Out of the Box
Out of the box, Black Thorn comes with the game CD, a detailed 73-page manual,
and a Ghost Recon preview CD.
The huge but compact manual is the culmination of all the info provided in the previous
RS/UO/COE manuals, along with additional content for Black Thorn. It is well-written
and comprehensive, and includes a helpful walkthrough for the first mission for R6 newbies.
"The Making of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon" CD is a great bonus that adds value to
your Black Thorn purchase. Even if you already own Ghost Recon, this exclusive CD has
development team video interviews, concept art, and exclusive tips and tactics for GR.
I thought the video interviews were the best part, and it was really cool to see and
hear the faces and voices behind GR.
Setup
Like COE, Black Thorn is a stand-alone product, meaning you don't need the original Rogue Spear installed.
I used Windows 98SE as the OS for each computer I installed Black Thorn on.
I installed Black Thorn flawlessly as both a stand-alone
fresh install on a P4 1.7GHz/ 512MB/ GeForce 3/ SB Audigy, and as a mod on a
Pentium III 700MHz/ 256MB/ Voodoo 5/ SB Live! system that had RS/UO/COE already installed.
The Black Thorn CD comes with the v2.60 RS engine, which is an upgrade from the Urban Ops
v2.52 engine. The executable was mainly modified for the new multiplayer Lone Wolf mode.
However, Ubi Soft has also added a team kit restriction option, Ubi.com support, and
a few minor bugs fixes.
Ubi Soft had already released a
v2.61 patch just after Black Thorn hit store shelves. I applied the v2.61 patch on both
computers and ran Black Thorn with no problems. (I have heard several people in the official
Black Thorn forums had troubles with this patch, so check this post in RS Retreat's
forums
for some help.)
Ubi.com multiplayer software can also be installed if you want. If you don't chose to
install Ubi.com during the initial installation, you will have the option to install it
later from either the CD-ROM or the Internet when you click on Multiplayer in the Main Menu.
Black Thorn's Story
I find it funny how several game reviewers have complained that previous R6 expansion packs like Eagle Watch, UO, and COE
did not have a story to tie all the missions together. Come on, not every one of Team RAINBOW's missions needs to be part of
a series of sinister attacks planned by a diabolical mastermind a la the original R6 and RS. It is good to show that
RAINBOW is called in for unrelated "routine" bread-and-butter operations too.
(Well, I should clarify that RAINBOW's "routine"
operations tend to all be extremely high-stakes missions that an individual country's
CT team cannot handle. RAINBOW is called in when the best-of-the-best is needed to prevent
earth-shattering consequences.)
Anyways, now that BT has addressed this complaint with an overall story arc linking the nine
single player campaign missions, reviewers are complaining the
story is "insignificant." Sheesh.
So is Black Thorn's story that bad? Not really. With the bio-terrorism angle already done
in R6, and the rogue nuke plot done in RS, the relatively new plot device of the
destruction of Team RAINBOW is as good a story idea as any. (This idea even was
explored in the R6 novel.)
It is obvious that the original intention behind Black Thorn is to have players
re-enact historical counter-terrorist (CT) operations. This is an interesting concept, but
how do you wrap a plausible story around this? I was originally concerned that the
premise of "copycat terrorists" would lead to a very convoluted story. However, I'm glad to
report that if you actually take the time to read all the intel in the planning phase of the
game, the writers managed to pull off a reasonably logical and well-paced storyline that links
the different missions.
My main gripe with the early Ubi Soft press releases was that the leader of the copycat
tangos was supposed to be an ex-Team RAINBOW member that was kicked out "years" ago for
torturing a prisoner. If you've read the intel briefings in all the previous R6 games
carefully, you would know it was impossible that this copycat terrorist could have joined
Team RAINBOW before the events of the original R6. Without revealing more of Black Thorn's story,
it seems the public relations department must have been using a different script than
what the story writers were actually writing for the game. I'm glad to say that
the above plot point is different so as to maintain the consistency of Team RAINBOW's history
as unveiled throughout the previous games in the series.
(If you are interested in any further details about Rainbow's "history", check out our
"Team RAINBOW Mini-FAQ".)
The missions in Black Thorn take place over a short period of time dated May 26 to
August 24, 2004. This places Black Thorn's events after the missions in COE. The timeline
of the missions is tight, which adds to the game's challenge to prevent too many Team
RAINBOW casualties as operatives do not have much time to recover between missions.
Although story is adequate given the limitations of Black Thorn's copycat concept,
I think there was still room for improvement and development of the story. For some reason,
the name Black Thorn doesn't actually appear in the game itself. I had assumed that
"Black Thorn" referred to either the
name of the terrorist organization or its leader, but the leader is just referred to in-game as
the "Copycat". Also, after five years of so many governments knowing about RAINBOW's
existence, it is surprising that the RAINBOW organization is still such a
big secret and is so fearful of being uncovered by the copycat terrorists. I guess how
RAINBOW handles going public would be a good subject of a full-fledged sequel ...
Another opportunity for improvement was to add new team members to RAINBOW.
RAINBOW's roster seems to have been frozen since Rogue Spear, and it would have been great to
have more new operatives join RAINBOW for Black Thorn. Some fans were hoping that more
characters from the Rainbow Six novel would make it into the game (like I was hoping to see
Julio Vega use the new M60), but with Tom Clancy not
owning RSE anymore, it is highly doubtful that Ubi Soft will get the rights to use any
more of the novel's characters.
