like in the desert in the bigger ….

Dominic: Exactly, Exactly

Cortexian: And we have seen obviously there are mountain tops, there is snow element to this game as well, I mean there’s high mountains and everything like that too…

Jean-Marc: … they wanted that…

Cortexian: … that’s awesome, so another question I had, I’m a forum moderator for Ubisoft so I’ve been monitoring the Ghost Recon Wildland forums as soon as they went up here, one of the big questions that I’ve noticed that people have been asking is that, in the trailer that you have shown, it’s very action packed, the use of the long range shots, cause the enemies to fight each other, things like that, the people have expressed a concern that the Ghosts are supposed to be a very stealthy, covert unit. Now can you talk about some pros and cons vs your overall play through if you decide to approach the game from a stealthy perspective, will it really feel like the whole thing is stealthy and all the different factions are aware of your presence as Ghosts, really in the area.

Dominic: What it’s important to note, for sure, for the trailer, for that kind of explosive reveal that you’re looking for, of course we’re going to show it action packed. To show a stealth trailer takes a much longer time, but it’s of course going to be true to the brand. The game is being made by the Ghost Recon team, these are the guys, we have guys in the team who have worked all the way through the series and so they understand it, they are fans of the game as well, they’re fans of the brand. It’s definitely going to stay true to the brand. It’s really, really important.

In terms of the stealth, of course it’s going to be there, these guys are special ops but they’re not supermen and we’re putting them up against very dangerous enemies in a very unpredictable world, so you are going to have to be careful. We’re going to give the players the option to go full assault, but it’s, you’re going to have to sort of choose your battles really, really carefully. There’s absolutely going to be consequences, to everything you do there’s going to be consequences and so it’s rather, we’d prefer not to say “this the stealth mission, this is the S word mission etc” we give you an objective, it’s up to the players how they do it. They’re going to have to read the topology the time, night day, the weather effects. All of these things make the right opportunity so it’s going to be tactical, it’s always going to be tactical and it’s up to the players to make the right choice at that time.

Jean-Marc: It is important to be faithful to the name “Ghost Recon”

Everyone agrees!!



Jean-Marc: and “externally” {Jean-Marc may have slipped into French here and there, remember he’s trying to explain to us some difficult concepts in a different language to his own} it was difficult to explain the recon part of the textile, but really stealth means, stealth is very important when you give the truthful word to Recon; otherwise stealth … could be your action. Recon is basically something that is very very important.

Cortexian: So you need to gather the Intel, make the decision how you’re going to convert the mission and the execute it

Jean-Marc: That is correct

AI BLUEFOX: One more quick question that’s come up, a lot of guys have asked and you might be able to say, are you going to be able to put a First Person view in the game as well as a Third Person

Jean-Marc: The shooting is in first person

Dominic: The shooting is in first person and the traversal is in third person. Right now. But we’re not going, it’s still early, it’s pre-alpha so we can’t say it’s going to be the only thing. We don’t want to get people, either way, it’s just we’re showing the game as we have it today.

Cortexian: Final question I have for you guys, in the trailer we see some synchronised take down of bad guys. We see a couple of the Ghosts come up and work together to take people out, now that seems to be very player coordinated, which is great, it’s fantastic; is there going to be anything in the game like a shot synchronisation system or something like that when you’re playing with AI. Is there going to be a way to mark enemies, so that you can indicate to your team mates that we need to take these people out at the same time.

Jean-Marc: We are looking at all these systems …. {audio drops for 3 seconds} we are taking our combat, very important to, coordination is key when you are playing co-op even and so … {time has run well over and the guys are needed for the press so that is discussed} … we are very focussed on that