Among the big announcements from Ubisoft at E3 was an upcoming mobile game called Elite Squad based on the popular Tom Clancy franchises that the publisher puts out. Ubisoft doesn’t share much information about the game but it does offer up a little bit of detail to give players some idea of what to expect.
Elite Squad will be an action RPG-type game that offers everything from a solo campaign with a “unique Tom Clancy storyline” to a 5v5 arena-style multiplayer mode that lets players battle it out for supremacy in what sounds like Ubisoft’s version of Team Fortress 2 meets Rainbow Six Siege.
Players will take on the role of the squad leader and be able to choose from characters spanning multiple Tom Clancy games including The Division, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six Siege, with characters like El Suaro from Ghost Recon Wildlands, Sam Fisher from every Splinter Cell game and a collection of other characters from the various series’.
Battles between players will be in real-time for that added challenge and competitive aspect that players just can’t seem to get enough of these days. It also sounds like the game will include maps based on locations in the games from all of the above-mentioned franchises, though just how many there will be is not known and is something that Ubisoft is likely to share at a later date when it’s closer to the game’s launch.
In addition to 5v5 arena-style matches Ubisoft is expanding on the PvP layer of the game with “guild wars” that players will be able to participate in.
Though no detail was given on how exactly these would work, think Clash of Clans which lets you join a clan of other players and battle it out against other clans over a small period of time, incorporating the moves made by all the players from that clan which participate in the battle until there’s a winner.
Players will be able to upgrade their characters and squads to make them even more powerful in battle too, however at this time it’s not clear how deep the upgrade system is going to be. Players may only be able to upgrade a few traits here and there between the characters on the squad as a whole or there may be a more robust upgrade system akin to RPG games that carry a more complex setup for making characters stronger individually.
Ubisoft is calling this an action RPG so perhaps the company has plans to set up squads with skill trees and special attacks and abilities based on the characters chosen.
No mention of the game’s cost may suggest that it will be a free-to-play mobile title built on in-game micro transactions for the revenue model, which many players find can be a little too aggressive if not handled correctly. Players who are interested in the game can already pre-register for Elite Squad over on the game’s official landing page.
In addition to Elite Squad, Ubisoft also announced its Uplay+ subscription service which will be available on Stadia in 2020, as well as Watchdogs: Legion which will launch on multiple platforms on march 6 of 2020 including Stadia.