STACK NZ Magazine November Issue 57

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GAMES
NOVEMBER 2014 JB Hi-Fi
FEATURE visit
characters: one of my favourite moments playing
yesterday was deciding to shoot the rebel soldiers
who had been fighting with me on a whim.
Logically they all turned against me, then one
of them hid behind a barrel and yelled, ‘you’re
shooting at the wrong side, f***face’.
Very proud we got to say f***face in the game
in an emergent, natural way.”
Story is important in FC4, and clearly
developing a strong nemesis in the game is now
a prerequisite (Hutchinson says Pagan Min is ‘not
We wanted a unique, open
world environment that
challenged gameplay
in a newway.
crazy like Vaas; he just lives in a world where he
is so rich and powerful that he can do anything’).
Moreover, the studio has also underscored the
importance of player-generated narrative.
“While the story is important as a backbone
for the game, we really want to provide as
much freedom for you as a player as possible,”
Hutchinson explains. “The story is there to drive
you around the world, get you to interact with the
various features and learn about why Kyrat is in
the state it’s in. This time around we’ve added a
bunch of choices within the story which affect
your missions, objectives and how the story
ends, which we hope means people feel
more ownership of it.”
Along with the choice-driven narrative,
additional gameplay features include the
ability to drop a friend directly into co-op
in the open world, and the introduction of
new tools including a grappling hook and
a gyrocoptor. And if you were a fan of the
hallucination sequences in Far Cry 3, the
good news is Ubisoft heard you, and the dev
team have designed a similar system for FC4.
“People loved them, so we wanted to
bring them back. But this time we wanted them
to be filled with gameplay, not just story,”
Hutchinson reveals. “We spoke about how we
could bond this desire with our goal to give a real
sense of depth and believability to Kyrat. The
result was the invention of a fictional set of myths
and legends for the country, which took the shape
of the five playable Shangri-La sections.”
Finally, we ask Hutchinson what other
locations were on the table before they
settled on Nepal.
“We’re always talking about
possibilities, other locales... but
to reveal anything would sadly
compromise our future plans and
then ninjas would descend from
the ceiling and cut your
throat before you could
include it in your
magazine.”
A new a villain, a new protagonist, and new geographical setting.
Far Cry is back.We spoke with creative director Alex Hutchinson.
Far Cry 4
is out on
November 18
ar Cry 3 was a real surprise package in
2012. Released amidst a crop of triple-A
competition, it was a technical tour de
force featuring a compelling, layered campaign,
and one of the best villains ever found in a
video game.
Now the series is back, ditching the
tropical Asian-Pacific archipelago of 3 for
the mountainous regions of Nepal.
The fictional region of Kyrat is where
Far Cry 4 will play out.
“We wanted a unique, open world environment
that challenged gameplay in a new way, so a
location with mountains was a big plus,”
says Australian Alex Hutchinson, creative director
on the game. “We also wanted somewhere that
was full of animals living in close proximity, and
we wanted somewhere exotic that would be a
new and unique playground for the player.”
The game area is approximately the same size
as the environment in Far Cry 3, but Hutchinson
tells us that the area is denser this time around,
and consequently there’s far more to do.
“It’s got more events, more people going
about their daily life. We’ve also got a bunch of
new systems – you can earn karma by helping
the locals and then spend that karma by
calling them to help you in battle.
“There’s also lots more interaction between
animal species and a much more complex
dialogue system for both friendly and enemy
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