The Best Immersion Settings For Ghost Recon Breakpoint

For any new players to Breakpoint, or any more casual players looking for a new way to experience the game, this is the guide for you.

Introduction

I love Ghost Recon Breakpoint, and I find it tragic that most of the players that played this game assumed it to be yet another Ubislop title to add to their growing catalogue of painful mediocrity and anorexic cash cows simply because the default settings achieve a level of default-settings-cancer that is only comparable to the likes of Team Fortress 2. I wrote this guide in the hopes of changing that fact.

Default Settings:

My Settings:

Where to Change Settings

When in game, press escape to bring up the pause menu and select the GHOST EXPERIENCE PARAMETERS menu near the top left of the screen.

This will bring up the Ghost Experience Parameters menu which is the easiest way to tune the game to you liking.

These are the settings I play on which will be explained in detail below.

Gear Level: OFF

This basically makes the game feel less like a tactical shooter and more like an MMORPG. I don't care about grinding weapon stats, especially in a tac FPS. I don't see any reason to ever have this setting on.

Difficulty - Enemies: Extreme

In my experience, the AI in this game is laughably oblivious on any difficulty lower than Extreme, trivializing the game to the point that it’s not fun anymore. Even if you find yourself dying a lot on the highest AI difficulty, I would actually change some other settings listed below before I would touch the AI difficulty.

Difficulty - Tactical: Elite/Custom

In my opinion, the elite preset is the best preset for realism and immersion minus two specific settings: Main Weapon Slots and Ammo Loss on Reload. Personally I like having two main weapon slots so that I can carry an AR and a Sniper, but this is just personal preference. I also have ammo loss on reload turned off. If you’re like me and have a primal urge to reload your gun every time you’re missing one round in the clip, I recommend you do the same or find yourself running out of ammo a LOT. Personally, I found it to be more annoying than immersive.

Interface: Custom

Strap in, this one is a long one. Now the main selling point of Breakpoint is immersion. At its highs, Breakpoint can get your blood pumping like no other singleplayer TacFPS on the market, but that’s only if you tune it perfectly. Your version of perfect may differ from mine, but I’d like to think that a universal rule of thumb is that the less HUD clutter there is on the screen, the more immersive the game feels to walk around in. These are my settings, though feel free to change them to your liking.

Setting	Reason
Subtitles: Off	Don’t like em, don’t need em. Trust me, if you miss a large chunk of what someone says, it’s not that big of a deal.
Hints: Never	Feel free to leave them on as you’re starting out, but once you get to a certain point in the game, it will just be annoying reminders for things you already know. You should plan to eventually turn them off.
Hud Preset: Custom Hud Size: Small	The less screen real estate the hud takes up the better
Crosshair: Never	I might turn it on if I’m using the mounted gun on a vehicle but otherwise I never play with a crosshair.
Hit market: Never	There's a sound cue for hits and headshots, I never felt the need to turn this on.
Stamina: Dynamic	You’ll probably want to leave this one on, the game is really frustrating if you can't tell how tired your character is, especially since you spend a lot of time running around. The stamina bar is also pretty minimal which is a plus.
Weapon and Item Display: Never	Start with it on to get a basic idea of your ammo count for each gun, but once you play with this off for long enough, you’ll learn to keep a mental count of your mags and rounds left which adds a lot to immersion.
Tool Information: Never	Same Idea as Weapon and Item Display except it’s even easier to keep track of.
Class Technique: Dynamic	Varies from class to class. Some classes basically require you to have this setting on to monitor your cooldown while others you can get away with having it off.
Mission Reminder: Never	Just press M.
Detection Gauge: None	I recommend starting with this set to Dynamic, as it will teach you some of the fundamentals of the game like taking cover from drones and what enemies can and can’t see, but I would only leave it on with the intention of getting good enough to eventually turn it off.
Warning Messages: None	You figure out all the warning messages pretty fast by actually paying attention to the game. (IE, instead of waiting for the big red block telling you reinforcements have been called you can just listen to the enemies call for reinforcements over the radio.)
3D Markers - Loot: None	Screen clutter, mostly BS and not helpful.
Interaction Shader: Dynamic	It’s basically the good version of 3D Markers for loot, it lets you know what’s lootable without vomiting a bunch of random icons all over your screen.
Loot Notification: Dynamic	Look, I’m not THAT hardcore that I don't even wanna know what I got from the boxes I just looted. Keep it on.
XP Module: Never	Hud clutter, pretty much useless.
HUD Markers - Enemies: Off	TURNING THIS OFF IS THE MOST IMPORTANT SETTING IN THE GAME. The difference between having this turned on and having this turned off is the difference between playing a point and click adventure game, and playing the tactical shooter that you actually paid for. Turning this setting on effectively gives you wallhacks. Paired with the Epsilon class ability to reveal and tag enemies through walls, this setting singlehandedly trivializes the game to such a level that only a mentally impaired chimpanzee (or a video game journalist) could find this game interesting. All that being said though, I actually recommend leaving this setting on Dynamic while you’re first starting out with the game so that you can grasp the fundamentals of recon and learn more about enemy patterns, formations, and behavior. The moment you feel like you can turn this setting off is the moment you’ve completed the tutorial.
HUD Markers -Allies: Off	Screen clutter, you’ll quickly learn how to tell enemies and allies apart just by observing them.
HUD Markers -Teammates: Dynamic	I recommend keeping this on as I found myself losing my teammate a lot in multiplayer.
HUD Markers -Objectives: Dynamic	On a first playthrough when you don't know what objects are intractable or not, keeping this on is pretty much necessary. You can definitely get good enough to turn it off, but in my opinion, that time investment is best spent elsewhere.
HUD Markers - Communication: Dynamic	Annoying, but also essential in multiplayer if you wanna coordinate literally anything.
HUD Markers -Alerts: Off	Screen clutter. Slightly helpful but not worth it, especially since it’s totally immersion breaking.
HUD Markers -Locations: Off	Screen Clutter, totally pointless and annoying, pretty much zero upside to turning on, even to the casual player.
Minimap: Off	Possibly the single most immersion breaking feature of modern AAA games is minimaps. Every game that gives you one is a game where you probably spent more time looking at lines and arrows in the corner of your screen than actually taking in the scenery you’re actually walking through. Absolutely zero reason to have it on, just press M to bring up the map when you need it.
Every other map setting: Never/None	Same reason as above, The game is just more fun if you actually take it in instead of just using ESP and reacting to alerts.
Notifications: Dynamic	The only reason I would ever turn this off is if I was recording footage for a video and turned off everything. The game is probably borderline unplayable without this on. (I say probably because I’ve never even bothered turning it off in Breakpoint, however it was unplayable in Wildlands.)
Current Location: Never	Screen Clutter, totally pointless.
Inputs: All off except on foot.	I would start with these on to learn the controls, but these are pretty easy to turn off very early into the game. As for on foot, that one is personal preference, but I like it for climbing mountains and knowing what walls I can scale.
Everything else:???	I don’t ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ know, I don’t play PVP. Just do whatever.

Social and Bivouacs: Restricted/Custom

This one depends on how much free time you have on your hands, if you enjoy walking longer distances and soaking in the world I would play with this off, but if you have limited time, setting Garage at Bivouacs to All will cut down on a lot of travel time at the cost of immersion.

Exploration mode: Not Guided

The game specifically states this is the way Breakpoint is meant to be played. This setting basically means no yellow tape, no glowing arrows on the map, they just give you a description of the location or a picture plus a general area. It’s up to you to track down the exact location. It adds a layer of recon and exploration to the game, and I’ve never once found it so frustratingly hard to find something that I gave up. This setting is a must for immersion.

Mods

If you’re someone who thinks that installing mods to fix problems that should’ve been fixed by the devs makes a game bad, I would probably have to agree with you.

However, I also don’t care.

With that out of the way, here’s two and a half mods that I recommend for the best Breakpoint experience.

First Person View[www.nexusmods.com]
This mod transforms Breakpoint from a third person shooter to a first person shooter. While this mod definitely has its fair share of minor visual bugs, I still consider it absolutely essential for crafting the most immersive experience possible. I don’t think I would ever play this game without this mod, though just make sure to have a convenient bind to switch from first person to third person. You’ll probably also want to install the First Person DoF Blur Removal mod.[www.nexusmods.com] I installed it through ReShade which I also used to make the nights in this game a lot darker and most of the environment look better.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint Spartan Mod[www.nexusmods.com]
At some point you’re gonna reach a point where even on the hardest settings, the game is still too easy and the AI are still too dumb. That’s where this mod comes in. I don’t recommend installing it until you have a solid grasp of the game, but just keep it in mind as an option.

Gallery

A collection of screenshots from the game using my settings and using default settings for comparison.

Default Settings:

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My Settings:

[Nicky]

The boxes under it are settings I believe

[Low Blow]

Hey man, great write up. Is there a surefire way to check that that spartan mod is actually working correctly in game? In cheat engine do you just check the top box next to spartan mod or do you also have to check all the boxes underneath it?

[MISISKO]

nice screes wow!

[JesusChristIsLord]

Hey man, as soon as I bought this game I noticed your post. I followed exactly everything twice actually. I knew something was off about the game whenever I see something that is related to immersion. I launched my first ever playthrough with this on, and still playing have 50 hours as of now. I love it man, with mods like spartan mod its even better + reshade. Thank you brother, have fun aswell.

[Nicky]

Hope you like it man

[THE_RaBiD_CanuK]

Your guide convinced me to buy the game - thanks!

[Nexxus]

I could be wrong but I think the exploration mode settings have been removed?

[ChequeMate]

All good points but I would say keep stamina consumption to standard, Nomad is not some 500 pound man who can't run for 10 feet without panting like a dog. Also turning on ammo loss on reload, makes sense you simply can't throw out magazines on a whim without losing the bullets.

[Nicky]

@Sark Malark IME when I did it it breaks a lot of the immersion to be in a discord call, but I know for a fact you can play multiplayer with mods and for the first person mod they don't even need to have it installed.

[Thicc Wine]

Another slight immersion breaker is the hit marker sound, if you go to audio and turn UI Volume to 0 it removes that weird hit sound when you shoot someone