Here’s the reveal trailer, for starters: Frontline’s main mode is Expeditions. It features over 100 players in teams of three exploring Drakemoor island, but it’s not exactly the typical battle royale. Instead of a constricting circle, teams work to gather intel from different locations around the map before calling for an extraction. Once a team triggers the extraction, they will be marked on the map for all other teams to hunt them down, steal their intel, and escape themselves. It’s a little bit like Hunt: Showdown or Ubisoft’s own Dark Zone mode in Tom Clancy’s The Division. It’s a fun structure for multiplayer shenanigans in those games. The rest of the structure around the game sounds familiar. You pick a contractor to play as and can level up their skills with various weapons, and there are three classes to choose from which come with different abilities. That includes an shootybang assault class, a support class who can build defensive structures, and a scout who can call in a mobile watchtower to snipe from. There will also be other modes, including quick arena matches. Ubisoft say it’s early days for the development of Frontline, but they want feedback from the community as soon as possible. With that in mind, the game’s first closed beta test will take place from October 14th to 21st, exclusively for PC players in Europe. Players can sign-up to take part at the Ghost Recon Frontline official site. I’ll be honest. I spent several minutes during this reveal thinking Ubisoft had already announced a game called Frontline, but it turns out I was thinking of the similarly free-to-play Tom Clancy’s The Division Heartland. The chances of me keeping the names Wildlands, Breakpoint, Heartland and Frontline straight in my head are basically nil. It’s an uninspiring name for what looks, at this stage, like an uninspiring game. I like extraction modes and battle royale and team shoots and assault rifles, and I know this because I’ve already played several games which contain those things. Maybe this doesn’t matter! Maybe every IP must now have an obligatory take on battle royale, and maybe Ghost Recon fans will be happy that they can now play a mode they like within their favourite fictional whatever. I’m torn between not wanting to rain on anyone’s parade, and thinking this parade is stupid and boring. Here’s the full announcement video, which contains the trailer above and several minutes more of excitable developers gesticulating about the game:
