Thursday 5-Feb-2004 4:13 PM Dipping through Crytek's tropical first-person shooter and passing by its palm-green shores in the company of Ubisoft Far Cry is developer Crytek's first foray into the first-person shooter world, and a tantalising first foray it is too. Graphically stunning with some downright jaw-dropping AI, the game plonks players into the shoes of reluctant hero Jack Carver, a man in the wrong place at the wrong time who finds himself fighting for survival in a stunningly realised tropical paradise.
Due on March 26 in Europe, Far Cry will be the first of a number of PC shooters due out this year that we're simply dying to play to death and beyond. A recent chat about the title with Ubisoft product manager Doug McConkey gave us more reasons to drool in anticipation.
So what's so good about Far Cry?
McConkey: Well, I think there's definitely room for something fresh in the first-person shooter genre and I think that Far Cry offers that.
A lot has been said about the AI in Far Cry, the realistic reactions of human enemies and the way they work together in squads. Presumably this changes according to difficulty level - what's the AI like on the hardest setting?
McConkey: It's bloody downright scary.
If enemies spot you in the open, then you run into cover, do they get confused, wonder where you've gone?
McConkey: Absolutely. The other thing as well is, the way the AI works is that it's meant to be geared towards... Well, they behave most impressively when in a group. Some of the guys are actually a bit stupid - as in some people really are a bit stupid - and they tend to be grunts, as it were. So they'll wander about, poking their noses into bushes and generally acting a bit dim.
Now if they're in a group, on the other hand, there's a leader who'll co-ordinate the attacks. He's constantly on at them, directing them with a radio. This is when the AI really functions like an army unit, and it's really quite scary when it happens.
I can tell you all this stuff, and to be honest a lot of it's going to sound like wild claims, but the only way of actually proving it's true is by people actually playing it themselves.
Anything else we should know about AI?
McConkey: Communication is a big thing. Along a beach, say, you'll see that enemies have these little huts and stuff, and as well as being places for these guys to hang out conveniently for you to creep up on and shoot in the back and stuff, they are all linked by radio. So if you're smart about the way you limit communications between the groups, you can make things much easier for yourself.
If there're three enemies, for example, they'll actually co-ordinate their activities. So two guys will start shooting you while one guy runs off to the radio. So then they'll send in a heavily armed gunboat to take you down, say. And enemies can set off flares to call backup.
Can you tell us about the binoculars in the game?
McConkey: You've got these binoculars that serve three purposes. Obviously, you can zoom in, you can eavesdrop with them, so you actually listen and maybe glean some information that'll point you in a direction that's less threatening; and also you can actually tag enemies. In the bottom left of the screen there's a radar, and tagged enemies will appear as green dots.
When green, it means enemies are unaware of you and that they're going about the normal duties. When they're yellow, their suspicion has been aroused, their state of awareness has increased.
Crytek has spoken a number of times about Far Cry's non-linearity. Do you think when gamers first play the game they'll be aware of the number of different ways or options available to them to complete an objective ?
McConkey: I don't think so initially. I think that people are conditioned into a way of thinking with first-person shooters. For example, once, when I was showing the game to someone, there was one situation where in the distance you had the shoreline and on the shoreline there was an enemy base.
Basically, the person was going headfirst into it and dying every time. So I said, "Look, it's a long shot, but I know that's there's a lookout tower back a way and if you kill the guy at the tower there's a sniper rifle."
After about ten attempts at trying to assault the base their way, they decided to give my suggestion a go. So, they went back, shot the sniper guy, got the sniper rifle and five rounds of sniper ammo, set themselves up in the tower and then took out the toughest enemies at the base that they could target while up the tower.
Do you think multiplayer will change significantly following player feedback from the multiplayer beta?
McConkey: I imagine a lot of it will be tweaking. But I have to say that, looking at the beta test forums, it's been phenomenally positive. I think people have been taken aback by it. I think that the thing that we always felt would be a key selling point of Far Cry was the originality of the setting as much as anything else.
Actually, the changes I've seen in my time as product manager have been quite large. There have been a number of tweaks with vehicles, for example, the way the vehicle weaponry works when you climb into the driver's seat.
It's possible that further changes may be made to vehicles following the beta test. What Crytek is trying to do is get an ideal situation where vehicles are easy to drive while at the same time weapons on the vehicles are easy to use.
So far, we've had the first-person vehicle where you could stick your arm out the window and shoot, then Crytek went for third-person vehicles, which actually worked quite nicely but you couldn't really see the enemy and the developer wanted it first-person throughout.
What we've currently got is an onboard gun on vehicles, and obviously beta testing will be trying that out. Some people are saying that the vehicles should be third-person because it's easier to drive and then you should be able to flip into first-person when you're going to shoot.
What's one of your more interesting gameplay experiences with Far Cry?
McConkey: Well, you have a machete that you can hack people up with and also a pocketful of stones that you can throw to distract people. Now that sounds bugger all, but if you're quite crafty with it... It's quite a challenge, but you can get through a level without using weapons, but that's bloody hard. And it's absolutely nerve-wracking.
Combining the stone throwing with the radar, if you throw a stone to distract an enemy and keep an eye on the radar to see which way they are facing, you can walk up behind them and crack them with the machete.
It's a good test of the AI and it's also a good test of the environments, how well they work for cover and such.
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