Far Cry 2: It came from Africa

18 Comments

In March 1898 two maneless Tsavo man-eating lions preyed on workers during the construction of the Ugandan railway. The pair, part of a testosterone-charged sub-species of lion local to the area, killed an estimated 135 people - their efforts later immortalised in the film The Ghost and the Darkness.
In late July of this year five men from Ubisoft Montreal were spending a night under canvas in the same area. "We couldn't see anything - we just heard an elephant scream in panic about 20 feet away from camp," explains a grim-faced Alexandre Amancio, the game's artistic director.

"Then we realised why he was screaming. We heard one of these Tsavo lions roar - and it was between the elephant and us. It was about 10 feet away - and the vibration of that lion roar, you just felt that in your bowels... then we heard the 'chk chk' of our two guards cocking their AK47s and we just started running to the land cruiser."

When Ubisoft claim that they will go to any ends to ensure Far Cry 2 looks, feels and sounds like the real Africa, they seem to honestly mean it. Three weeks travelling around Kenya, sleeping with a centimetre of fabric between them and various predators, and getting to know the musky scent of their workmates at a level they never before expected.

But why were they packed off to Africa in the first place? What makes the Serengeti fit Far Cry?

"In early conception we talked about that a lot - what does 'exotic' mean?" says Clint Hocking, creative director. "What does it mean for players?

"What we realised was that it meant somewhere beautiful, somewhere breathtakingly beautiful that required good graphics and art direction, but also somewhere people could never get to go in real life. Somewhere you know exists, but you never expected to visit as it's so remote or so hard to get to.

So we chose Africa because going back to a jungle island just wasn't going to be exotic any more after people had played the original Far Cry, Just Cause, Boiling Point, they watch Lost every week... it's not exotic any more. You've been there hundreds of times."

Far Cry 2 then is creating 50km2 of a fictional country in the heart of Africa - a failed state where the civilian population has fled or is in the process of fleeing, and warmongering leaders battle it out for control. It's certainly a game near the knuckle of current world politics.

"We didn't want to Set Far Cry 2 in a real country for a couple of reasons, one being that we didn't want the player to go to a real country then not have it be a country by the time the game ships, or something crazy like that!" continues Hocking. "A more important reason is that Africa is a huge continent and it has a massive amount of ecological and geological diversity. What was important to us was to capture the whole range of these - we want to have Serengeti-style grassland, savannah plains, central African Congo-style jungle, north African sandy desert; all the different ecosystems you see over the continent."

So it was then that camera operators, sound technicians and artists were despatched to Kenya and parts of Tanzania - stable countries judged to have the most diverse locations on offer. To the Serengeti plain, the Masai Mara to its north with its typical savannah grassland and hundreds upon thousands upon millions of animals.

The team touched down on Kenyan soil during the migration of the wildebeest - with three or four million of them on the move - only a fraction of which, unfortunately, will be making their presence known in the final game. Sleeping in tents, staying for two to three days in various different parks before moving on - it was hard work, as well as an adventure.

SHOOTING WILDLIFE
"We were super busy," picks up Alexandre. "We'd wake up at 5am, eat really quickly then hop into the land cruiser and go out on a scouting run. We brought cameras, and took about seven gigs worth of pictures. Our days were spent just rolling on dusty trails, seeing animals and going from place to place taking photos."

With a cameraman dispatched into the skies in a hot air balloon with a hi-def camera getting them all manner of birds-eye shots of the landscape, the aim was to get up close and personal with a slice of raw Africa.

They experienced a near collision with a giraffe which, Alexandre reflects, "was so large that it looked like it was running in slow motion", and at another point an elephant decided to charge their vehicle with little to no warning.

"All these incidents we came across in Africa we're integrating into some of the conversations that the NPCs have," adds Alexandre as an aside. "When you go into a town or meet NPCs in the game world, or when they meet each other and have conversations, some of the dialogue will be stuff that happened to us in Africa."

It was a dangerous business, though, no luxury tourist lodges for the Ubisoft boys. "We managed to ask for special permission because usually you can't travel at night in national parks, and some areas you really can't go off-road, you just have to stick to the main roads. But we had special permission."

Really? I asked. Where do you get permission for something like that?

"Er..." comes the artistic director's response, coupled with background whispers and a few giggles. "Erm... we got permission by... well, you see, they do 'special' permits you need to 'purchase' from different people. At the airport, at the park... the driver..."

Oh, that sort of permission...

Of course, the team wasn't only after the look of Africa - they went to find out what it sounded like too. In fact, when the game appears in the first quarter of next year, the ambient sounds you'll hear will be those recorded by super soundman Amaury on location: whether it be on the savannah, in the jungle or beneath the twittering dawn chorus. In fact, great efforts were put into capturing the birdsong of different areas at different times of day. The technology used to capture audio mood is quite clever too - known as the art of binaural recording to those in the know.

"It looks like something a doctor would use - like a stethoscope," explains Alexandre. "It's something you put in your ears but it's capturing sound using the shape of your ear. It actually positions sound in 3D. It's impressive - when you put headphones on and listen to it, it just feels real. Like you're actually there - in your mind the sound is there in 3D."

In fact, if you want to have a listen yourself, it's worth hitting the Far Cry 2 blog (blog.ubi.com/farcry2) as the team plan to upload some of their binaural treats in the near future.

After all their adventures with scary animals with big teeth, though, it is a minor disappointment to discover that the Africa of Far Cry 2 will feature far less of its usual circle of life. There won't be any predators - we're not talking about a game with a STALKER-esque living, breathing ecosystem.

All the large animals in the game will be grazing herbivores, featuring star turns from zebras, wildebeest, gazelle, buffalo, impalas, oryx and the like. And, no, I wasn't over sure what an oryx was either, but Wikipedia informs that it's a gazelle with a face that looks a little like a badger.

PREDATOR-FREE
"The reason we decided to stay away from predators was because our animal AI is a subset of our human AI," explains Hocking when confronted by the lack of big cat diaries.

"They really live in the world; in the morning, for example, gazelle will come up from the flatlands into terrain that's hillier to find a watering hole. In these groups of 20 or 30 they'll come in, find a watering hole, drink, move back out into flatter lands where they can see out over the plains and then graze there. They live in the world following these rules. The problem was, if we wanted to put predators into that ecosystem we would have to balance it to make sure the lions didn't eat all the gazelles and then all starve to death."

With so much being put into the AI patterns and routines of the human enemies, the extra work demanded by the kings of the jungle was deemed unnecessary. Gazelle will act as if there are predators around but, as in real life, really, you won't catch a glimpse of them.

After the gallant expedition had returned to Montreal, they had about two weeks to polish the hell out of the game demo that was due to be placed lovingly before the critical eyes of the press, yours truly included, at the annual Leipzig gaming jamboree.

It was a frenzied two weeks by any account, as every possible nuance of their African experience was poured into the game engine. The shape of the terrain, the types of rocks, the placement of trees, the shape of the hills, the texture of the ground and its colour: everything changed to some degree to prompt, even at this early stage, the fullest African experience possible.

It's genuinely gratifying to see Ubisoft's Far Cry 2 keeping what made the original so special, yet also trying to innovate wherever possible.

With a true go-anywhere mentality, the fact that this is distinctively a PC game rather than watered down console fare and the all-important presence of a hang-glider, this is a game leading the charge of a new, exciting breed of shooter. And, as we all now know, it's authentic too. But do you know what the biggest change that was heralded by the Ubisoft fact-finding mission? Shit.

"The first thing we noticed when we set foot in the African savannah is that it's filled with shit." says an earnest Alexandre. "There's seriously all shapes and all sizes. We have to include it - it's just the first thing that you notice!"

So there you go. Far Cry 2 - set to be packed with only the most authentic of excrement. A gaming first if ever there was one.

Will Porter