Ghost Recon: Wildlands - 10 Things We Learned From The Beta

9. The AI Isn't As Clever As We'd Hoped

Ghost Recon Wildlands Ghost Team
Ubisoft

Now, before I begin, I totally get that betas aren't nor ever will be representative of a final product. Stuff can change quite literally at the flick of a switch, and though it may not seem it, March 7th is still a month away - there'll be plenty of time for Ubi to iron out the kinks until then.

With that out of the way, it does look as though Ghost Recon has an AI problem, both in terms of your teammates, and the cartel you encounter. Your fellow Ghosts have to be babysat pretty much all of the time, and offer little tactical clout in a given situation unless you're performing a very ungracious drive-by on an unsuspecting convoy. This is most evident in close-quarters combat, where fellow operatives seem to make it their mission to stray into your line of sight repeatedly, grappling cover that offers little in the way of protection from on-coming threats. They're also prone to detection, turning successful infiltrations into needless confrontations and in-turn smashing what little nuance is left of the title's stealth system. They're meant to be Tier-1 operatives, but they come out of the game looking like wannabe Air-Soft enthusiasts running on an inconsolable diet of Mountain Dew and Doritos. Not the impression I guess the title is going for, right?

Then there's the enemy, split between the ill-trained Sicarios of the Santa Blanca and the PMC Unidad, the only difference between them being that the latter take a few more shots to the chest than their stereotypical cartel counterparts. I genuinely struggled to come across a firefight where I felt challenged by what Wildlands had to offer, which, to me at least, signals a glaring problem. After all, the title banks on its ability to convey guerrilla warfare authentically, pitting four soldiers against a gigantic force and persevering only through intelligence and teamwork. If it can't even deliver upon this fundamental theme, then there's a stark danger that it will fail, and fast.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.