GC'07: Far Cry 2 Q&A Feature

It's been a few years since the original Far Cry came out on PC back in 2004. Since then we've seen Jack Carver appear on the Xbox, Xbox 360 and Wii, unleashing his wild side with a number of feral abilities. There are a number of changes however, not least the fact that Far Cry 2 is having to do without original developers Crytek, now working on Crysis for EA. But never fear, Ubisoft Montreal (the workhorse of Ubisoft) is here.

TVG sat down with Clint Hocking, Creative Director on Far Cry 2, during a packed Leipzig Game Convention to discuss the upcoming title, and what's in store this time around...

TVG: You have 50 kilometres square of game word in Far Cry 2. Will there be any loading screens at all?

We haven't got a full build running in memory right now. It's really built as two worlds that are connected. There's a border between them like GTA. We don't know whether you'll have to go to a loading screen when you're crossing it or not, and we won't know at least until after alpha. But at most you'll have one loading screen.

TVG: How stringent are the objectives and how do you follow the story throughout the game? Are there a number of objectives and allies, giving you various ways of attacking a mission?

The way it happens is you need to go and work for these warlords in order to get information about where The Jackal is. And they're playing you - they need deniable guys who can do dirty jobs, they're willing to give them to you and they don't give a s**t if you live or die. So, they'll throw you a bone here and there, and what happens is you get given a mission by a warlord and you can just go do it the way he tells you if you want.

On the other hand, if you have a buddy, the buddy will say: 'Well, I happen to know something about this place, I know this other guy and here's another way you can do this mission. It's probably a little more dangerous, but it will probably be more rewarding. And, in order to do it, I'm going to help you out.' So, if you decide to do the mission in that way, then it becomes more complex and involved, and it also means the buddy becomes involved in the mission. It makes your relationship with him more complex, it puts him in jeopardy but it also means he's there to help you. So, it's a completely different way to do every mission in the game.

TVG: And these buddies - they'll react differently to you depending on how you react to them?

Absolutely. The game keeps track of what we call the buddy's history rating. It also keeps track of the things you've done for him and the things he's done for you; how often you've worked with him; how often you've elected not to work with him. This is done in order to determine which buddy seems to be the player's favourite and put that buddy in the most prominent position, and then sort a pyramid under him.

TVG: What about Jack Carver, the guy gamers played as in the first Far Cry?

You don't play Jack. When the game starts, you actually choose your character from a pantheon of buddies. The game starts where you're being presented a bunch of photographs and they're saying 'who's responsible for this mess?' You pick the character you're going to play and that buddy gets removed from the game. The remaining buddies then get populated into the game world with some variation and randomness. All of the story elements, side missions and everything associated with the buddy you've chosen then disappear from the game, and you're him.

TVG: Are mutants and feral abilities going to play a part at all?

No, no, no. There are no super powers, there are no mutant powers, there are no feral abilities and there's no psychic anything! One of our important beliefs is that the best parts of the original Far Cry were the first three or four hours, when it was you surviving against mercenaries who were coming after you and were against you. It required your wits, innate human abilities and quick thinking to resolve the combat.

One of the players we talked to said exactly the same thing. They felt like the mutants and fantasy/science-fiction elements came out of left field and broke some of the immersion and realism, and we really wanted to focus on that.

Also, as we're going for a much more realistic look and a much more beautiful open world - where the game world is more realistic - it wasn't going to fit to have mutant powers. It didn't make sense.

TVG: In those first parts of the original Far Cry there was a lot of stealth play involved. Is that going to be the case for Far Cry 2?

Absolutely, yeah. Stealth is a big, important part of the game. A lot of it comes from the fact that it's an open world, but a lot of it also comes from the fact that there's tall grass everywhere, bushes and lots of places to hide, even when you're completely out in the open. If you want to crawl in on the fuel depot and not snipe guys from 100 metres out, you can get in very close and be very quiet using a silenced sub-machine gun and machete for hand-to-hand combat. You can be very subtle as to how you go about your objectives.

If you want to stand up on a hill, fire RPG rounds into the camp and blow the crap out of everything, they're going to send guys after you in trucks and you don't have an infinite amount of ammo, but that's certainly an approach. If you want to snipe guys, that works, but they will come after you. If you want to start a fire and use that to your advantage, that's one way. If you want to just crash in there with a truck, hop out with a machine gun and start dusting everything, you can do that as well.

However you want to do it, you can do it. Some ways are going to be easier, others harder, and some will require thought and planning.

TVG: You told us in the demo about how the high-tech weapons jam more often than a straightforward AK-47. Are there any other types of weapon variation in the game?

We have over 30 weapons in the game. So, when you have four different assault rifles in the game (which we do), you need to make sure that they're not only balanced, but differentiated. You know? What's the difference between an FNFAL and an AK47? Actually, the difference is really important. It's not just in damage, but it's also in accuracy, it's in recoil, and it's also in reliability.

Both the FN and the AK-47 have been in service in places like Africa (dirty places with poor maintenance), in the field for years and years. If you take some of the newer plastic American, or even British, assault rifles and drop those in Africa - if you don't have a guy who's well trained in stripping that thing down every day, at the end of every fire fight, oiling all the parts and putting it back together - you've got a gun that's just gunking up on you all the time.

So, putting that in adds an element of realism, but it also differentiates the weapons. If you like that accuracy - you like to be able to hit guys with tight three shot clusters in the chest from sixty metres - go with something high-tech, but you've got to replace it all the time. If you like to just have something reliable, grab an AK and it'll never wear down on you.

TVG: Real Tree, the in-house development tool you mentioned, provides very fine detail for the ways in which your tress are destructible. Do you see that becoming available to the whole games industry?

No. It's in-house and proprietary and I think for the industry to continue along the path that it's going (making games in open worlds where everything's really dynamic), other people are going to have to develop a similar technology. But we've had guys working just on Real Tree for a year and a half. It's a huge investment for us in terms of helping make our world more believable and realistic. Obviously, it's a competitive tool for us - we have to keep it for ourselves.

TVG: In the demo, we saw that the AI determined much of the gameplay on the fly. Is there going to be any scripted play at all in the game?!

Well, you saw the buddy rescue. When I said it wasn't scripted, what I mean is it doesn't happen there, because it happens there. The sequence itself is made of ten second pieces that are stitched together based on the situation. So, there's a little bit of small scripting to make an event like that happen. Also, there are the major libraries of missions that are being assigned to you by the warlords and their Captains depending on their needs, and in different orders.

But there are also more important missions that aren't scripted, they're just more controlled. The warlord might ask you to do a mission at a certain time of day, or might force a mission to start at a certain time of day, stuff like that. But, I guess the answer is no - I guess that's the best answer I can give.

TVG: Can you tell us anything about online or multiplayer gameplay?

We're not communicating too much about multiplayer right now, just because we're not ready. We've been working on multiplayer for over a year. What we didn't want to do is to go 'Now that we have these African environments, let's put capture the flag in there.' We want the multiplayer to feel like you're a mercenary, gun for hire type, fighting in a bush war in Africa - like the single player feels that way. So, we're trying to capture all those things but not make it feel like a gamey layer that's tacked on. But it's a big challenge, we're working on it and we'll communicate on it soon enough I'm sure.

TVG: Do you have solid release date you're working too?

We're Spring 2008 - first quarter 2008.

TVG would like to thank Clint Hocking for taking the time to speak with us about Far Cry 2, which is (as Clint's just said) due out on PC during the first quarter of 2008.