Far Cry 2 was a creature of contradiction. It gave us an open world like no other, an equatorial tapestry of shifting palm fronds and brittle grass, sluggish rivers and sweaty towns, sand dunes and cliffsides. With its liquid global lighting, self-propagating fire system and animate vegetation, it never painted the same picture twice.
But beneath the visual stew, it was an oddly colourless and repetitive beast. Closely spaced enemy outposts restaffed themselves the second you strayed out of view, making retracing your steps a chore. Settlements were silent, desolate, and you could only interact with people by fighting them. Cars deteriorated like clockwork, obliging you to swap rides after every clash or undergo the tedium of a first-person repair animation. Main characters struggled to differentiate themselves, voice-actors rattling out lines in a low monotone.
Your captor's name is Vaas, and he's the warlord of this particular corner of the game's tropical island setting. "Have I ever told you about the definition of insanity?" There's a hideous shriek as a nearby thug kicks a bound, weighted prisoner into a watery pit. "Insanity is doing the exact same f**king thing over and over again, expecting s**t to change." You're treated to a few minutes of unnerving soliloquy before you're shoved over the edge yourself, but that's not the last we see of Vaas.
He returns at the end of the demo, with the encampment in ruins following your ferocious getaway attempt - textbook Far Cry action, the player infiltrating, disrupting and (almost) escaping a knot of passive AI troops. As you drag yourself out of blazing helicopter wreckage the nutball grabs your hair and pulls your head back to stare into your eyes. "Have I ever told you about the definition of insanity?" he asks again, serenely. OK, Ubisoft. We see where you're going with this.
Fade to black - and we're back in the room, discussing Far Cry 3's fish out of water sensibilities with producer Dan Hays. "Let's say you've never, ever gotten on a plane, never had the crazy one year off from school, or you've left your job and you decided that you're just going to explore," he says. "If you've never had that experience, that's what we want to capture.
It's an agenda that directly recalls the words of Benjamin Willard, Apocalypse Now's laconic lead, contemplating the shadowy banks of the Lao river. "Never get out of the boat - absolutely goddamn right. Unless you're prepared to go all the way." Francis Ford Coppola's retelling of Heart of Darkness haunts Far Cry 2, and Ubisoft evidently feels that his sweltering meditation on the places where civilized man and barbarian meet is worth a second glance.
Far Cry 3 protagonist Jason Brody, a stranded photojournalist who's mysteriously handy in a firefight, is something of a cipher. While that's to be expected at this stage in development, there's the suspicion that his transparency as a character is deliberate, that Ubisoft wants to minimise the imaginative distance between player and avatar. Hays all but says it out loud. "What's really interesting about Jason, is that Jason gets on this island thinking he can handle things. Jason is you, the player."
7 comments so far...
Waffles2541 on 1 Jul '11 said:
Vaas if definitely a character to watch. His speech in the trailer may have been one of the best things to come out of E3 this year.
FC3 looks like they are trying to blend together the best bits from both FC and FC2 (excluding instincts, i would really like those back). It is set back in a tropical paradise with a lone unlikely hero (who seems a bit too much like Jack Carver), combined with what probably will be an open world experience with a free flowing campaign. It would be awesome if they can pull it off and make not feel so damn repetitive.
Here's hope that they will get rid of quick respawning enemies at checkpoints and remove the stupid slingshot system on enemy cars.
dragonheartbe on 1 Jul '11 said:
looks awesome hope its like far cry instinct and predator i was always hoping for a sequel on that story
Martfish on 1 Jul '11 said:
I bloody love all the Far Cry games and while there might be flaws i never really understood the Carver hate that so many people seem to have. I like his 'reluctant hero' schtick. Playing through Far cry 2 again for a bit of Cheevo whorage.LOVE IT!!!
Spiderless on 2 Jul '11 said:
"Insanity is doing the exact same f**king thing over and over again, expecting s**t to change."
I'd just like to point out that that line is based on (or ripped-off (but thats unlikely)) the good ol' Einstein quote "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Useless trivia points for me!
On topic I'm definitely looking forward to this!
OXM ETboy on 2 Jul '11 said:
Hmmm, I'd completely missed that. An interesting additional facet.
Jensonjet on 3 Jul '11 said:
FarCry 2 was an excellent game with an unforgiveable problem that will ensure I never touch a future sequel unless I'm sure the problem that destroyed the game is eradicated!
The problem I'm talking about is the movement control. I've gone into detail about this in the past, but simply put the acceleration of the movement of looking around (right pad stick) was set to high. At the sensitivity I play all shooters this meant at the point that viewing increases speed with the increased movement of the right pad stick the movement accelerated to too high a speed.
Turning down the sensivity to counteract the high acceleration meant the small stick movements used to perfect an aim was too slow. In the end the uncomfortable and unnatural viewing, which is completely unique to FarCry 2 (I've never had an issue with this in any of the other 30 or more first-person shooters I've played) meant I couldn't bear to play the game.
The problem could easily have been resolved with an independent adjustment for the viewing acceleration, or at worst if the developers had just copied any other game!!!
The infinite respawning road blocks, although annoying were very easily, if not slighly inconviently corrected. I played all the missions on the hardest difficulty, as I would any shooter. But unlike any other shooter, after a mission I changed the difficulty to the lowest so that when I travelled around and through road blocks they didn't cause a problem and were far less annoying.
Fortunately the gaming industry is slowly learning that infinite respawns are detested by gamers, not to mention being utterly unrealistic (unless perhaps the genre was science fiction and the technology could be explained within the realms of the science within the game's universe, which it never is!).
Of course, changing the difficulty so often was tedious. But less tedious than attempting to clear road blocks over and over again on the toughest difficulty. I suspect most people just stuck with the difficulty that suited them and found the infinite respawns completely game destroying and gave up quickly.
It's a shame that Ubisoft didn't understand the gaming market, or didn't care to test game, or that any of the gaming press (who I expect would've have seen this issue earlier than any gamer) actually spoken up and criticised an obvious mistake, giving the developers time to correct before it went into production.
FarCry 2 under a veneer of pathetic, schoolboy-error, thoughtless gaming errors was an otherwise excellent game! All of the blame, in my eyes, as with any game lies completely with the producer who should have had the passion, skill and intelligence to iron out problems that held back the quality and ultimately the sales of a game that could have sold many more copies and could have been loved by plenty more than it was.
Finally, FarCry 2 (as I believe the original did) had a feature that is completely unique, utterly amazing and far ahead of all the competition... a map making mode! Utterly, utterly brilliant. While every other developer and publisher within the console gaming industry is either too greedy or lacks the skill to implement this feature in their game, FarCry2, for all it's fault is an industry leader.
For me FarCry2 was on the verge of being absolutely stunning and at the same time it also appeared to want to be utterly shi...
As much as the director of a movie can be very important to me I'm beginning to think I need to start to take notice of the producers of games. It surely has to be completely their fault when a game turns out to dog and equally, when a game turns out to be amazing!?!
d4nx2y on 3 Jul '11 said:
Maybe they'll be another movie!