Joystiq

Far Cry 2 confirmed Oct. 21; Oct. 24 for Europe [update]

Alexander Sliwinski — 2008-09-05T13:20:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters

Ubisoft sent out a press release this morning confirming that Far Cry 2 will hit European retail shelves on October 24th. The company also announced a collector's edition, which comes in a wooden box. The fine wooden case, sure to be made from only the finest trees (not really), will deliver the game, t-shirt, art book, collector's map and "making-of" DVD.

We're still waiting to hear back officially from Ubisoft if North America should plan on getting the game on October 21st, which is what many retailers are currently showing as the release date. Update: GameSpot confirms the date is the 21st.

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Into Africa: Far Cry 2 dev talks about, shows immersion

Randy Nelson — 2008-08-29T21:30:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters

It seems that even Ubisoft wants to know what an average day is like for our very own Ludwig Kietzmann. Is life in Africa really as crazy as he makes it out to be? Clint Hocking and his team have dedicated themselves to finding that out. They are going to great lengths to put players into Ludwig's shoes via a variety of immersion-enhancing elements in Far Cry 2, which Clint himself talks about in a brand-new video after the break.

As an added bonus, we've included a new, all-gameplay video of Sony's Afrika (Hakuna Matata outside of Japan) after the break as well, since Ludwig assures us that this game is also highly representative of his daily routine.

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Far Cry 3 probably sticking with African setting

Alexander Sliwinski — 2008-08-27T14:00:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action, First Person Shooters

Far Cry 2's Narrative Designer Patrick Redding informs VG247 that Ubisoft Montreal has started work on the next Far Cry game. He tells the site that Africa still has a "huge amount of promise" and there are still things they'd like to do with the setting, but he hedges it all by saying that the team is still in "preliminary stages" of development.

Redding expresses that the Far Cry 2 engine could be used to make other locales, but that to save time the team will probably build on the sequel's African setting. He wants to stick with the series' exotic settings, but feels that jungle islands aren't as exciting as when the original Far Cry released four years ago.

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GC 2008: Ubisoft screenshot roundup

Ross Miller — 2008-08-21T18:44:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Galleries

Ubisoft has released beaucoup d'images as part of the media overflow we call Leipzig Games Convention 2008. Below and after the break, check out new galleries of screenshots for Raving Rabbids TV Party, Prince of Persia, EndWar, HAWX, Far Cry 2 and more. It's just like Ubidays, only with no Beyond Good & Evil in sight. Oh, mon Dieu!

Gallery: Prince of Persia (Leipzig 2008)

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Check out Far Cry 2's map editor

Ross Miller — 2008-08-21T02:00:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters

Ubisoft has released video of Far Cry 2's map editor, complete with a soothing narrator who holds your hands through the 5-minute trailer. Quite frankly, we're excited for how intuitive it seems to be, but perhaps that's just wishful thinking that we'll be able to accurately recreate the island from LOST and play out our own scenarios (only with fewer polar bears). Weather and time of day can also be altered. The folks at IGN have detailed impressions of the editor.

~~It looks impressive, for sure, but remembering Unreal Tournament 3 for Xbox 360, what is unclear right now is how (if at all) console gamers will be able to trade maps.~~ Update: Curse our insomniac ways! Previous entry Far Cry Instincts featured ways to share maps over Xbox Live, so it'd be safe to assume a similar method will also be used for Far Cry 2.

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Far Crysis: PCs will weep at Far Cry 2's system reqs

Randy Nelson — 2008-08-08T14:45:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, First Person Shooters

Ubisoft has revealed the minimum and respectable suggested system requirements for its upcoming FPS / wildfire simulator, Far Cry 2. Let's just say that if your current rig had trouble running Crysis well, it's a far cry from being able to handle FC2.

Oh, and just because previous series-dev Crytek is currently designing Crysis Warhead to run well on $600 systems doesn't mean that its new caretakers at Ubisoft are giving up the war against two-week-old PC components. You'll find the full shopping list rundown of requirements after the break.

[Via Big Download]

Minimum requirements

CPU: Pentium 4 3.2 GHz, Pentium D 2.66 GHz, AMD Athlon 64 3500+ or better
Memory: 1GB
Video card: NVIDIA 6800 or ATI X1650 or better
Shader Model 3 required
256 MB of graphics memory
Media reader: DVD-ROM

Recommended

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo Family, AMD64 X2 5200+, AMD Phenom or better
Memory: 2GB
Video card: NVIDIA 8600 GTS or better, ATI X1900 or better
512 MB of graphics memory

Supported video cards:
NVIDIA 6800, NVIDIA 7000 series, 8000 series, 9000 series, 200 series. 8800M and 8700M supported for laptops.
ATI X1650 - 1950 series, HD2000 series, HD3000 series, HD4000 series.

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Joystiq E3 hands-on: Far Cry 2

Alexander Sliwinski — 2008-07-20T15:30:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters

Adding on to our hands-on with Far Cry 2 a couple months ago, our most recent experience at E3 gave us the same feeling that we'd only begun to scratch the surface of this title. For a general overview of what to expect in Far Cry 2, check out our previous hands-on with the game. Here we're going to get into a little bit more detail about our experience within the game.

For starters, the African Serengeti, the open-world venue for the game looks the same on both the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. The location has some great level design put into it with our 20-minute experience presenting us with several locales. After a battle in one particular village, we got on a boat and drove through a well-detailed ravine; while in another instance we drove to a location in a car along dirt roads. The driving in the game is surprisingly good, making sense depending on what terrain is being driven over, and we didn't find ourselves unnecessarily fighting with the controls at all. Now, let's discuss the surprising AI in the game.

Gallery: Far Cry 2

OK, we're going to preface this by saying that if the AI in the final product does similar things to what we saw in this demo, we're going to have an enjoyable time with Far Cry 2. Ubisoft Montreal has done a fine job with some reactions we didn't expect from the enemies.

For example, during a battle, one enemy we capped in the leg fell to the ground, little did we realize he was down, but not out. Sneaking around the side of a building and just watching, we saw one of his comrades come and drag him to safety behind some cover and prop him up. When the battle continued, we took out the helpful friend and when we came near the wounded soldier he was still on the ground and injured, but he started shooting at us with a pistol.

We also saw other examples of teamwork and just proper AI. None of this is exactly amazing, but it's nice to know that it's in the game. We avoided stealth due to our lack of time with the game and during one village attack just rammed a car into the middle of a bunch of soldier, running over one of them. His buddies jumped out of the way, ran behind cover and started shooting. We started running for cover ourselves, hitting the heal button in the process and throwing a grenade at the car. Once the car blew up, the soldier started looking for better cover as fire began to consumer the village.

Fire, wow, the fire. Although we didn't get to test this, we've been told fire could be used as a great distraction tool when trying to infiltrate a village. A small brush fire can be started right outside and, as it catches onto the thatched roof of a house, it'll be possible to do other stuff while the soldiers are distracted. One fire we started was consuming a village while a battle was going on. We didn't have any frame rate hiccups (we were testing on the Xbox 360) and the scene looked spectacular.

As for just general things we noticed. There's a main map showing the whole game and a secondary map that'll give general area information (where to go and safe houses), both were easy to read and understand. The guns control well and sound good when firing, switching weapons is easy in battle and explosions will cause weapons to fly away. So if the player shoots a bunch of soliders and then throws in a grenade, the weapons won't just be lying there where the guy got killed. Overall, the package seems solid and at no point in our time with the game did we have a strong "oh, that's just stupid" reaction.

Although Far Cry 2 hasn't been getting that much attention, that's really a shame, because after our time with it we've become believers that there's something here for FPS players. We can't speak for what the full game will be like and we've already been told there won't be a demo, but Far Cry 2 definitely deserves the courtesy of being tried out when it releases later this year.

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Don't be sad, but a Far Cry 2 demo isn't happening

Alexander Sliwinski — 2008-07-11T14:58:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters

Far Cry 2 will not have a pre-release demo according to Clint Hocking, the game's creative director. Hocking explains to Eurogamer that given the open-world nature of the game, that even if they put walls around a certain section, there could still potentially be hours worth of game in that space -- defeating the whole point of a demo being a teaser.

Hocking went on to say that Far Cry 2's features are all locked and now "100 guys" are sitting around picking out the bugs. We should certainly get some hands-on time with the game next week at E3 and we'll report back what we find from our jaunt through the savanna.

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Far Cry 2 single player could last 25 hours! No 50! ... No 100!

Jason Dobson — 2008-05-30T03:00:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters

Players looking forward to shooting their way through Far Cry 2's 50-square kilometers of African wilderness best set aside the better part of a few weeks (at least!) to do so. Varying reports suggest it could take as long as 100 hours (for compass-be-damned wanderers, no doubt) to complete the game's single player campaign alone.

Ubisoft Montreal creative workhorse Clint Hocking offered us an apparently inadequate estimate when he guessed that the campaign could be completed in as little as 25 hours, before adding that to see it all "you're looking at a 100-hour play experience." And, speaking to CVG, producer Louis-Pierre Pharand landed his estimate somewhere in the middle, suggesting 50 hours of play time to completion. Regardless of the varying possibilities, it's reasonable to expect that the shooter's single player experience will be long, evidence that not all devs are drinking from the same fountain as Phil Harrison.

Gallery: Far Cry 2

On top of the campaign, Eurogamer reports that the sequel to 2004's tropical island shooter will support up to 16 players in online multiplayer, which as we noted previously will focus on team-based gameplay rather than traditional deathmatch modes. Also missing from Far Cry 2 will be online co-op, though according to Pharand multiplayer games will support multiple classes, as well as persistent awards and experience, giving us plenty to look forward to when Far Cry 2 debuts this holiday season for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

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Joystiq hands-on: Far Cry 2

Christopher Grant — 2008-05-28T14:10:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Microsoft Xbox 360

When we last saw Clint Hocking, creative director at Ubisoft Montreal, he was making a last minute stop at PAX to show off Far Cry 2. The visibly tired Hocking took us on a tour of the new game's exotic environment, the African Serengeti - exoticism being the game's major connection to the original. A couple weeks ago at Ubisoft's Ubidays event in San Francisco, Hocking was there again, but in a smaller room (decorated in an African theme) surrounded by journalists actually playing the game.

"It's 50 square kilometers, an open world," he says. We'd heard the same thing previously, as far back as PAX. The game had always been ambitious; now, it was running quite smoothly right in front of us, on an Xbox 360. So, how close are they to reaching that goal of being an entirely open world shooter? From what I could tell in this very limited demo, pretty close.

Gallery: Far Cry 2 (Ubidays '08)

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Far Cry 2 gets new trailer, blog for Ubidays

Alexander Sliwinski — 2008-05-28T10:54:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360

Ubisoft has released a new trailer for Far Cry 2 as part of its Ubidays press event about to get underway in Paris. The trailer is narrated by Reuben Oluwagembi, a freelance reporter in the fictional African city of Port Selao. Oluwagembi wants to tell us about "The Jackal" - a merchant of death, a mercenary (we always think of that West Wing episode where C.J. performs "The Jackal" for the staff too). If you're paying attention, you'll notice a link to Reuben's blog - War Unlimited: My Journey Through a Warzone - where he writes about his experience covering the violence and factions that dominate Port Selao.

Far Cry 2 is expected later this year and will have us hunting down "The Jackal" across the African savanna on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. Hopefully we'll get a firmer release date from Ubidays today.

Gallery: Far Cry 2

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Far Cry 2 intro trailer mixes gameplay with developer commentary

Alexander Sliwinski — 2008-05-07T16:00:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters

Ubisoft recently released an introductory video for Far Cry 2, its upcoming human-hunt across the African plains. The trailer mixes clips of Ubi Montreal developers talking and actual gameplay footage. Although we got some footage showing off the game's engine earlier this year, we really haven't seen gameplay footage since Leipzig.

The developer clips in this trailer are actually quite entertaining, with Far Cry 2's art director, Alex Amancio, explaining how the team almost got eaten by lions while camping in Africa (silly Quebecers, should have hired someone with lion-mastering experience). Far Cry 2 is expected later this year and will allegedly be the same game on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Gallery: Far Cry 2

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Far Cry 2 confirmed for PC, Xbox 360, PS3 this Fall

Alexander Sliwinski — 2008-03-26T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters

Ubisoft informs EuroGamer that Far Cry 2 will release in "autumn" this year. The game is currently in development at Ubisoft Montreal and this latest information narrows down the previous year-long release window of April to March of next year. Ubisoft also states a demo is likely for the game and that the title should release simultaneously for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

Given the impressive footage we've seen so far of the game, Far Cry 2 can take its time in development and keep upping the pretty. And you know, our summer is already looking pretty full.

Gallery: Far Cry 2

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GDC08: Madden inspired Far Cry 2

James Ransom-Wiley — 2008-02-22T16:00:00+00:00

Filed under: GDC

Seriously? Seriously. Ubisoft Montreal learned a valuable lesson from sports games, revealed Patrick Redding during a lecture on the narrative design of Far Cry 2. No, not that it's possible to sell millions of the same game year after year, but rather, games like Madden provide players with their own unique moments. Something big -- a game-winning catch -- can happen in Madden, and that particular event, and the specific elements that surround that key experience, become an epic moment in a player's mind. I created that -- it happened to me! The Far Cry 2 team is importing this concept into its free-form FPS and building a gameworld with unscripted highlights -- minus the Maddenisms.

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GDC08: Far Cry 2 gives you malaria, deal with it

James Ransom-Wiley — 2008-02-22T14:25:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, GDC

During a lecture on narrative design today, Ubisoft Montreal's Patrick Redding revealed that Far Cry 2's health system is tied to infection. Upon arriving in the game's fictitious African country, the player's character -- the strong, silent type -- is immediately stricken with malaria. Ubisoft's Patrick Redding called this device the "ultimate mechanical drawback." The disease creates a dependence on medicine ('health packs'), but the pills aren't scattered throughout the plains or hidden inside crates. Instead, medicine can only be obtained from civilians. The developers use this device as one of the game's few "push" designs; otherwise, players control the order and scope of Far Cry 2.

The reality of malaria and its debilitating symptoms (ultimately death -- if untreated) forces the player to interact with non-threatening characters, in turn, exploiting the urge to anthropomorphize the AI. Human conditions are recreated through these interactions. A few doses might be exchanged for, say, travel papers. The civilians don't simply operate as the game's 'store,' but function as "micronarrative" elements who bring life to the gameworld -- like, the desperation inherent in a war-torn country. But Ubisoft Montreal doesn't "presume to know what's in the player's heart." Whether you obtain the papers simply to quell the fevers and convulsions, or instead come to sympathize with the civilian's helpless condition, the developers provide the space for freedom of experience. You've got malaria. Deal with it.

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Far Cry 2 teaser debuts Dunia Engine

James Ransom-Wiley — 2008-01-24T16:15:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters, Video

Much like Crytek began Crysis marketing with sweeping views of a tropical island jungle powered by CryENGINE2, Ubisoft has used this Far Cry 2 teaser to throw a coming out party for its "Dunia" game engine. We see romanticized views of anywhere Africa through a hazy film filter with little indication of actual gameplay, save for the obvious metaphor of brushfire - oh yes, there will be blood.

Once you're done gazing at the virtual safari, considering checking out MTV's chat with Far Cry 2 creative director Clint Hocking for some real insight into the FPS-cum-male weepy. "Yes, it's a shooter where you run around and machine-gun a bunch of people. But there are real characters in here who I hope you're going to develop a real relationship with," hopes Hocking.

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Ubisoft announces Far Cry 2 for Xbox 360 and PS3

Christopher Grant — 2008-01-03T13:24:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, First Person Shooters

Similar to spotting a remote outpost far off in the African savanna, we could've spotted this announcement ... oh, nearly six months ago when they first announced the game. Nevertheless, Le Ubisoft today announced that their upcoming FPS, Far Cry 2 - full of all sorts of procedurally generated goodies - will be coming to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles as well as the originally targeted PC platform.

When we spoke with Ubisoft Montreal's creative director, the lovely and talented Clint Hocking, about the possibility of console ports at PAX, he told us, "Our mandate ... was to make Ubisoft a top-tier PC game. That's my mandate, that's what I'm doing. It's obviously Ubisoft's business if they want to do a console version." He elaborated, "The engine is not alien to a console environment just because we have the expertise." So now, Ubi is taking advantage of said expertise to bring the game to consoles. While it's unclear if all three versions will ship simultaneously, the console ports will also ship in Ubi's 08-09 fiscal year, which runs April through March.

Gallery: Far Cry 2

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13 minutes of FarCry 2 footage

Alexander Sliwinski — 2007-09-07T14:00:00+00:00

Filed under: PC

Taken at the Leipzig Games Convention, this 13-minute video gives a good taste of what FarCry 2 will have to offer. If you don't know yet, FarCry 2 takes place on the African savannah in a giant sandbox environment. Obviously, Ubisoft's Montreal Studio (Crytek is off doing Crysis) don't consider the now-classic Survivor: Africa issue a problem. When the television show Survivor went to Africa something got lost (like beautiful blue water and lush green vegetation) and they never went back to anything similar. FarCry 2 continues the gaming trend of a more brown environmental color palette. It'll be interesting to see how fans react to the new environment.

And before the calls of racism start over a white man going on a shooting rampage in Africa, the people you are shooting appear to be white. At least we think they are, way too much movement in the video to be sure, but a lot of the still images in the gallery below show white people. Although that opens up a whole other set of issues.

The game does look beautiful and is still in a pre-Alpha build. The title is expected next spring on PC. With any luck we'll get some console release projections in the near future. There is also a special introduction announcement for the FarCry 2 footage after the break.

Gallery: Far Cry 2

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Joystiq interviews FarCry 2's Clint Hocking

Christopher Grant — 2007-08-31T11:05:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, First Person Shooters, Interviews

Ubisoft's Clint Hocking made a special trip to PAX this year to show off his latest project: FarCry 2. But this isn't your run-of-the-mill FPS sequel, as our liveblog of the demo details, but an ambitious open-world shooter set in the exotic locale of the African Savannah. We were lucky to grab a couple minutes of Clint's time following the demo for an interview where we asked about the FarCry brand, the possibility of console ports, and how long they think this open-ended game will take to finish.

Why use the FarCry brand to make this game?

Well, I think that's kind of a business question for Ubisoft but my answer to that is, Ubisoft started with FarCry, published it and obviously started making the console games. The same time they were doing that - keep in mind I started conception before FarCry Instincts even shipped. They were in production when I started conception. And Ubisoft knew at that time that they wanted a top tier PC sequel. At the same time they knew about FarCry; at that time Boiling Point was announced; we didn't know about Just Cause; they knew they were going to make at least two sequels on the console; LOST was on TV. Literally they said, "We're worried that we're going to dry up this brand."

Gallery: Far Cry 2

Not to mention Crysis ...

Well, Crysis wasn't even in production at that time but they figured that Crytek would probably go on to make another awesome game, so they said, We need to not only make a sequel but we need to reinvent the brand in order to sustain it, because it's been exploited. We've used it up. So that's what they told us to do and that's what we did. We started and said, what do we have to have? We have to have the exotic world, we have to have that sense of realism, openness, freedom of gameplay; we need to have that. Everything else, they just said if you have everything except for that, we're fine. So that's what we did.

FarCry 2 is obviously a lot different than, say, Chaos Theory. As a designer, it seems like a pretty unique challenge to give yourself. To go from something like Chaos Theory to the open-world of FarCry 2.

Yeah, of course. I worked on the original Splinter Cell and for me, Chaos Theory was a chance to do everything that we wanted to do in Splinter Cell perfectly. In a sense, this belittles the year and a half I spent on that project, but in a sense it was kind of an easy mandate. We all knew how to do it right, now. All the nails are sitting in a row, we just have to knock 'em in and we're done. At the same time, Chaos Theory was the best Splinter Cell that I could make. I couldn't make a better one. And the same time I went into this project, a bunch of the core team on Chaos Theory went into Conviction which at that time was just called Splinter V and their mandate also was to reinvent the Splinter Cell brand. And I knew that was going to be the mandate of Splinter V and I said I'm not the guy to do that. I'm so steeped in 3-1/2 years of making this Splinter Cell, I can't reinvent it. It's etched in my brain this way, forever. And I'm probably not going to be beat Chaos Theory with the same thing, so I need to do something different. So I asked to go on something different, they offered me a couple things, FarCry was one of them, that sounded really hard and fun, so let's do that.

The technology you guys are using, is that all built in-house?

We started with core technology we got from CryTek in the deal. But we've gutted it. The tech director says we have 90% new runtime code, so we kept the stuff that was good, but everything else was rebuilt. The AI was rebuilt, the Real Tree is a huge component, all the open world stuff is rebuilt, so it's basically a new engine.

You said you guys have been working on actual production for three months and you're hoping for a first quarter '08 release. That's a pretty short development time for a big AAA title that, one can only imagine, is a testing nightmare.

It is gonna be pretty tough in test. We do have almost a full year of production, we have about 11 months of production once you've taken out all of the finalization stuff to market it and ship it and all of that stuff, we lose a month there or something, but we have 10 months of production. I was in production on Chaos Theory for only nine or something like that after pre-production and conception and all that. We have really good tools. It's going to be hard, but we already have ... in fact, when I get back to the office on Wednesday or whatever I should be able to - unless the guys have missed their deadlines - I should be able to run all 50 kilometers of the game continuously on my PC at my desk. Not all of the mission scripting will be in, but I should be able to run the whole game as a continuous game. There's still missing features, we're not at alpha, but once we hit alpha, that's what alpha is, it's feature complete. The world fits together. We just have to polish it from there, really. I think we can make it. I know it sounds hard, it sounds crazy to me, but the rate at which we can build this stuff is insane.

The game looks impressive for three months of full production and pre-alpha.

When we showed our demo to get through the gate into production which was also the demo we showed to the European print press when we first kicked off. That was a completely different one square kilometer. And it's not like we're going to show the same demo every time for the next eight months every time we show something. We'll probably show a different demo every time because we have this huge world and it's all there and we pick this part of the world because it had a small piece of jungle plus a lot of rolling hilly Savannah plus a good place to watch the sun set in the west. We picked it for criteria we wanted to show in this demo. We'll have other stuff we want to show so instead of having to shoehorn it in, we'll find a place in the world where it actually works.

How big is the team on FarCry 2?

It's complicated ...

I imagine you would need a lot of artists to cover 50 square miles,

You'll see that a lot of it reproduces. There's only ten blades of grass, we have a really big team, but it's not as big as the Splinter Cell team was. I think we have about one hundred guys on the real dev team. We also have a pipeline team, the engine team, that we ramped up earlier and did the technology development and they're about 35 guys, but they really are the engine team. Yes, they service us as their primary client right now - well, actually, we're not their only client anymore - but we actually give that engine out to other projects in exchange for arrangements that keep everyone's budgets balanced and all of that. But, yeah, we don't really count that in our team so we're just one hundred guys.

What about console ports? A game like FarCry 2 seems like you're necessarily limiting those possibilities ...

Yeah, I know. Our mandate, like I said, was to make Ubisoft a top-tier PC game. That's my mandate, that's what I'm doing. It's obviously Ubisoft's business if they want to do a console version.

So, in terms of design and structure, you're not really considering a future on consoles? It's all about that PC to its full power?

Well, keep in mind, we have a lot of experienced console developers. And yes, using a PC to its full potential has really big advantages but I think that pure PC and conversely pure console developers, I think a mistake they often make is to assume that you make a PC game a certain way. Actually, we have a lot of guys that are really good console developers and there are things you learn from consoles about how to make a better PC game and to just disregard those things and say, "We're PC and you can't learn anything from how to make a console game" is ridiculous. So, we've leveraged some of the things we know about the consoles in order to make the game better. Streaming is a really good example, right? On PC you have a giant hard drive with a really fat pipe coming out of it, and you can stream really, really easily, but that leads to data bloat and doing things that you maybe shouldn't be doing. On console, you don't usually have as big a hard drive or as fast a hard drive and you don't have the same technological advantages in terms of streaming, often, or if you're streaming from a disc on a console, same thing, right? You need to find ways to keep your data small; you need to find ways to get the data quickly off of the media, so we still use a lot of those tricks that we know from consoles. The engine is not alien to a console environment just because we have the expertise.

You've been talking about a strong single-player experience. Will there be a multiplayer experience?

Talking about multiplayer is sort of later in the communications plan. What I will say briefly about multiplayer is that the same way we're trying to revolutionize the first-person shooter and trying to make a game that's immersive and realistic and really has a strong sense of place. We're trying to do the same kinds of things in multiplayer so it's not just taking out all of the slow animations, putting in some flags and there you go. That's not what we're going to do, but you'll have to wait to find out more.

Alright, fair enough. In the single-player experience, what sort of length are you budgeting? With games like this, they can become huge.

Yeah, it can be huge. What we proposed at our kick-off meeting when we went into production, is that if you aggressively go mission-mission-mission-mission-mission and speedrun through it, you're looking at a ten or twelve hour game experience. I think, more feasibly, getting through the main A plot if you want, and doing a few side missions here or there, to play it normally, you're talking about a thirty plus hour game. And I think to really exhaust the content and go to all of the locations and collect all of the stuff and do every mission you can do, you can do so, you're talking about upwards of eighty to maybe even upwards of one hundred hours to really drain the content.

That's obviously a huge departure from most triple-A first person shooters, where you're talking about an eight to twelve hour game a lot of times. Are you nervous about alienating an audience that's looking for that twelve hour game.

It's possible ...

It's almost like it's an RPG in that respect.

In a sense it has those elements to it and there's a risk there, but there's lots of other things I'm nervous about to. I'm nervous about the fact the economy is going in the shitter and people don't have $80 to spend on eight different eight hour games. And maybe they'd like to spend $80 on a hundred hour game they can play as they upgrade their PC periodically and not spend $80 on a game every two months for the next two years or three years or four years or however long the game is going to look great on the PC for. I think the idea of only the twelve hour game, and you don't have a choice about it, is maybe a bit antiquated. I think, or I hope anyways, that people want to choose a little but about how long they want to engage a game for and if they want to play it aggressively and quickly in ten hours, they can. I think the main design challenge is that if people that are classic linear hardcore shooter players who want to play a game in a line and be taken on a really, heavily guided experience that's fun and has a powerful story with really strong pacing, if they try to play it that way, one of the risks is that they start to feel like they're missing something so they feel some kind of conflict, so it makes them unhappy about the content balance. Going into that without knowing how it's going to work out is, I guess, the price you have to pay. We said when we started this game, we told our bosses "first, true open world shooter." But now there's Boiling Point, there was STALKER; so we didn't end up being first. And the feedback on those games was pretty positive. Even Boiling Point, which was terribly, terribly broken, a lot of people said, "This game is so good, if only it didn't have bugs."

Well, STALKER is similar. It was delayed numerous times, and it came out and it still has a lot of bugs, but gamers were really receptive to the idea.

When we were in conception, a lot of people said, "You can't make that game. No one wants to play an open world shooter." And it turns out we have a really fun game, so we'll see what they say after they play it.

Are you guys even considering a Mac version at all?

Honestly, I have no idea. No idea. I've never heard anything about a Mac version.

Thanks for your time, Clint!

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PAX 07: The Far Cry 2 public demo

Christopher Grant — 2007-08-26T19:05:00+00:00

Filed under: PC, First Person Shooters

They inform us that there will be no visual or audio recording during the FarCry 2 demo. Developer Clint Hocking is on the stage, having flown to Seattle from Leipzig for this one, single demo. They've reserved the first two rows for press, eager to ensure their forfeiture of sleep doesn't go unrewarded. The screen is showing a Windows desktop with a big, shiny FarCry 2 logo. Carolyn Carnes opens up, reminding us there is no recording equipment (OR ELSE!), asking us to turn our cellphones off, reminding us this is a pre-alpha (read: if something goes wrong, it's early!) and of course, they won't be able to answer everything during the Q&A session.

They gave a limited demonstration of the game at Leipzig, but this will be the definitive unveiling of the game. She intros Clint, notes he was the lead developer of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (someone yells out, "Oh yeahhhh!") and creative director of the FarCry 2 project. He's been on the project for over 2 years now, starting with a small team of eight guys working to determine how to make a sequel worthy of the original. They went into production three months ago and "aren't even alpha." They're targeting first quarter 2008.

The demo, due to a technological circumstance, will be run in an unfortunately low 800x600 whereas the game has been running for them at 1600x1050, 30fps. The good news: the frame rate should be great.

Wants to reestablish Ubisoft as a top tier PC developer, not just consoles. That's the business mandate ("and I don't care about that frankly.") The second part: Ubisoft believes that games need to evolve into a medium as emotionally involving as any other medium. More than just distraction. In order to compete with other entertainment opportunities they need to be engaging. His job is to prove to us that their beliefs on the evolution of games is not wrong.

They tossed everything from FarCry 1 that didn't belong. What they left:

It was exotic
A high level of gameplay
Very realistic
Very immersive

They wanted to create someplace beautiful, someplace you maybe have never been, but didn't consider the tropical environment an exotic location anymore. Instead: they chose the African savannah.

They wanted to create an open environment where you could go anywhere at any time. The world is a 50 sq. km world with no loading times that you can go anywhere you want at any time, and return to the same location at any time. In order to make it seem less scripted, they needed to make the world dynamic. They'll illustrate this later.

Rather than making a game where they tell you the relationships between characters, they want you to develop those relationships on your own.

When FarCry 2 opens you will find yourself in a hotel room in Africa dying from malaria. You will be tasked with the job of hunting down and killing a man responsible for selling arms to an African nation. The story opens with him sitting next to your bed reading your dossier on him, laughing. He doesn't bother to kill you. You'll need to track him down by playing both sides, taking missions. The open world applies to gameplay and narrative ("which are fundamentally the same thing") not just geometry and graphics.

The demo will run about 30 minutes.

The demo is not scripted (they actually didn't even make the tools to script it out) so "funny things may happen." The demo starts, the audience claps. We're off!

"Pre-alpha build - August 2007"

Jungles! "Jungles are also an important part of central Africa." Maintains continuity with the first game. They're using "Real Tree" to generate the trees. They're all completely physical and interactive, procedurally generated. The trees are "real", they're destructible.

"This whole notion of high-res textures has gotta go. It' doesn't work." The textures are "very, very, very small. They take up almost no space." That's an advantage since they can't scale down their textures 6 week s before shipping.

Guards patrol the world, meaning if somebody dies the rest of the world will know it. The map is in-world so the character pulls it out and needs to find good light to read it. The map shows 1 sq. km. "In the next 1/2 hour you'll see 1% of our world."

They're showing off the tree bark textures, and they're very high-res "without being high-res at all."

He climbs onto the back of a parked Jeep, fires the turret, and jumps into the driver's seat. The AI is autonomous, so they chase him. "This is not a scripted car chase. This is the AI pissed off I stole their truck."

He crashes the vehicle, gets out, shoots his way through some shacks to take cover. They're looking for him and say, "Let's cut his fucking eyes out."

They'll often break into two teams, with one team providing cover.

He's wounded so he uses a knife to pull out a bullet from his leg. No health packs. In the final game they'll have over 60 animations for first-aid.

The truck flattened a row of grass on it's way in. It's not pretending to blow in the wind, it's "real" and they can render it off to the horizon.

You can pick up ammo from ammo piles, but they're real too. He shoots it and hundreds of bullets start flying around.

They have a real-time day/night cycle. He shows the sun coming up (in the East of course), shows the light coming through the trees (God rays!). He shoots some tree branches off, more light comes through, the tree's shadows change.

He points out a bug, tells us we'll be seeing it a lot.

The skybox is not a texture, those are procedural clouds. He's created a storm, the clouds change, the wind is blowing the grass and the trees. Trees are actually losing branches. Particles from an explosion are blown away in the wind as well.

The tree trunk are still blowing without the branches ("we'll fix that.") The gun jams, true to its real life counterpart. An AK will almost never jam but it's less accurate.

There are no super powers or mutant powers or anything. You can't turn on storms. They'll take control of the weather system at times to emphasize events, make them feel more cinematic.

"I know it sounds cheesy and corny, but is it less cheesy and corny than what we see in movies all the time?"

Stealth is an important part of the game as well.

he shoots a building full of ammo with a rocket launcher and the whole building explodes in a chain reaction, tires fly everywhere.

Somebody asked about ricochets and he happily answers showing an example. RPGs can bounce, but it's dangerous. One explodes too close and he reaches over his arm to put out a fire. Audience claps!

We meet his friend Marty. The audience wants to kill him.

While the RPG is his 2nd favorite weapon, the flame thrower is his first. He lights a tree on fire at the bottom, and watches as the entire thing lights up on its own.

He shoots a guy in the leg, and everyone scatters. Of course, since he's not dead, another comes out to help him and, sure enough, he gets shot. THe audience loves it.

Uh oh, they're after him! He dies, and his friend Marty is there to drag him to safety. If he killed Marty previously, he'd be dead right now. Marty is in the open, and he can be killed just like any other character. Marty left all of his guns on the ground so we've got to find another weapon. The fire he started before has spread even wider.

"Normally when I do this demo it's a little shorter so it's starting to get dark." He lights some stuff on fire to give us more light. You can use fire to also help control fights.

He climbs into a dune buggy (!) and speeds away, intentionally crashing it into a tree and climbs into a hang-glider. "It wouldn't be FarCry without a hang-glider."

"What's it like hang-gliding in a storm?" "not implemented is what it;s like." Laughs.

There's gazelles eating on the ground. You can really get a sense of the scale up in the air. He lands and ends the demo looking out over the sun setting on the African savannah.

We've got 15 minutes for a Q&A.

"What about animals? Will they affect the environment?"

There will be about 12 different types of animals. There will not be predator cats and there won't be any endangered species.

What happens if you kill one faction?

They'll know camp to camp if you're out there. There will be no changing hands of territory. Regardless of how many people you kill, there are hundreds of thousands of people and to affect that, you'd need armies, etc.

Will the wind affect bullets?

It will affect fire, windmills, and obviously trees but probably not bullets. They did discuss it though (nerds!)

Will leaves be affected by things?

More or less, yes.

How will the boundaries be handled since it's no longer an island?

The original game had a "soft boundary" - the water. It felt limitless. THe new game has desert. There's a low desert and a high-desert. You lose stamina?

Is it possible to incinerate the entire game world with wildfires?

You could if you went everywhere and torched everything, but the fire is procedurally generated. You can create a firebreak to protect yourself from burning to death. The burned stuff will regenerate to some degree.

What will users without DX10/Vista be missing out on?

There will be a high-end Vista version for those people (billionaires). The min-spec will be a "very powerful" single core machine. Recommended machine is a dual-core with a graphics card. Demo was on a dual-core XPS with an 8800 at 25fps at 1600 unoptimized.

Sheer size, short development time, how has that affected level design?

In 2 hours a level designer and artist can build a map 1 sq. km in size with gameplay. The engine is built for iteration, and they can just "test, test, test, test, test, test, test" to make gameplay work.

In traditional FPSs, you progress by acquiring new weapons. How does the player progress?

You buy weapons in the game from arms dealers. There are two towns with an arms detente. As long as you don't fire, they won't fire back at you. There are about thirty weapons in the game.

How important is fire to beating the missions?

It's a way to play. it's very dangerous, throws a lot of chaos into the system. It can disrupt the habits of the enemies. The marketing team decided fire was an ample demonstration of their commitment to the open-world ideal.

Will the game take advantage of the PhysX card?

No details to report right now.

If you destroy the vehicles for a camp, how long will it take for them to get a new vehicle?

In short: it depends on all sorts of things.

Sustenance?

You don't need food or water, but you are sick with malaria, so you need medicine. You need to do missions to try and help doctors leave the country and help you get medication. That will help increase your health meter. The more terrible things you need to do to progress in the game increases your infamy and, inversely, makes civilians less likely to help you. It's a balancing act.

Will there be in-door environments?

There will be some in the towns, but it's a shortcoming of the engine that they can't do detailed internal lighting. No embassies, nuclear power plants, or convention centers.

That's it. The crowd claps and exits, surely eager to dissect the demo they've just seen.

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