Far Cry 2 was announced earlier this year for the PS3 and 360, but sadly there were no details surrounding the game. Thanks to the latest issue of Edge, we have some new details on the game and it sounds interesting.
Despite outward similarities, this Ubisoft-developed sequel to Crytek's brilliant but flawed paradise island blaster will not be following in the footsteps of Crysis or the original Far Cry.
Here the emphasis is on grimy realism, not sci-fi excess. In fact, Far Cry 2's creative director Clint Hocking draws intriguing parallels between his game and the theme of "man's inner madness" in the Joseph Conrad novel Heart Of Darkness, where monsters are metaphorical rather than literal.
"Don't expect mutants as some surprise later on," adds Far Cry 2 producer Lois-Pierre Pharand. Instead, your adventure through the African savannah could turn you into a mutant, feared and reviled by enemies and allies alike. That's thanks to Ubisoft's innovative approach to 'levelling up' your character. You begin the game infected with malaria, as do most characters in the lawless African state. As you progress you'll discover medicine that steadily 'cures' you, reinforcing your strength and giving you better resistance to attack and injury.
Ubisoft has created its own game engine called Dunia - which means 'World' in Swahili - for the development of Far Cry 2, and it'll be part of the developer's future next-gen projects. The Dunia engine is geared toward creating a credible environment, and a high level of immersion. "I want the player to feel the grime under his fingernails, the sweat, smell the gun oil" Hocking continues, "I wanted to create the guns jamming, the dust - the world isn't this clean, sterile, digital representation of Africa".
Another 'sim' effect that's generated plenty of interest already is the injury system. While you take damage as per usual, occasionally you'll be wounded so badly that you'll need to carry out some impromptu field surgery, digging the bullet out and patching yourself back up. Left untreated, wounds are always fatal - and if you're shot while taking care of the wound it's instant death.
Fortunately, Ubisoft hint that wounds will only crop up once every half hour or so, so the whole shebang will avoid becoming frustrating while retaining the visual impact. For the full, huge feature - which also covers Ubisoft's "no compromise" approach to the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, as well as detailing further gameplay action - seek out a copy of Edge magazine issue #185, on sale now.
So it's not coming out on PC?! Well let's see howq the consoles handle the free roaming landscape.... And then release it on PC with bigger landscapes.
So it's not coming out on PC?! Well let's see howq the consoles handle the free roaming landscape.... And then release it on PC with bigger landscapes.
It's coming out on the PC. I don't know how you didn't realize this, especially with the last line mentioning Ubisofts 'no compromises' with the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions - meaning they'll be ports of the PC (the first announced version) with every feature.
I guess you haven't played a console game in years if you don't think they can handle free-roaming landscapes.
Ah, oops, obviously I missed the PC mention. I did think it was slightly weird.... An re. free roaming, consoles can handle it but (as the other guy/gal said) not on the same scale. The reason why Oblivion came shipped with cities separate to the rest of the land was the consoles' inability to handle so much data. Fact.
I guess you haven't played a console game in years if you don't think they can handle free-roaming landscapes.
Well they can, but they tend to not be on the same scale without lots of loading times.
Just Cause (terrible, i know) was hardly 'small scale'.
Oblivion, while graphically pretty, just has a terrible grid-based loading system. Yes, the console version was fairly crippled, but for each Oblivion-esque title there's an open world game which doesn't require the loading.
*yawnz* whu cares about dis POS? lame a$$ pc game dat cost £5000 2 play. no fanks, i'll stik to cod4.
oh wait, it comin to consolz! omfg, luks amazin! gonna be best game eva!!!!11!1
You're either joking, or you're a complete tosser.
Re: Just Cause, yes precisely - it didn't have much going for it AI wise or other processor intensive tasks (NOT graphics). Hence the ability to render huge landscapes without problem. Besides, from what I could tell, it had separate indoor scenes? I might be wrong though...
I guess you haven't played a console game in years if you don't think they can handle free-roaming landscapes.
Well they can, but they tend to not be on the same scale without lots of loading times.
Just Cause (terrible, i know) was hardly 'small scale'.
Oblivion, while graphically pretty, just has a terrible grid-based loading system. Yes, the console version was fairly crippled, but for each Oblivion-esque title there's an open world game which doesn't require the loading.
Scale doesn't necessarily mean size of the game world, it also takes into account the detail of the landscape. And Just Cause's detail was pretty low. It's already been mentioned, but Oblivion suffered on PC because of the way new sections were loaded; that kept the scale of detail up, but at a cost of the way certain sections were loaded. It's not something you can get away from, no matter how clever the programmers are into fooling you about what parts of the landscape are loaded at what time, the fact that the PC has access to more memory (most of the time) just means it can hold more data on the game's geography - it's not a processing thing (although processing does come into it if you're using algorithms to fool the player into thinking that the scale is larger than it is).
*yawnz* whu cares about dis POS? lame a$$ pc game dat cost £5000 2 play. no fanks, i'll stik to cod4.
oh wait, it comin to consolz! omfg, luks amazin! gonna be best game eva!!!!11!1
You're either joking, or you're a complete tosser.
He was taking the p**s out of fan boys. Surely that was obvious.
This games sounds amazing but I don't see the point calling it 'Far Cry 2' When it is nothing like Far Cry?
The Far Cry license is a valuable one, they obviously wanted to use it to sell some game, so chose this one and gave the tenuous link being that it's set in an exotic location. Expect Far Cry 3 to be in the Antarctic.
Yes well after 2 straight days at staring at competency questions I'm bound to lose my sense of humour.... I can't believe I missed that. I feel very very sad now....
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, UK BA1 2BW England and Wales company registration number 2008885
