In a far-reaching interview with us at E3, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint associate producer, Nouredine Abboud spoke at length about designing Breakpoint, what they learnt from Ghost Recon Wildlands, how they absolutely intend to keep the game-world alive, and just why story is as important as player-freedom in an open-world.

"What you said is clearly because you have the experience of Wildlands," says when we ask about educating players on open-world expectations after our own hands-on with it. "We made the decision [that] because we knew how to create the missions for Wildlands we were able to add more variety in the way you play the game. And we really worked on both legs where it's more the story-based elements that are going to prove the story path for a while [whereas] the elements mentioned above; giving the character and players [more open-world] freedom -- I would say that somehow by clearly identifying what works for you: story [or the] extra elements -- I think it's probably clearer for the players to [understand] what’s in store...

"I think you always need to work on end of game mechanics but also enough storytelling elements around it so it makes sense so it feels right and doesn't seem to push in [one direction] -- it's very important because no matter how much work you do on the design side, if you don't make the right storytelling decisions very early, you're going to get stuck either by feeling like you’ve made it too complicated to do, and you're going to lose control of the logic of the world and you're going to, in the end, lose control of the players who might think it's like a mindless playground."

Click here for the full, in-depth Breakpoint developer interview.