Ghost Recon Wildlands

We infiltrate ubisoft’s paris studio to sneak a peek at its south american sandbox.

- James Nouch

Ubisoft’s developed more than its fair share of open worlds over the years. it recreated renaissance Rome in assassin’s creed brotherhood. it squeezed a Himalayan nation on to a Blu-ray disc for far cry 4. and, more recently, the developer sculpted a virtual San Francisco for its sandbox hack-tacular, Watch Dogs 2. so, when the studio promises that ghost recon Wildlands will take place in the largest action-adventure world it’s ever created, that’s a claim with some substance behind it.

And this time around, it’s the geographically diverse nation of Bolivia that serves as the setting for Ubisoft’s near-future narrative, which presents a quintessentially Clancy ‘what-if’ scenario. “Bolivia’s one of the biggest producers of coca leaf in the world, which is used for lots of different things like medicines, and Ritalin, and toothpaste, and altitude sickness,” explains Wildlands’ narrative director Sam Strachman. “But a small minority of people are using it to make cocaine. And the idea is that a drug cartel moves into Bolivia, takes over a huge area, and creates a narco-state, and they start producing more cocaine than any cartel in history.”

Not just any cartel, though. Santa Blanca is a truly ruthless organisation that rose to prominence running all manner of illicit substances on the mean streets of Mexico. Since moving into Bolivia, these drug-slinging entrepreneurs have applied a careful mixture of money and threats to establish complete control of the country, paying off the government while meeting any local resistance with appalling violence. Playing as a four-person team of autonomous agents, your job is to undermine this criminal empire by taking down each of the cartel’s 26 bosses, including its terrifying top dog: El Sueño.