Revisiting Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands
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- Опубликовано: 2 июл 2020
- This is a lengthy deconstruction and critique of Wildlands, one of the most ambitious, beautiful, and deeply flawed games I've ever played. It contrasts the game's technical skill with its narrative shortcomings and includes the two major DLCs, Fallen Ghosts and Cartel Road, along with all the major post-release missions now that the game is no longer being currently supported.
__TABLE OF CONTENTS__
Wildlands Base Game-- 00:16
Fallen Ghosts-- 52:43
Cartel Road-- 59:26
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If you enjoyed this video and want to contribute to the production of others like it, please consider donating through the crowdfunding website Patreon: / noahcaldwellgervais 
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"only 1.42% have bothered to finish it, I'm honestly disappointed its that high" might be the most brutal thing Noah has ever said.
Glad to be in that 1.42%. I feel like i have achieved something.
I mean if you played for 10 hours you have seen everything the game has to offer. After 20 hours both me and my coop teamate gave up. It was fun for the first few hours but then it felt like a chore.
The only game I got a platinum trophy for.. That’s how much I liked it 😅
Yeah, that DLC was terrible. I just wanted to get it over with.
I think that the idea that wasting time on it would crack the top list of his regrets at the threshold of death tops the 1.42% jab.
Gotta appreciate how Noah enunciates so clearly that the auto-generated CC is almost flawless.
to be fair they have got really good in the past few years
To me, a non-US based, no native speaker, Noah has this sort of implaceable accent. Sort of a base American with a overlay of posh British accent.
I would compare it to Alan Watts, though Watts had a clear British accent, there is a similar quality in the way they articulate around words.
@@valletas Yeah, but you still very often see it get tripped up on stuff. Errors are super sparse in this vid's captions.
@@bastienmillecam3183 Yep, I think the best way to describe it is a de-Hollywoodified Transatlantic accent.
Bastien Millecam from what I understand it’s a southwestern accent? I know what you mean about it being hard to place. It kinda reminds me of the mid-Atlantic accent, (more of a vocal performance than an accent, it’s why Americans in older films talk so sing-song)
I'm glad you have such a good opinion of people who have enlisted, Noah. But I've been enlisted too, as a Marine, and while I can't say that the majority of people hold the morally nihilistic opinions of the characters depicted in this game, I can't say that such a thing was uncommon in my experience.
I enlisted in 2012, and at that time, the generation of Marines going through boot camp were already children of the media they were raised in. One of the interesting things about the Marine Corps is that we take things that supposed to be reflective and we turn them 'moto'-- as in 'motivational'. In the 2005 film 'Jarhead', based on the real life experiences of fellow Okinawa Marine Anthony Swofford, there's a scene where the Marines get together to watch Apocalypse Now, a film that is, in no way, flattering to the US military. Yet, the reaction to the airborne assault on a Vietnamese village is one of elation, a savage celebration of violence. Later in the film, the Marines get together to watch The Deer Hunter, perhaps one of the most bleak and harrowing films about the Vietnam war and its torturous effect on the psyche ever made. There's barely an action scene in the film, and yet, it's public viewing to the Marines.
My generation of Marines was raised on a similarly heady mix of Call of Duty, Black Hawk Down, Generation Kill, and, ironically, Swofford's own Jarhead. When I fractured my shins and was convalescent in Boot Camp, we'd watch Transformers, Team America: World Police, and Battle: Los Angeles as treats. The tone of the media does not matter, the depiction of war, horrifying, glorious, agonizing, and thrilling, itself draws young men to service. We revel in the violence and suffering: our own, that of the enemy, and sometimes-- I have heard from my fellow Marines-- civilians too. How much of this is bravado, how much is morbid curiosity, and how much is merely clinical education, I cannot say, but I find it necessary to disabuse civilians of the notion that service is always elevating. Sometimes, the best we can hope for is to bind killers to an ethos, and turn them on our enemies. Sometimes, people join because all they want is the license to commit the most anti-social act a human can do-- kill. I have heard, more than once, a Marine profess that he enlisted so that he could 'kill someone'.
This doesn't mean that the myth of the noble soldier should not exist, in fact, it means that it *must* exist, lest we succumb to this curious need for violence, but uncritical glorification of the military is itself dangerous to the civil-military dynamic.
Appreciate hearing your perspective. Thanks for writing all this out.
@@wingbarrel I hope I didn't take it too far. Service has social advantages beyond its supposed imparted benevolence. I've seen it reduce racism, or at least suppress it. It can provide structure to people who would be lost without it. And some of us are heroes.
But most of us aren't, and it honestly makes my skin crawl when someone thanks me for my service. I was *under* the civilian, not above him or her; it was for the civilian that my job even existed. The deference is unnerving.
Thanks for a beautifully written comment. I can't remember the last time a comment affected me this much tbh
We really are a bunch of monsters. I remember being absolutely pragmatic in the army, perfectly willing to inflict horrid violence because I was getting paid, and my poor ass had the chance at social mobility. I didnt really have any pride as a patriot. I just wanted to be the toughest, the best.
It was only the example of a few good men that really made me believe we could be heroes. Even if I failed, it was still a comfort to see those shining stars.
@@patliao556 I thank you for sharing your experiences.
I love how you never actually "land" an aircraft, you just crash approximately close to where you want to be.
It's how I remember playing Just Cause, and one of my biggest takeaways here was that Ghost Recon is basically the same game as that now.
Wait, so you actually need to land with the aircraft?
In his defence, I think I jumped out of 50% of my aircraft. Half the time they were just a taxi to my HALO jump XD
Landing with style*
And when you think about it, those helicopters were bought with drug money, I'm just cleaning up the country
@@zcritten Funny enough, thinking on it, I don't think you can steal a legitimately 100% for sure civilian aircraft. If I remember correctly everything you can "borrow" that flies is SB, the paramilitary police, or rebel owned.
"To be put in a room with two of your favorite paragraphs and a bullet for one of them."
That's such a good line.
Brevity is the soul of wit
If this were an indie game, I would be convinced the writers were making an intentional satirical point about how far they had to stretch reality in order to construct a scenario where the player wouldn't feel like a monster for taking part in a US "regime change" operation.
right!! its crazy that this is a stort that ubisoft wants to sell with total confidence
If you found this shit funny you should look at the division 2’s story (or what exists of it, they got so lazy with that piece of shit)
I kneel to Ubichad's writing team....
@@SuperNova-so2cj funny part is this story is completely in line for a tom clancy book. dude wrote this shit fully straight face. but he also got so much detail right so painfully that his games should be simulators not this.
It’s so funny how every time Noah does his Patreon shoutouts at the end of his videos he is always somewhere odd with the worst possible audio but I absolutely love it and it helps to almost decompress after such a deep dive into whatever he is dissecting.
I'm actually down for this wait-two-months-then-upload-three-videos deal. Everyone likes being spoiled.
Yeah, I've never been so pushed to watch more Noah, and never been like "oh I haven't seen this one yet" and that's fun
You hit the nail on the head with the problem with Wildland's story. The more infinitely frustrating part is if you've actually read Tom Clancy's Clear And Present Danger. The _moral of that story_ is that while the US _could_ send special forces into Columbia to fight the war on drugs, the problem with extrajudicial double secret black bag operations is that people exactly like Karen Bowman will wind up in positions of power to throw away the lives of American servicemen and cause untold destruction and not be accountable to anyone. The hero of that book cancels that entire operation, gets everyone fired for signing off on it, and convinces the President of the United States who greenlit that shitshow to throw his re-election campaign. That the frame of Wildlands is that the drug cartel is a terrorist organization on the most flimsy pretense imaginable and Post 9/11 anti-terror policy allows this is an even more galling dodge.
But hey, I think Ubisoft completely lost it's way with the writing for their Clancy-branded games a long time ago and it's miserable to sit through games made by people who seem to have completely missed the point of the books the man wrote.
That's very idealistic of Clancy, because that would never happen, even if that hero would become a whistleblower.
Ubisoft are adamant in claiming their games aren't political in any way. A lot of the time to their own discredit.
@@maggitPL Of course it's idealistic. The joys of reading Tom Clancy is two things: his ultra-detailed mechanical observations, and his idealism. When Noah makes a point about how Clancy can make a plot point about a certain model of helicopter is slightly different from another, he's not far off. In The Sum of All Fears there's an entire chapter where the elapsed time is about three seconds, where Clancy describes in excruciating detail what happens when a nuclear weapon explodes and all the side effects that came off with where and when this nuke goes. The entire rest of the book and the extremely near miss in starting World War 3 hinges on the FBI and the Nuclear Emergency Search Teams finding out about the flaws in the weapon and telling the same hero from Clear and Present Danger (Jack Ryan) about it while everyone's carefully constructed character traits edge them towards oblivion in a dramatic fashion.
The idealism is also important. In all of his books, Tom Clancy makes the presumption that while there are plenty of bad apples (who else would you have for villians?), that the fighting men of the world are primarily brave, noble, loyal, and ultimately _moral._ That he also made this assumption of the Russians in the middle of the Cold War is to be commended. It also made his villians interesting. The terrorists, while never ever celebrated (they're the bane of the professional fighting men of the world after all), usually have finely constructed frameworks that they see themselves as acting bravely, nobely, and loyally within. My favorite line that he penned in any of his books was in The Sum of All Fears, during one of the villians backstories: "All men seek nobility of the spirit. And it was not Marvin Russel's fault that he first discovered it at the hands of convicted felons."
As a side note, Clancy's idealism gives the world of his books a goal. From Clear and Present Danger to The Bear and the Dragon, he works with the same world and characters ultimately to create world peace. It's basically an alternate universe of the 1990's where after the fall of the Soviet Union, brave, moral, upstanding men and women made and kept peace in the Middle East, cleaned up the US Government, got terrorism down to record lows, allowed _Russia to join NATO,_ and got rid of intercontinental ballistic missiles, making worldwide nuclear war that much harder to actually commit. By the end of The Bear and the Dragon, it was clear that Clancy was going to stop there, enjoy his huge pile of money, and rest with his characters having secured the peace and freedom of most of the world's population. Then he got divorced and 9/11 happened, so he made a couple more books that weren't really as good, but at least passed the torch on to other thriller writers.
Anyway, I could go on forever about this, but my point is if you actually like Tom Clancy as a writer and not just a brand name for video games, there are layers to how badly fucked the writing in Ghost Recon Wildlands is and how antithetical to the entire thrust of what the man actually wrote and stood for.
@bigevilworldwide1 You're not wrong. But man, I remember when Rainbow Six came out and there was stuff to read in all those mission briefing screens. Or for that matter Homeworld's manual. Man I miss that kind of thing.
@@nclanceman People love misinterpreting the work of writers smarter than them. It's like when people characterize Starship Troopers as fascist propaganda when, to make it's martial society work, Heinlein deliberately throws out or villainizes the biggest markers for fascism, essentially saying that mechanically fascism can't function.
@@nclanceman daaaammn, thanks for saying that and expanding my view of Clancy. I read Rainbow Six so I knew about the helicopter thing, but, just damn.
The phrase "snake-fuckingly mean" is just *chef's kiss*. I will use this later.
21:00 The interrogation scenes playing in the background are so outlandish and detached from any form of self awareness that they kidnap my attention away from Your commentary. It's bizarre.
Same, I had to go back and listen to the commentary again because I was absolutely entranced by how the interrogations played more like a comedic skit more than something that should be taken even remotely seriously.
@@Gangmaker5000 I'm assuming they are being done for comedy, at least to some degree. The dialogue in particular gives me some major Grand Theft Auto vibes.
I had to physically look away. They were disgusting.
also they all appear to happen in the same shitty shed
@@smaspa8627 boohoo
The game's focus on Americans intervening in Bolivia is a bit unsettling after the government of Bolivia was literally overthrown in an American-backed coup last year.
The US wasn't really involved in that. At least not nearly on the same level as the Cold War. I get being skeptical of coups not having foreign influence, but they still happen at times(Arab Spring was largely natural as well).
Wasn’t exactly coup though. The only reason it’s being painted as one is because Anez stepped in as Evo’s replacement. Bolivia was primed for it to happen too, folks wanted him gone years before the election. Shit political graffiti was everywhere even in the rural towns.
There was no coup in Bolivia, stop repeting bullshit.
"Overthrow democratically elected leader and install fascist" is so typical of American intervention in South America it's almost funny to see people deny it.
@@macmcskullface1004 argentine here: If Bolivia was so great then why bolivians still come to Argentina to work 14 hs a day?
Now, being serious: Evo did good for his voting buddies nothing else
At some point, Noah, you should try and dive into the library of Supergiant Games. Bastion, Transistor, Pyre, and now Hades. They're beautiful games with a lot going on, you might really enjoy them even if you decide not to make a video on them. I thought of it while you were getting some rant out of your system, and figured you might enjoy a good palette cleanser, even if you probably did this game months before this comment.
This is a good comment and should go to the top of the pile.
100%. Some of the best examples of art and storytelling in recent gaming.
would really like this too
Also: Falcom, a master of fleshing out incredibly detailed worlds on shoestring budgets.
Bastion is their only really good game, the rest are meh. Focus more on art and story than making a game thats actually fun to play
"You only have 4 missions with him but they cumulatively add up to an eternity of torture so it feels ... longer" is a masterpiece of deadpan delivery
1:04:11 timestamp
He said something about psychological torture as well. And at one point on of the Ghosts learns of the fourth wall. I mean, it all adds up so neatly now!
As someone who is not american, this story was more or less an example of how this narrative that the USA can do nothing wrong according to some people has affected real American foreign policy and regular politics. I found it pretty good considering the story is never about justice, it is about showing which country has the biggest stick. The US does and has in the past, and therefore justice to these people is what is best for the US. You can see it in the true ending, bowman basically admits that the USA will use all the info they can and not give a shit about all the suffering that it all caused. When it's all over, they'll just decide to move on and "stop the bad guys" again if they need to.
I would say that the example of this in real life is the seal who basically committed war crimes, but he "is a good American boy" according to some in the USA and they supported the decision that he be pardoned. This narrative does not work for all people in some cases if it is about their country because the narrative basically shows who in a society thinks power is justice and who thinks it is about what is right. It basically deals with the idea of american exceptionalism according to me and how people respond to that idea.
However, I will freely admit that all this is simply my personal viewpoint.
I'm American, gotta agree our government is pretty much evil and has been for fucking years. As is our military and police force in general really.
@@AbstractTraitorHero The terrorists won didn't they? Our politicians sure didn't let that disaster go to waste.
Wow I completely forgot that case with the seal happened! It is pretty disgusting and this game feels like an echo of all of that.
@@AbstractTraitorHero Our goverment is shit but as a people we're great. I always say that.
If you're referring to Eddie Gallgaher, he got pardoned because we have elected the most gullible president alive. I don't think even the most callous earlier Republican Presidents like Reagan woulda let him get off free. Hell, even if you don't give a rip about innocent Iraqis / Afghanis and think they're all terrorists, he tried to run over a US Navy guard with his car! A fellowserviceman! Sigh. But guys like Gallagher and Clint Lorance get talking heads to go on Fox News talking shows, and that matters more than the actual military, which did a pretty crappy and slow job but DID come around to attempting to punish them before the pardons were handed down. Sigh.
As some poor completionist who has all the trophies in this game I can conclude that Narco Road is in fact the worst garbage I have played in a long, long time.
Seek psychological counselling sir
Noah is one of the few channels that get's me interested in "average" games more than anyone else
check out his videos on call of duty.
Holy crap, Noah can make a compelling case for call of duty, having artistic value.
He frames every game as an adventure on it’s own, which is a wonderful way to look at art in general. I think that plays a big role in that feel - almost every game has unique, appreciable elements to it that we often otherwise just write off.
It’s like a road trip (hello, Noah’s travelogues). Even if the journey is filled with potholes and ends up being “meh” in general, there’s still experiences there worth having and stories worth telling.
@@0uttaS1TE I'm pretty sure the Far Cry franchise is critically acclaimed. If even as a competently made popcorn FPS. And Far Cry 2 has got quite a lot of artistic merits.
Whitelight
That’s what I love about Noah. He always seeks for meaning even from the failures of gaming
"Wildlands is only truly good when you don't think about it" should be the back of the box quote
When you didn't even get the notification but see the vid was uploaded 44 secs ago... It's like the universe knew I needed this.
Don't worry, you'll get a notification 25 minutes after you've finished the video.
*4 Years Later*
RUclips Recommendations: "OH BOY! YOU'RE NOT GONNA WANT TO MISS OUT ON THIS!"
`"viewing a soldiers job as being more about restraint than the exercise of power is the attitude you'd have to have to actually represent a pro military narrative`"
beautiful
Finally, a Noah video on a game I DON'T want to play
fiddle I played the whole time thinking back to the old days, particularly GR2 when you had missions like defending a medical base getting overrun by North Koreans with mass infantry charges and armor, just thinking, imagine if there were platoons patrolling around with tanks and you had to actually think and avoid fights 4 guys couldn’t handle. An actual military game set in an open world, but he’s right, this is some loony militiaman’s fantasy, the wrong type of military game from gameplay to story. God there’s so many ways you can criticize this crap...
Would love to see an analysis of Breakpoint after all is said and done with its dlc and support, actually I would love to see you do a 3 hour social and critical analysis of Untitled Goose Game. Keep up the good work.
@Eriko. Oy I still remember Jim Sterling just starting his review with the jank car physics underscored by Mr. Booze.
Breakpoint is really just Wildlands, with the "Gear Score" progression system from The Division/AC:Odyssee tacked onto it. Only notable thing really is how the plot is not about "americans saving a foreign country" but rather something closer to Far Cry as in "player is stuck in a place where the big man controls everything and he is bad". It tries to have a more interesting plot by having the scientist man who was well meaning and got ripped off by the man who wants the power. It also features a completely fictional land with some light sci-fi added. It's just as cringey as WL probably even worse because the player character becomes an actual actor in the story rather than just Karen's tool and you are laughably one dimensional and "nice". All the while you consistently murder other soldiers who in the end are really just private military contractor working for a megacorp which sounds even less commendable than shooting narcs who knowingly destroy and abuse everything around them.
I remember seeing an article once about the job of a consultant who worked for Ubi with the goal of reviewing how their games portray things and people and tells them whether it's authentic or offensive and reductive in some way. Breakpoint is really Wildands after this consultant came in.
If the year was 2007, Breakpoint would've been set in the middle east against some type of ISIS.
Is Breakpoint any good? I heard Breakpoint and Wildlands were less than stellar, but I still have a free redemption code for it. I'll probably use the code, but what are the pros and cons? Any MTX or lootbox, or booster packs?
@@flamebrindger3984 whilst graphics are better the world doesn't feel as immersive as Wildlands. You can now turn off gear score so that it's like Wildlands. Story, imo, is worse
@@flamebrindger3984 Mechanically, Breakpoint is identical to Wildlands, with the exception of the core design now being structured around a single character.
Seeing as the last game's geopolitical tone rankled some folks, we now have a generic paean against the automation and industrialization of warfare. The game does try and say a few things about emergent AI and the human biases we just can't extricate out of automated threat detection algos, but it only skirts the surface.
Like a lot of Clancy properties, things come down to a single guy seizing the means to express a fundamentally broken view of the world, and Ubisoft had the weird idea of making one of Wildlands' former Ghost Recon buddies flip their lid. The end result is a version of Nomad that's nice and inoffensive and a setup that ditches problematic elements like Karen Bowman's "fuck it, we're justified" approach to things - and replaces it with painfully obvious morals.
"Don't take military tech too far" is shoved in your face over and over. "Soldiers shouldn't view themselves as needing a conflict to justify their existence" is another one.
It does help Nomad's character to an extent, but all it really does is put them in position as a well-balanced operative that can do truly horrible crap if it serves the immediate tactics while still having enough sense to want to protect Auroa's Homesteaders. That's in opposition to Walker's "Fuck it. They won't give us a war? We'll give 'em one." approach.
It also paints the Tech sector as a weird cabal of bliss-brains that won't think twice about designing rights-violating and democracy-threatening systems if they have the vaguest hope of being able to constrain them to their own little utopias. Considering, Breakpoint also has something to say about self-determinism on the national scale, and skirts the same grounds as Neal Stephenson's Post-Cyberpunk content.
The word 'Narcostate' being uttered while my mouth was full of tea was considerably perilous.
rule britannia amirite
@@TheWoodstock2009 Quite
They totally used to exist though. You could make an argument for Panama and Colombia in the ‘80s were narcostates. The US had a hand in making them like that, but they were.
@@timcosgrove707 Mexico
The aggressive misanthropy is one reason I've started to find so much modern military fiction so difficult to read. I used to read a lot of military fiction and military science fiction back in the 1990s, despite being a leftist and while I'd often roll my eyes at elements of it it was never as brutally unreadable as it's got since the nominal end of the war on terror.
Same here!
It's the typical thing that american media wants to be "dark, gripping, and shocking" like "The Dark Night" "24" "House of Cards" It's the reason why I just can't consume anything american anymore, it's all either dark gritty trash or it's some unfunny sitcom trash.
@@Da_maul Pretty reductive, but...sure. I can't say there isn't lots of American media like that and it makes no difference to me what cultures you consume media from. Yet I don't think these kinds of media are any less common in other countries other than America having a much higher body of military-oriented material. Obsession with darkness and cheap comedy are fairly universal human traits.
@@fraundakelmbrilpondaprost90 Right but the soul of it in america is often the most shallow or rehashed way it could possibly be done. It feels like if you've seen Seinfeld you've seen every american sitcom, it feels like every "serious dark show" is always the exact same, with a sociopath protagonist that acts in antisocial ways and is tormented but never as a direct consequence of his antisocial behavior, Jack Bauer and Kevin Spacey's character from House of Cards, that and the plots are very rarely interesting.
I will say that I was somewhat reductionist, there's some good shows that've come out like Psyche and Firefly, but those are the exception and not the rule.
@@Da_maul I mean, only cornballs of the highest measure watch and enjoy sitcoms anyway, lol. Plenty of good American comedy outside of that tacky subgenre. And I do take the same issue with a lot of those dramas you bring up, but Breaking Bad, probably the most widely-acclaimed of the bunch, subverts that by making the protagonist's suffering a direct product of his own terrible choices and ethos. Most others are just playing catch-up.
BoJack Horseman does a good job of taking these kinds of ugly traits of American media and interrogating them. It took me a few episodes to enjoy, but I'd recommend it.
As a latin american, that story feels so tiring. I grew up in the 90s watching movies were hollywood actions stars like Chuck Norris """liberated""" poor south americans from eeeeevil dictators/cartels every other week.
So insulting. Especially taking into acount the real history of US intervention in southamerica.
@Le Tigidou I mean, I and everyone I knew usualy talked about it quite a lot (and I may have been like 10-12 yo, btw). My country had not that long ago came out of a dictatorship sponsored by the CIA, so it wasn´t like some obscure hot take that a social studies major spat out on twitter. It read like blatant probaganda to us, at the best of times. Fun explosions and fight scenes, awful messaging, plots and characters.
Think of the Chinese actions movies that have been making the rounds, and how everyone calls them propagandistic. They didn´t need to wait a couple of decades to call out what it´s planly obvious.
@Le Tigidou Hey, here's a fun exercise for you: look up how the CIA used former Nazi and "Butcher of Lyon" Klaus Barbie in Latin America and decide if it's *really* "cancel culture" that made the American saviour offensive.
Honestly, what on earth are you on about? The US's ruthless projections of power have caused outrage since the Mexican-American War
at the very least. It's history. Nobody gives a shit if it annoys you when people bring it up.
@Le Tigidou Your not understanding that "outrage culture" doesn't exist and the People who are angry about these things always existed you just couldn't hear them. Now that they have a platform they can share their thoughts so for you who would never encounter them it seems random.
TLDR: Offensive shit was always offensive, its just now you can hear the voices who couldn't speak before.
@Le Tigidou It's more the fact that information is readily available and spread. The 80's and 90's didn't have the ease of access we have with handheld phones and such. People are getting offended and outraged more frequently because people can see different sides of things much easier. It was much easier to control people and keep them complicit back when information just came from the news on television. There's very obviously going to be situations where it's not as justified (cancel culture over a tweet released over a decade ago) but I don't think a Latin American complaining about the US glorifying their operations in Latin America which harmed many different areas of it intensely is unjustified or to be labeled as "Outrage Culture". That's a real world problem that affected millions, the way you speak seems to dismiss that.
Add a 00:00 timestamp in the description so that RUclips's auto segmenting algorithm will pick up your timestamps and insert them into the video timeline.
Noah will notice in 2 years give him time
Was that recently added? I noticed it on a few videos from other creators, and I didn't remember them being there before.
@@Herodegon yeah it's a pretty new feature
I really enjoyed the gameplay but I never got around to finish the story because it's a fucking joke and as a Latin American I couldn't take this shit even slightly seriously. Bolivians speaking like Mexicans with Mexican accents and expressions, mixed in with some Argentinian slang that isn't used outside my country besides Uruguay (I'm talking about the rebels and the Bolivian citizens, not the narcos), the USA going after a cartel, as if they weren't the ones supporting them lmaoo. I really enjoyed being tacticool and getting wrecked by the Predator, but it makes me wonder how the same company that produced titles such as Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is the same that put out this thing.
Chaos Theory was one of the last few good instances of what Ubisoft Montreal's output used to be, but it was still rooted in the same basic problems.
To be fair, a lot of what you've mentioned (Bolivians being cartoony versions of themselves) is typical of Ubisoft's Tom Clancy license - and of Tom Clancy properties in and of themselves. "The Sum of All Fears" is submarine porn when its source novel is dissected, with the movie needing to flesh out its characters to turn a basic scaffolding placed to hold up tactical and engineering-related technicalities that serve as plot points. As Noah said, Clancy's basically a military tech-focused J.R.R. Tolkien analogue - the one difference being that Tolkien could still assemble characters, events and motivations in ways that wouldn't fall flat.
Clancy assumes that you're absolutely enthralled by the idea of a Comanche 'copter being pitted against a SWAT-issue B212. Most gamers aren't, seeing as technical specifics aren't related to gameplay characteristics, so Ubisoft has to leverage Manichean characters, and knows quite well how the game's target demographic likes black-and-white justice. You're up against Bad Evil Men, and you're playing as a guy who's extremely qualified at ending lives, but whose sociopolitical position paints him as the Good Guy. Ergo, extreme measures à la Ghost Recon or Karen Bowman's ethos are excused.
So Ubisoft's at least tried something, but all it does is hand you a power trip. Wildlands and Breakpoint have horrible UI designs, both maps are a chore to traverse, and the entire gameplay loop assumes that self-serving ballistic precision is enough to keep you going for dozens of hours.
I will say, that Santa Blanca is a Mexican Cartel that moved into Bolivia, that's why they speak Mexican, they do explain that
@@derrickdill7615 It makes sense in-context, yes, but it still strikes me as one of Wildlands' scriptwriters realizing that leveraging Mexican narco-culture to the extreme would save them the trouble of paying more than lip service to Bolivia's more specific Latin variations.
Look at it this way and things do make a bit more sense. Toss in some pan flutes and the occasional traditional dress-flaunting NPC, slather that in Reggaeton and Narco-Folk music, and you're good to go.
They did do their research but yeah the Mexican accents among the Bolivians stand out a mile and their one Argentine character from los Extranjeros did not have an Argentine accent. Now some Rioplatenese slang might be plausible in Bolivia due to the influence of Argentina and Buenos Aires in particular but the game was grindy as all hell. The expansion with 'los extranjeros' was decent like where you have to murder informants based on a photo and this involves shooting civilian NPCs is a lot closer to how these things are done, are challenging and also make you question a lot more 'what am I doing here' ?
Also the Predator Mission was really cool and free and super fan service, if there's one positive
rewatching this review, I'm reminded of the part of ghost recon future soldier where an entire special ops team gets murdered by a dirty bomb and the ghost's commander is like "Maybe take a moment to mourn your friends." and the ghosts are like "No sir! We don't need to do that." which was clearly meant to make them look like badasses but to me made them look absolutely psychotic.
Noah's takedown of Cartel Road remains one of my single favorite pieces of content anywhere. I always come back to it when I need a laugh, and it never, ever fails. It's just so funny, and SO good
25:55
AM I RIGHT?!
haha that cracked me up
love the critique of American foreign policy as a basis for the shallow narrative of the game
Happy 4th of July!
My friends and I enjoyed wildlands, but we had to regularly say to ourselves “we’re the ‘good’ guys” to play off how wack the game’s moral compass is. Wild how things can swing from holding a teacher at gunpoint to forgetting to pop your chute and dying to a 5 foot drop.
I could barely believe it when Bowman went all Holier-than-thou on La Gringa, despite the fact that the only reason she was there was that the CIA used her as a fall gal in an operation that went bust.
@@ohauss
Glowies be like that
Me and my friend enjoys the game. We just casually acknowledge that we plays the bad guy. We didn't even think that it's in anyway subtle that we're not the good guy.
I might actually have read that review, back in the day. I remember liking something Polygon wrote around that time, and I did read a lot of Ghost Recon reviews.
As far as the game's weird relationship with the military goes, I'm going to direct people to Jacob Geller's "What does Call of Duty believe in?", a sort of spiritual companion piece I feel. American developers, American publisher, explicitly about the US military... and the game has a similar ambivalence, not as strongly, admittedly, and more tempered by justification and philosophizing, a more classically pro-military narrative... and yet, one of the key points of the video is that the game's message is not so much "the ends justify the means" or that America is right, but rather "the means are always justified when done by the right people", tacitly meaning soldiers who should be allowed to operate without oversight. And of course, the video also touches on the soldiers who took that no-limits lone-wolf no-morals operative stance to heart, the militia man who for some reason didn't fail out of the psyche evaluation. The only conclusion I can come to is that the complete lack of restraint is unironically appealing to the American psyche, or at least a portion of it. Which probably explains why Ubisoft felt comfortable going so over-the-top in their own game. Half the people playing would see it as parody, half would take it at face value, and the third half (because what matter is mathematical logic?) wouldn't think about it at all, in favor of the goofy gameplay. It's a win-win.
ruclips.net/video/FtCV421T52s/видео.html
Also, worth a mention: In Luiseno (a southern California group) culture, ghosts are considered dangerous because "they have all the power they had in life, but none of the restraints". That is, the dead can still affect the world, but lack any of the social or moral constraints to not behave as petulant, aggressive, vindictive or cruel as their whims take them. Which is of course why the dead are shooed along to the rest of the afterlife as quickly as possible. It seems, unintentionally, an appropriate name for this game's group of operatives.
This is how I'm celebrating 4th of July while locked up from Covid.
*party-blower noise*
@ What you're saying holds true in the multiplayer, a contextless limbo of anonymous soldiers shooting at each other in inexplicably arena-like city blocks. That argument doesn't work in the campaign which has a strong emphasis on a cinematically presented narrative which deals with torture, chemical weapons, acceptable use of force, war crimes, geopolitics, etc.
The devs could have made the singleplayer component not have a story, or have an incredibly basic story where the bad guys are mindless clones who the good guys can shoot without moral qualms. Instead the game involves real world militaries, debates about the use of chemical weapons, torture (including waterboarding), terror attacks,
and so on. There's a mission where you carry out a no-knock raid on a civilian dwelling. You can't just mindlessly include all of these elements and not expect people to take deeper messaging from it. The campaign invites that kind of criticism by being intentionally gritty and "ripped from the headlines" edgy. The devs chose to put political issues in their game.
I loved what you had to say about justice, power, and institutions in America, and its portrayal in a game i had less than no interest in. Bravo Noah
The most unrealistic part about this game is that if a drug lord took over a south American country that the CIA would want to get rid of them
If you want to try a game which attempts to address war crimes in games, try out ARMA 3’s Laws of War DLC
@antisocialite Well, both were made in Europe.
Well, if you want war crimes as a main part of the game, there's always Spec Ops: The Line.
This is such a 100% read on Ubisoft as an entity in this era of the company (which I believe they are about to leave behind).
On the one hand, they do not seem to have writers. Seriously. It seems like people with no writing background or expertise have come up with characters, situations, and (sometimes) storylines, and they never considered they might not say what they think they say - or say anything at all.
On the other hand, I can't help but see it like this: I am so impressed by how much time, effort, and money Ubisoft are prepared to spend to make something so stupid so monumental.
It's insane.
38:17
-caveira
-objective completely barricaded
-everyone anchoring
yep, it's copper time
Far Cry 3 sandbox + Ubisoft politics-but-not-really + US Military gun-wank = profits
Coming off of FC 5, this game looks like it was actually made by adults in comparison. That’s not a compliment to Wildlands necessarily.
*Insert Snot-Related Joke*
@@0uttaS1TE Love me some good gun porn in a game. Hell, even fucking Last of Us Dos had some Metro-inspired gun wankery. On the plus side, we get a wide array of interesting implements instead of the same early 2000’s mp5, m16, spas 12, magnum, etc loadout in every shooter.
On the downside, it’s inspired a new generation of insipid gun pedants who pop a stiffy any time they get to correct someone saying “silencer” instead of suppressor and “clip” instead of magazine. Hate that shit.
Since the last of Us vid covered both games and this is the third game covered in the last few days...You could say "And baby makes three."
So my nomad IS saying "baby makes three" I was always lost cause I'm over here like. " why is she saying baby?"
@@yuzuichikawa Nomad is fucked in the head and likes to pretend she's shooting babies
@@Maksie0 I was always so confused lol.
I remember hearing "baby makes five," which is apparently the title of a sitcom from the 80s, lol.
@@SaddenedSoul o: so nomads been making references this whole time?
Your Dude McBro voice at 26:00 was almost too perfect.
Best "keep politics out of my video games" take i ever heard
Actually i think the only good take i've seen regarding this subject
I think your thoughts on it 'saying the quiet part loud' indicates its actual politics, or at least the political environment in which it was created. That sort of cynical take is increasingly common: the "We are not good guys because there are no good guys" mentality. It posits that justice doesn't exist, all motivations are selfish, therefore selfish and amoral acts are justified. And I do think you hit at a core tenet of fascism when you mentioned how the game substitutes power for justice. It's still pro-military, it's just discarding the disguise that used to go along with that....
I really appreciate how you organized this essay, starting off by telling us that you were looking forward to playing the game again to get us intrigued, then getting the obvious negatives out of the way (just another Ubi sandbox, and the ridiculous attempt to stay apolitical) so that you could then spend the bulk of the essay talking about the positives uninterrupted. Great work as always.
The “apolitical” war shooter always needed a serious critique. I think if we seriously wanted an apolitical shooter, we’d only be left with sci-fi or fantasy games free from most geopolitical issues.
On such large scale we just gloss over the inherent politics of games such as Ghost Recon, where you get do mass killing against The Terrorists (no reason why the average npc is bad, just go along with the generalization that they are evil) without ever reflecting on the act of killing someone. Even Modern Warfare 2019 brought this into question while simultaneously offering a campaign where you kill The Russians and liberate the Kurds from dictatorship. Shooters were originally designed for gameplay in abstract levels, but evolved into the modern warfare genre where the two concepts put together should create skepticism.
Cod modern warfare made me realise this, Can a game present a load of soldiers, breaking into a suburban home, shooting first asking questions later as "the best?" and then be apolitical? I thought last of us 2 giving enemies names really haunted me, I don't remember a single gang member I killed in wildlands, I remember dana, who I shot and killed in a school after breaking out of capture.
These modern shooters really need to think about themselves intelligently, in the wake of this BLM push I hope these ideas get better thought about. But Ubisoft is definitely not away from this idea. If you wanna run from politics, don't set your game in the real world, make up a fake country, make up a fake universe and time period. But don't have your GI joe commando's shooting up cheap suburban houses and then say "good job"
@Abby Grace Eh but I don't think they ever tried to seem serious, same with cod, they weren't trying to be mature. But once your characters start admitting to war crimes the fun starts to fade if you think about it. The same way I felt with the newest modern warfare being so happy to kill and brand heroes and villains but be 'apolitical'.
I don't think Ghost Recon has ever successfully critiqued its own setting. Any time it did try to handle a political analysis with nuance, it fumbled to deliver any meaningful commentary. To be fair though, few "Triple-AAA" games ever come close to attempting to deliver any particular opinion on the state and ethics of war. The only game I can ever truly remember doing a remarkable job of delivering such a message was "Spec Ops: The Line", but I'm not sure if that was a "Triple-AAA" title or not.
@@Herodegon spec ops is weird to me, as so much of it is good, but it's sort of been talked to death and the way it blames you for a lot you can't control is aggravating on multiple playthrough, if you play it as a normal shooter you get the full message, you go in ready to expirience the horrors of war and you get lectured on why YOU are the problem here
At some point Noah is gonna do a 15 hour review of the Witcher series books included and on that day my life will be complete
id be down for it. I still thought his 4 hour analysis on Red dead wasn't long enough, even in that time he only scratched the surface.
Didn't Joseph Anderson already do that?
@@HarryS77 He will, but Not yet. He has only released one video on the first game (which is about 4 hours and 20 mins give or take). He plans to release two more videos, each on the second and third game of that length. No idea when that will be though.
I sure hope so.
Woah, was not expecting this type of review from Noah. Only a matter of time before we get to the Metal Gear or Witcher games...
Ben Wasserman really want to see him take a stab at Witcher.
Personally, I'd love to see more exploration of older niche 'cult' titles, as he's done with games like Alpha Protocol, Red Faction, Homeworld, Arcanum/Bloodlines, Mafia, etc.
I'm still waiting for a GTA series one
@@hayk3000 He'd probably have to start with 3, since none of the top-down entries really have much thematic quality.
@@benwasserman8223 neither has Doom. I don't think he would skip them considering how mechanically revolutionary and controversial they were. And they're not too long either.
Btw a MGS one would be excellent because I'm planning to finally introduce myself to it this week!
I had so much fun with this playing solo. The "synch shot" is a highly underrated and awesome mechanic.
Yeah. I mean, I don't think I've ever turned my brain off so hard to a game's story that I actually finished. But it was a fun time stalking through the jungle as the world's angriest bush, or playing impromptu RTS with the drone and sync shot, or jumping out of perfectly good aircraft.
@Eriko. Oy Sadly, I don't think we'll get a new game in the style of older ones anytime soon. Or a remake. Doesn't seem to be in Ubisoft's current style. Wouldn't say no though.
Play Ghost Recon: Future Soldier than. You'll enjoy it.
Mr Caldwell-Gervais, you are probably one of the finest critics of current times. In an age of listicles, click farming and focus on dull plot minutiae, you are a breath of clean air.
If I was rich I'd pay you to play Tom Clancy's The Division next. I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts on that one. :O Your video essays are the BEST!
@GiRayne Good point. I want him to play the first one. I just feel like he'll have a ton to say. That's not already in this review here. Also D2 was the worst one. As far as story goes. I liked the first one better, but D2 is technically a better game.
this was unexpectedly timely, and at times real poignant. great work as always, noah.
Omg, another video?! Noah, you're spoiling us and I love it.
Hey Noah, this is going to seem wildly unrelated to Wildlands (because it is). Ever since you mentioned Bone Tomahawk in the Red Dead video, I've been curious as to your thoughts on the portrayal of the cannibal Natives in that film, and the messages the film sends in general. I'd be intrigued by your take given the ruminations you have made on the treatment of Native Americans found both in that same video, and in your Call of Juarez video. I figure it may be more likely to receive a response on your most recent release.
This video itself is a great examination of pseudo-politics in games, and I like the release schedule you've been working on a lot.
As someone who did indeed get all available followers in the Narco Road DLC for the sake of completion, I appreciate your sympathy, Noah.
~18:00 and forward is some of my favorite writing that I've listened to in your videos. I adore how much time you take to contextualize your thoughts the way you do. Thank you!
Never once have I closed the tab, Noah. In fact, I'm here, back for more. You've got the gift. Use it.
Hey Noah, think you could do a franchise retrospective on deus ex or maybe even a look at the spyro series?
In the meantime, everybody should check out Ross's Game Dungeon : Deus Ex
While it's not a full franchise retrospective he has videos out on Deus Ex. It's an old video, and it's more about comparing Duke Nukem to Deus Ex, but it's something.
@@GodlessXVIII I've seen it and liked Ross's vid, but tbh I really want to hear what insight Noah's got to add lol
@@seiban8455 I've seen that one as well. I've binged & rewatched all of Noah's video's. I think I have a problem lol. In all honesty though, I want to see what insight Noah's got on the Deus Ex series specifically, instead of just as a talking point like he did in that video.
@@GigaWh4tt Ah, just making sure
This is probably my favorite video of yours. This is 110% Noah content. Feels like you were having a really good time with this one.
More Noah so soon? Blessed be.
Love your content, dude. You're a breath of fresh air in the scene, and I'm always happy to listen to you speak at length on games I often haven't even played. Please keep it up forever and ever.
Played this in coop with my friends, from the moment we realized the game's story was going to be the "AMERICA FUCK YEAH" style chestbeating, we decided to pretty much skip the cutscenes.
To emphasize how little we knew or cared of the story, we only realized that Bowman (the mission briefer) was a WOMAN 90% trough the game...
After watching this I don't regret it one bit, because what we were left with was a beautiful gigantic playground for chaotic fun, with some more tactical moments if the game's difficulty demanded it.
Would never play this alone, but would recommend the coop especially during these times.
Having heard Noah so politely and fairly critique so many games, it’s a joy to hear him truly unload on the cartel road DLC
did Karen bowman have girl power when she oversaw a cia paramilitary operation in bolivia
8:55 Duken nukem saying: "really respecting women is calling you mom in mother´s day" is the best analogy someone could find.
Been skipping over this one because "Tom Clancy". Came on during autoplay and i gotta say that this was one of my favorite of your videos.
I honestly adore the way your vids are presented with the live action openings and fitting music. Seeing a new upload feels like christmas
I found it interesting that throughout the video, you talked about how Tom Clancy as a video game brand name represents a certain adherence to detail and realism. This was certainly true with the early Tom Clancy titles in the late 90's and even the very, very early 2000's but that very much stopped when Ubisoft released Rainbow Six: Lockdown back in 2005 and hasn't really changed since. Titles like Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 1/2, Rainbow Six: Vegas 1/2, and even Ghost Recon: Future Soldier all wrapped themselves up in some degree of military authenticity but it was skin deep at best and was seldom ever reflected in any mechanical way. When you get to Wildlands, Rainbow Six: Siege, and Breakpoint, the Tom Clancy name doesn't really mean much anymore beyond a vaguely military theme.
With this in mind, I wasn't surprised by Wildlands. I knew that it would be a 80's action movie romp at best and while I agree with your various points about it, I can't say that it impacted me as profoundly. I found it to be a playable Ubisoft style open world shooter that was appealing in the same way fast food can occasionally have some appeal.
41:27 dude straight up drew his silhouette
This game was really fun when I played it during the time that was Snowmageddon but I understand where you’re getting this theme from.
1:05:31
Because, believe it or not, the Team (or Company) that originally made the Driver games was behind the driving mechanics.
The company was bought by Ubisoft some time ago and works and smaller tidbits for bigger Ubisoft games - and in this game it was the Driving.
On an other note:
I bet the development of this game was a mess internally.
There was a team that actually flew to Bolivia and probably made lots of interesting experiences - real-life experiences - locally, trying to get a good picture of the local people and how they go about their lives, what celebrations go on and so forth.
There are loads of little lore-bites in form of the collectibles which actually sound really cool! For example the city in Inca Camina where you kill that Peruvian Lady - that city was actually made up of a crashed airplane! And there was this other lore tid-bit in the same mountainous region explaining how lights were set up by people in the mountains to disorient and blind pilotes so they would crash!
And then there is this total disconnect which is the actual story and gameplay. Half the time I didn't even notice all the mutilated bodies all around - but that's shit the actual cartel in Mexico is up to.
One of the more surprising things to me was that the cult of Santa Muerte is actually real! It seemed so stupid and corny in the game that I never considered the option that it COULD be real!
And the use of social media to impress potentially younger people is also not far fetched - if you grow up poor and you see a way out, a way that seems glamorous and glorious - who whouldn't take that shot?
And so there is all these real-life components, but the team responsible for the story and the gameplay just shit the bed. There must have been such a major disconnect between the teams.
Truly a corporate product with no soul.
I was listening to your analysis on far cry when I saw this notification
Thank you for delving into the oddities of the story themes & pseudo-Americanism the game so thoroughly bungles. I really liked your “say quietly” point, we’ll taken.
I think if you start the timestamps from 0:00, RUclips will display the video's 'chapters' on the timeline. I find this feature super useful, certainly the only good thing RUclips has done to its platform in years, if you want to consider it!
I enjoy your videos so much. All the extra knowdledge and interesting viewpoints you provide come together for a truly enriching viewing experience. Great job!
I think about the phrase 'snake fuckingly mean' on an alarming basis
Noah is hands down my favorite games critic on youtube. Always an interesting listen
God man, just love your reviews. Wish more people would give this much attention and care to details in games as you have been! Keep up the fine work, and stay safe mate!
Your videos give me hope for a better tomorrow. Thank you mate, keep going at it!
You are such an exceptional RUclipsr! Love every one of your videos! They’re such full of details and precise analyses!
'... use as many words as I like, and trust you to close the tab when that gets irritating.'
Aw man, can I use that? I've just written 11,000 words on Metro Exodus, I think that may be too many words...
you'll love the beauty of the world in assassins creed origins and odyssey
One of the things I found funny about the plot is the idea that the United States had to send in spec ops to take down a country taken over by a drug cartel so that no one would ever know that the U.S. was there as if the U.S. cares enough about public opinion to not want to get caught even though there are ample real world examples of the U.S. doing just that, ala Nicaragua, Afghanistan, etc.
2 Videos from Noah in 1 week is absolutely glorious
Dude, this stuff is superb. I usually can't sit through the usual hour long gaming dissections because the people making them can't string together a thought, take themselves way too seriously, or have horrific/shallow politics. I've watched like a few hours of your recent stuff over the past few days and it's really a cut above in the level of thought put into it. Keep it up.
Thanks for the video Noah.
But I can’t be satisfied till you make a METAL GEAR breakdown
Geez Noah it's 3 am where I live, now I'll HAVE to watch it
Loving this faster release schedule Noah. :)
59:38 is just priceless!
Get into a monster truck. Instantly crash it into a pole.
How'd that car get there in the first place if the pole is right behind it and there's a cliff in front?
Doesn't matter. Just. Drive. Off. The. Cliff.
As a Peruvian, I have to say its pretty annoying that Bolivia (and other latin american countries) always gets the short end of the stick. They're only involved in cocaine or poverty and whenever there is a cartel they're always portrayed in a cartooney evil kind of way.
Proud Arizona native here. In the 27th minute you captured the subtle beauty of my homeland in a way that made me deeply wistful. Im not gonna watch this in one sitting (hopefully), but it brings warmth to a weary heart. Thank you for your hard work Mr. Caldwell-Gervais. Thank you very much.
Just found your channel. You sir have a way with words. I have enjoyed every minute of what likely amounts the the better part complete revolution of the earth at this point. Cheers.
Oh man getting excited for what the third video this month is going to be!
His name is El Invisible, all in spanish. The word just happens to be spelled the same in both languages.
God I love your analyses Noah. Such powerful statements, compelling opinions and revelatory conclusions. Really makes for content that I can universally enjoy regardless of the covered media; I found your road trip videos some of my favorite of yours, even though some of the things you covered were goddamn empty deserts.
I actually really had to think about how I consume your videos because I feel like I wasn't appreciating their journalistic, analytical value enough when I just typed that. I'm a big fan of long-form retrospectives like this; I thoroughly enjoyed a four-hour video on why someone liked Fallout New Vegas, an 8-hour carefully-crafted "brief" retrospective on Morrowind, but I enjoyed them as passive media. When I typed my previous paragraph, though, I thought that it was almost a disservice to how thorough the thematic processing you make is, and how much they resonate with me, emotionally or otherwise. Like, I'm taking this very enjoyable crafted experience you upload, sit through it, only listening and interpreting a third of what you said, and then say "neat." I really have to give you credit in more than just that; sometimes, in more ways than a simple RUclips video ever could, and in ways beyond just what a retrospective or thorough look at a game could be, you make me *think*, and for that I thank you.
Your videos are always engaging and thought provoking.
Love your work Noah so good!
Thanks for the awesome content Noah! Happy Independence day!
I found myself in a similar position as you when playing Assassin´s Creed Origins last month, just swapping beautiful Bolivia for ancient and scenic Egypt. When you have been stuck at home for almost two and a half months it almost feels like a direly needed vacation.
Wildlands really seems like a mixed back if you look at the finished product with all the DLCs added on top of it. That extreme sport one indeed looks simply dreadful.
I enjoyed Wildlands a lot for the joy of taking over places undetected. Owning AC: Black Flag gave me a special outfit in the game also which I dressed everyone up in just for the sense of unit cohesion. But it does not want to play nice with my computer and it's file size of around 150gb+ is just, too hefty for me at present time. Bit disappointed you didn't mention the Metal Gear reference with Sam Whiskers, then again I suppose everyone's already seen that one.
" _There was this other guy, wore a bandana I think._ "
" _I heard he retired._ "
" _Is that so? .... Then it's only, me..._ "
EXACTLY the game I wanted reviewed by PRECISELY this reviewer. Great to see you back.
The snark permeating your words in the Cartel Road segment. That was glorious. Glad you got that game out of your system.
You have the best timing Noah, thanks