Does Ghost Recon Wildlands Have a Campaign?
Yes, Ghost Recon Wildlands contains an expansive single player campaign that serves as the pillar of the gameplay experience, offering dozens of hours of tactical covert operations.
Massive Open World Sandbox
Ghost Recon Wildlands is set across a massive open world environment called Bolivia, encompassing over 21 different regions covering a total area of over 400 square kilometers. To put that size into perspective, it‘s approximately 1.5 times larger than the map of The Witcher 3. As a passionate gamer and content creator, I was extremely impressed by the scope and density of the open world Ubisoft crafted.
Exploring Bolivia truly feels like entering a living, breathing world brimming with details and interactive environments. The diversity of biomes stretches from arid deserts to lush forests and snow-capped mountains. Traversing the world utilizes a variety of vehicles, including trucks, helicopters, boats, and more.
Scope of Campaign Content
The core of Ghost Recon Wildlands lies within its story campaign and side missions:
- Main story missions: 30
- Side ops missions: 75
- Regional bosses: 17 major bosses
- Total missions: Over 100
| Mission Type | Examples |
|---|---|
| Story missions | Cut off supply chains, interrogate informants, seize facilities |
| Side ops | Rescue VIPs, destroy convoys, eliminate targets |
This table provides insight into the volume and variety of campaign activities players can explore for a game of its age.
Gameplay Length
Completing all story missions in Ghost Recon Wildlands will take approximately 25 hours. However, Embarking on side content and full completion can extend playtime to over 80 hours. That offers superb value given the budget price it can be found for currently.
Here‘s a breakdown of completion time averages provided by HowLongToBeat:
| Gameplay Style | Time to Complete |
|---|---|
| Main Story | 25.5 hours |
| Main + Extras | 48 hours |
| Completionist | 81 hours |
Playing Solo vs Co-op
The entire story campaign supports 1-4 player co-op. Playing solo offers an immersive lone wolf spec ops fantasy by commanding 3 AI teammates. The AI demonstrates competent pathing and tactics to assist you in stealth and combat situations.
However, coordinating with real players in co-op truly unlocks emergent gameplay. Assigning roles, customizing loadouts, synchronizing shots, and tackling objectives from multiple angles brings incredible replay value.
Premise & Story
The campaign sets up an intriguing premise – American agents inserted into Bolivia to systematically take down the Santa Blanca drug cartel run by El Sueño. Players must destroy operations across the entire country region by region to ultimately topple the cartel.
Storytelling occurs through cutscenes with photorealistic motion-captured animations. While the narrative isn‘t on par with single player masterpieces like RDR2, it provides sufficient background to connect the variety of missions. Supporting characters add flavor through radio banter and on-site briefings as well.
Gameplay Innovations
The mission structure features welcome innovations to the tactical shooter genre. Objectives support complete freedom – whether stealthily infiltrating at night, executing synchronized sniper shots, loudly storming compounds, or any approach in between.
The skill tree and upgrade paths let you customize weapons and gadgets tailored to preferred playstyles. Environmental effects like weather and time of day force adapting strategies.
These elements combine together to deliver an incredibly strong gameplay loop that maintains engagement even after defeating the final boss.
Lasting Value
Releasing over 5 years ago in 2017, Ghost Recon Wildands remains popular thanks to continued updates and fan support. The final major content update added a New Game Plus mode enabling replayability along with a new PvP class and maps.
Critics praised the scope of its open world and core gameplay, while noting the story falls short of blockbuster expectations. Overall reviews average in the 70s, commendable for such an expansive title.
Personally, as an avid gamer actively playing even AAA releases this year, Ghost Recon Wildlands stands out for its tactical gameplay freedom unmatched by newer titles. The continued engagement and updates years later cement it as a fan-favorite with lasting value thanks to such a strong core campaign experience.
