Right now, Far Cry is currently one of Ubisoft’s longest-running franchises and is still getting new games every couple of years. Ubisoft tries to rediscover it; they try to give gamers a world that is worth exploring and characters worth interacting with. This legacy of having interesting characters, specifically an interesting villain, came from Far Cry 2.
Back then, it was the pinnacle of what was possible if developers invested time in some exciting new technologies. Dunia Engine was a one-of-a-kind game engine; Jackal was a one-of-a-kind villain; and that game’s world was unlike anything players had explored before. But its director explains that the inspiration for that came from a very unexpected place.
Far Cry 2 took a lot of inspiration from a competitor
When the first installment in this franchise was launched back in 2004, it was developed by Crytek and published by Ubisoft. This game became quite successful for the kind of freedom it gave its gamers. A completely non-linear playfield that allowed players to approach missions the way they wanted.
After the success of the first game, the responsibility to develop a sequel went to Ubisoft Montreal. The directorial responsibilities went to Clint Hocking. The same guy who was tasked with salvaging the Watch Dogs franchise by developing Legion.
But back then, he did an excellent job. The studio worked for around three and a half years on this game. They replaced the first game’s engine with something called Duniya, and they changed the tropical setting into a gloomy African location.
Players controlled a mercenary sent to kill a weapon smuggler called “the Jackal.” The moment players enter the country, they contract malaria. They have to push through it to find the guy igniting the civil war through his weapons.
This was a world unlike any other. In a very raw, open world, players held maps in one hand and drove vehicles with the other. Instead of blow-torching their vehicles to fix them, players actually opened the bonnet and fiddled with the engine instead.
The world felt lonely; the world felt brutal; there were no detection meters and no fast-paced stealth kills. On the other hand, its narrative was pretty dynamic. Players are given missions, and the speed at which they complete them alters little things. It meant the life or death of their in-game buddies.
They also took sides, and the side they chose, of course, won; this mechanic was seen later in its sequels too. If director Clint Hocking is to be believed, all this became a thing thanks to a person called Suan O’Connor, one of the writers who worked on Bioshock.
It was an immensely difficult creative, logistical and technical challenge that required among other things hiring the best writers in the industry to ‘fill in the blanks’ of a truly massive script. We hired Susan O’Connor – one of the writers of Bioshock – to help us bring all these characters to life in the nearly infinite number of permutations possible in the script.
Today, many consider Far Cry 2 to be the best game in the series, while others have a very different opinion of it. While the response to it is pretty polarizing, one thing is true without a doubt: Ubisoft Montreal made a very immersive game.
They might have evolved into something else altogether, pitching protagonists against a bunch of dictators again and again, but Far Cry 2 would remain the most unique game of them all.
Ubisoft has made it a habit of taking references from other games
Years ago, when Assassin’s Creed 3 launched, gamers were pretty excited to see a very interesting feature there. Players could now hunt wildlife and use those animal parts for various purposes. This mechanic was inspired by Red Dead Redemption’s hunting game.
Then came Ghost Recon: Wildlands; this game was launched two years after Hideo Kojima’s stealth action masterpiece, Metal Gear Solid V. Developers Ubisoft Paris and Milan implemented a bunch of mechanics from MGS 5 into Wildlands. And they worked remarkably well, too.
Finally, Immortals: Fenyx Rising was a game heavily inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Its visual style, puzzles, and a lot of other things were very clearly designed by people who had thoroughly enjoyed Nintendo’s masterpiece.
Now fans eagerly await the reveal and launch of Far Cry 7. This game is said to be a massive departure from the usual trends of this series.
