Far Cry 3: Ubisoft boasts ten times the scale of Far Cry 1 and 2

Posted July 5, 2011 by Lewis Denby in News.

Take Far Cry 1 and 2 and “multiply by ten” to get an idea of the next game’s scale, says Ubi narrative director. Also: more on those big moral choices…

Far Cry was huge. Its sequel was even huger. It was a vast, open-world game which – while it made some errors that discouraged exploration – was played across an enormous African plain.

For Far Cry 3, the series is returning to its tropical roots. But there had been some concern expressed about the scripted nature of the game’s E3 demo.

Does this mean Far Cry 3 will be smaller, tighter, more compact? Well, according to narrative director Jason VandenBerghe, the environment will be “dense” – but the scale will be even larger than ever before.

“If you look at the vistas and the scale of Far Cry 1 and 2, take that and multiply it by ten,” he told the latest issue of UK games mag Edge.

“We want to take that even further,” he continued. “We’re focusing on taking that scale and making it dense, so that around every corner there’s something to find or see.

“That’s a key in open-world experiences. We ask ourselves: if there wasn’t anyone to shoot in the game, could it still be fun?”

VandenBerghe also went some way in allaying fears about the “moral dilemmas” that are to be included in this third Far Cry title.

“We’re not doing simple good versus evil choices,” he said. “I don’t think that’s interesting.

“I want to present the player with intense situations, and then I don’t even want to watch what you do. That’s not the designer’s business.”

Tagged as Far Cry 3, Ubisoft, Ubisoft Montreal