Ghost Recon Frontline, a free Battle Royale, announced by Ubisoft

Ubisoft has announced Ghost Recon Frontline, a free PvP first person shooter game. With support for over 100 players, it’s an objective-focused twist on the incredibly popular Battle Royale genre. Public play testing will begin this month, but a full release date has yet to be announced.

Ghost Recon Frontline’s flagship mode is Expedition, in which 102 players are divided into teams of three to fight for victory on a map of the island. To win, a team must find and claim three pieces of intelligence, allowing them to head to a designated drop zone and extract from the map. However, when the extraction helicopter is called in, other players are alerted and have a chance to attack and steal that team’s extraction to claim victory. It’s an objective design that sounds like a mix of Ubisoft’s Dark Zone from The Division and Crytek’s Hunt: Showdown. Ubisoft also points out that there are other tactics that can be used to win.

In addition to rejecting the last team standing approach to the battle royale, Ghost Recon Frontline also ignores the idea of ​​a shrinking circle. You will have access to his entire 16 square kilometer map throughout the game. That map is divided into four different biomes and houses 20 different landmarks.

A character class system will allow you to tailor your tactical approach. So far three have been revealed; The Scout is designed for long-range encounters and for tracking enemies, the Assault class is best suited for close-range combat, and the Support can establish defenses such as turrets. Each class has one special active ability, two gadgets, and three passive abilities. These classes are attached to customizable “Contractor” characters; You’ll start with two, and more can be recruited as you go. This allows you to create a group of contractors that can be tailored for specific tactical approaches. Interestingly, you can change which Contractor you’re playing as during the events of a match, so you’re not permanently locked into a specific class and playstyle.

Another new idea that Frontline is proud of is “TAC Support,” which allows teams to order air deliveries of supplies, paid for with funds earned by completing objectives. This includes basic things like new weapons, but also items designed to reshape the battlefield, like bulletproof barriers and even a complete sniper tower.

Developer Ubisoft Bucharest has been working on Ghost Recon Frontline for three years and is aiming for the game to be a multiplayer suite with multiple modes. The first alternative game type to be announced is Control, a 9v9 mode in which teams battle to dominate an area. While this is a smaller arena shooter-style mode, all of the tactical tools and contractors from the main Expedition mode will be available for use. New modes are planned to be introduced each season.

A full release date for Ghost Recon Frontline has not yet been announced, as the game is still considered in “early development,” but a closed trial will be running on PC for European players from October 14-21. Interest register to participate in the test is already live. Ubisoft claims that this will be the “first” trial, and that trials on other platforms will be announced in later phases. Ghost Recon Frontline is on the list to release eventually on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X | S, Xbox One, PC, and Stadia.

Ghost Recon Frontline is the third free Tom Clancy game that Ubisoft has announced this year. In early 2021 it revealed The Division: Heartland, while last summer it introduced XDefiant, a Call of Duty-style PvP shooter. This follows Ubisoft stating that it intends to create “high-end free games”. Hopefully it will be more successful than Ubisoft’s previous battle royale Hyper Scape, around which the conversation quickly faded.

Matt Purslow is the UK news and entertainment writer for IGN.