Far Cry 5 - Welcome to Montana

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Man, those graphics are incredible!

Well those are unsettling

Love those teasers and the setting should make for some gorgeous views. Far Cry 4 was my first game in the series so I'm definitely ready to jump back into that type of experience again.

Intriguing. I have pretty much had my fill of the Ubi-brand collecta-crafta-hunta-shootathon but this at least piques my curiosity.

It's probably too much to hope, but...sigh...if they went back to Far Cry 2 style gameplay and atmosphere, I'd absolutely be down for, say, a nice Cormac McCarthy-inspired noir Western.

There is a chance they've learned that they need to change things up. I'm pretty sure they got the message on the radio tower front. A more gritty Far Cry 2 style game would be amazing. Just the change of setting to the US suggests it will have to be a different type of game. Fingers crossed.

The teasers are great I'm excited. I didn't expect to be. I tried to convince myself the trailers were in engine but they are undoubtedly filmed. The product of the not so secret film shoot.

Well that creeped me out. And not in a good way.

It looks to me as if they've gone a bit more in the horror direction, which makes me more interested than I have been in the last few...

Podunk wrote:

Intriguing. I have pretty much had my fill of the Ubi-brand collecta-crafta-hunta-shootathon but this at least piques my curiosity.

It's probably too much to hope, but...sigh...if they went back to Far Cry 2 style gameplay and atmosphere, I'd absolutely be down for, say, a nice Cormac McCarthy-inspired noir Western.

Forgive the ignorance, but what made Far Cry 2 such a gem? I haven't played it (my first game in the series was 4) but did it not follow the progression/towers gameplay the the later games adapted?

tanstaafl wrote:

It looks to me as if they've gone a bit more in the horror direction, which makes me more interested than I have been in the last few...

Yep, that's where I am too - I'd love to see a more creepy/survival-horror take on the formula. It will probably be something like cannibal cultists, but maybe they'll get creative and we'll have something fresh.

UDX wrote:

Forgive the ignorance, but what made Far Cry 2 such a gem? I haven't played it (my first game in the series was 4) but did it not follow the progression/towers gameplay the the later games adapted?

It felt a lot less tuned for a wide audience. No radio towers, no collecting other than 'war diamonds' that, if I'm remembering correctly, actually gave you money towards weapons, etc. The enemy vehicles would chase you down if they saw you and the enemy patrols would genuinely try to flank you ( I died a lot before I started to spot the buggers moving quickly and quietly through the grass out on my left or right.) The fire wasn't just a token thing. It would propagate and spread over a wide area. I would occasionally burn out every vehicle in the vicinity and I'd have to walk home.

It also had malaria that could crop up randomly, even in fire fights. You had to take pills to clear your vision. The guard posts repopulated and it had the, ever popular, weapon degradation. Many people saw those things as a negative (which is entirely understandable.) I enjoyed all them because it gave me more fights and made the fights unpredictable and exciting (you'd be fighting with an assault rifle only to have it pack up on you and have to pick up the next weapon you found and fight with that be it a shot gun or a rifle.)

There was also no tagging which again, for me, just ramped up the tension and excitement. You'd be in the middle of a hostile guard post and you had no idea if there was a guy around the next corner or not.

My conviction though is that Far Cry is a series where the first one you play is your favourite. People who love FC3 often say it was their first one. I personally didn't get on with FC3 because, in so many ways, it wasn't Far Cry 2. Coming off FC2 FC3 felt very hand holdy and the AI felt a lot dumber.

What Podunk said, basically. The last Ubisoft game I played was Assassins' Creed: Black Flag, which was the apotheosis of their philosophy (love the "collecta-crafta-hunta-shootathon", btw).

I avoided Far Cry 4 because it looked like Far Cry 3.5. I avoided Far Cry Primal because I couldn't see the point.

I could be tempted by something more stripped back like Far Cry 2 (provided those instantly respawning guard posts don't return).

Higgledy wrote:

My conviction though is that Far Cry is a series where the first one you play is your favourite. People who love FC3 often say it was their first one. I personally didn't get on with FC3 because, in so many ways, it wasn't Far Cry 2. Coming off FC2 FC3 felt very hand holdy and the AI felt a lot dumber.

Counterexample: My first FarCry was FarCry 1.

Looked alright to me. I got more of a dark comedy vibe a la Fargo.

Thats not computer graphics, by the way.

I do fear its zombie themed, but hope its not! After Primal, which is my favorite Far Cry game ever with Permadeath and survival mode, I do have somewhat high hopes!

Gremlin wrote:
Higgledy wrote:

My conviction though is that Far Cry is a series where the first one you play is your favourite. People who love FC3 often say it was their first one. I personally didn't get on with FC3 because, in so many ways, it wasn't Far Cry 2. Coming off FC2 FC3 felt very hand holdy and the AI felt a lot dumber.

Counterexample: My first FarCry was FarCry 1.

Oh yeah. Apart from Far Cry 1 . The exception that proves the rule.

PaladinTom wrote:

Looked alright to me. I got more of a dark comedy vibe a la Fargo.

I've been thinking it could be inspired by Justified.

Higgledy wrote:
UDX wrote:

Forgive the ignorance, but what made Far Cry 2 such a gem? I haven't played it (my first game in the series was 4) but did it not follow the progression/towers gameplay the the later games adapted?

It felt a lot less tuned for a wide audience. No radio towers, no collecting other than 'war diamonds' that, if I'm remembering correctly, actually gave you money towards weapons, etc. The enemy vehicles would chase you down if they saw you and the enemy patrols would genuinely try to flank you ( I died a lot before I started to spot the buggers moving quickly and quietly through the grass out on my left or right.) The fire wasn't just a token thing. It would propagate and spread over a wide area. I would occasionally burn out every vehicle in the vicinity and I'd have to walk home.

It also had malaria that could crop up randomly, even in fire fights. You had to take pills to clear your vision. The guard posts repopulated and it had the, ever popular, weapon degradation. Many people saw those things as a negative (which is entirely understandable.) I enjoyed all them because it gave me more fights and made the fights unpredictable and exciting (you'd be fighting with an assault rifle only to have it pack up on you and have to pick up the next weapon you found and fight with that be it a shot gun or a rifle.)

There was also no tagging which again, for me, just ramped up the tension and excitement. You'd be in the middle of a hostile guard post and you had no idea if there was a guy around the next corner or not.

My conviction though is that Far Cry is a series where the first one you play is your favourite. People who love FC3 often say it was their first one. I personally didn't get on with FC3 because, in so many ways, it wasn't Far Cry 2. Coming off FC2 FC3 felt very hand holdy and the AI felt a lot dumber.

Very interesting. It almost sounds like survival mode in Fall Out -- a bit more tailored toward a "hardcore" (I really dislike using that term) experience with lots of balls to juggle at once. Those balls, apparently, being disease-infested and gun-jamming, ha.

I think your point about the first people play being the favorite is probably spot on. It's hard to replicate the feeling of experiencing something for the first time. I think it's interesting that I see so much flak for the towers. I get that they're kind of a Ubisoft joke now, but I thought it was a satisfying progression method; slowly peeling back the map to discover more.

I've always thought the towers were a clever way of gradually dishing out quests and points of interest (slightly ruined by the fact that I had a tendency to run around and do as many as I could in one go.) They just used them in one too many games. I believe 'The Crew' was the last straw.

Higgledy wrote:

I've always thought the towers were a clever way of gradually dishing out quests and points of interest (slightly ruined by the fact that I had a tendency to run around and do as many as I could in one go.) They just used them in one too many games. I believe 'The Crew' was the last straw.

I would enjoy a more low-fi experience that merges some of the conceits of FC 2 (nihilism, relativism, fighting yourself as much as your enemies, etc) with the fun characterization of FC 4 (outsider protagonist, over-the-top enemy, semi-mysticism).

For gameplay, I hope they keep the solid shooting, stabbing, arrowing, take-downing and discard the grindy crafting and animal hunting.

The setting sounds interesting but I'm more interested in finding out about the nuts and bolts of gameplay. If this is just a nice coat of paint over the same stuff we have been doing the last couple games I will probably pass.

I never got the love for Far Cry 2. It was just good (to me).

Cons: Punishing traversal with very limited fast travel. Re-spawning enemies. Weapon degradation. Malaria.

Pros: The live map! Repairable vehicles. Getting revived by other characters. Fire.

For me, what Far Cry 2 nailed that none of the others in the series did was immersion. The uncompromising commitment to keeping you in the game and out of menus, the painstakingly crafted environmental lighting and weather effects, even the fact that you were alone in a hostile world and could only interact with potentially immersion-breaking NPCs under very specific circumstances. No on-screen waypoints, minimal HUD, no constant nagging reminders of all the other ways the game is desperately trying to amuse/hook you--just you and a beautiful, dangerous world.

I love a lot of other things about FC2, but for me the number one thing that is missing from the subsequent FC games is that sense of place and immersion.

Edit: I wrote this in the FC2 thread back when FC4 was new, and it still sums up my feelings:

Podunk wrote:

I've been replaying Far Cry 2 during my lunch breaks, and also sporadically playing Far Cry 4 in the evenings. I'm mostly enjoying the FC4 experience, but it's so damn needy--you spawn in a room where some woman is wailing about the injustice that has been done to her and offering you a mission, you step outside and the Golden Path is in the middle of a pitched battle with some of Min's douchebags (Karma event!), you try to drive to an outpost or a tower or a mission and oh sh*t it's a courier, and then a cargo truck, and then some animals that you need to murder to make a wallet, and then some prisoners that must be freed. You can't go for 30 f*cking seconds without the game throwing something in your face. Here, Gamer! It's Fun! Wait, here's more Fun! Take some more! Open wide, f*cker, you know you like it! And then you get out of the vehicle because it would probably just be faster to walk overland, and the landscape is crawling with animals, almost all of which all super aggressive and very interested in immediately eating you.

Meanwhile, Far Cry 2 lets you drive alone on a desert road at night, and although you are constantly expecting an attack, you don't see another living soul. You finally roll up to the bus stop on the edge of the savanna just as dawn breaks, and a flock of birds rises gracefully up from the river as the golden light of morning fills the valley.

Far Cry 3 and 4 don't trust you enough to give you those moments. They think you are some kind of a goddamned moron.

Edit again, because I've apparently gone off on this topic numerous times here on gamerswithjobs dot com, and this is more reasonable and less ranty:
https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/comme...

I understand exactly what you're saying Podunk. Far Cry 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, no other entry in the series even comes close.

This looks... like it's going to be different...

IMAGE(http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/HEac6CMaPtYzhmq2PY5xki-650-80.jpg)

And to hijack my own thread a bit further, I too think FC2 was my favorite of the series. Two moments stand out to me; one a quiet one and one an action one.

In the first, I've driven back towards a bus station after my last mission, get out, and turn to look at the sunset. There, I see the sun partially silhouetted by the trees with beams of light shining through the dust my jeep had kicked up. I had one of the more memorable "I'm *there*" moments I've had while gaming.

The other was a mission where I was supposed to kill someone. I've cut cross-country to intercept his convoy, see it, and open fire. Of course, the convoy retaliates.

I'm ducking fire, taking damage, and see a jeep peel out from the convoy and head towards me. (A rocket launcher has already killed my target.) I toss a grenade towards the oncoming attackers and duck behind some rocks to heal.

I hear an explosion, see a shadow and look up to see the jeep, which apparently drove right over my grenade, flipping over the rocks and above me. One of the most cinematic scenes I've been in in a game that wasn't a cutscene.

Yeah the constantly respawning checkpoints were annoying, the malaria was a PITA, and the ending was kinda "wait, what?", but the moment-to-moment gameplay in that game was amazing.

I love it so much.

tanstaafl wrote:

This looks... like it's going to be different...

IMAGE(http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/HEac6CMaPtYzhmq2PY5xki-650-80.jpg)

Hopefully those are the bad guys.. I like the idea of white male terrorists.

If they actually embrace the idea of examining white supremacist terrorists and don't water it down with both-sides-isms it could be amazing (like Spec Ops: The Line) and I'll buy it day one.

If they make it glamorous to be a lost-cause white-supremacist terrorist, I'll go play something else.

This looks great. Video games always get grief for stereotyping and the US is ripe for it right now.

Can't wait to see 'Muricans as the bad guys.

Not for nothing, but Clint Hocking returned to Ubisoft (Toronto) back in 2015. He was the lead designer on Far Cry 2 and we know for sure he's not working on Splinter Cell. Just sayin'

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