By Jim Rossignol on November 16th, 2012 at 7:00 pm.
Far Cry 3‘s Rook Islands contain bears, leopards, crocodiles, and what appear to be komodo dragons. And those things can dynamically hunt the other animals – and humans – on the island. Ubi have put a video which attempts to show off some of these dynamic features, which you can see below. There’s a lot of things on fire, of course, and many dudes are exploded. But will all these things add up to an interesting open world? Bears + explosives is an equation that I am very interested in examining with a critical eye. Perhaps writing down the resulting functions on a blackboard. Yes, I’m going to be reviewing this over the weekend, so I’ll be able to tell you all about lizards versus pirates next week. Review on the 21st.
(It’s got to be better than Far Cry 2, right?) The game is out November 29th in Europe and December 4th in North America. Haha.
16/11/2012 at 19:03 Text_Fish says:
Tropical islands are boring. I want FC2′s setting with FC3′s wildlife and supposed variety.
Also, what’s up with the miniature forest at 0:53? Is that weird?
16/11/2012 at 19:05 Brun says:
I found the African Savannah got rather boring after a while. It’s inevitable when your setting is so one-dimensional. I think Just Cause 2 struck a nice balance of environments.
16/11/2012 at 19:16 Text_Fish says:
The difference for me is that the African setting felt so much more threatening — I could almost feel the suffocating humidity and diseased mosquito’s tickling my neck. By comparison, tropical islands feel a bit too much like a holiday resort.
16/11/2012 at 22:40 The Random One says:
I think Just Cause 2 went too far on the other way. It’s too strange when a desert suddenly gives way to a tropical rainforest. If you represent a single biome properly it does have a lot of different terrains and sights that add some variety to the game.
16/11/2012 at 19:06 cue kalamos says:
I disagree, I have been to too many brown jungles in shooters these days
16/11/2012 at 19:11 Text_Fish says:
To be honest I don’t really play many new shooters these days so I guess I dodged a bullet there. A brown jungle shaped bullet. I thought the current trend was for urban decay.
16/11/2012 at 19:40 zeekthegeek says:
Check some Crysis 3 trailers: They went from Jungle, to Urban Decay, and now are at Jungle growing out of Urban Decay
16/11/2012 at 21:44 ukpanik says:
“Jungle growing out of Urban Decay”
J. G. Ballard styli, yes please.
17/11/2012 at 01:19 captain nemo says:
“crystal world” – nice
16/11/2012 at 19:39 Zogtee says:
Can you get malaria in FC3? That’s the important bit.
16/11/2012 at 22:30 Arglebargle says:
…And is it an incredibly poorly done, dumb mechanic?? That’s important too!
16/11/2012 at 23:06 Text_Fish says:
Personally I don’t think the malaria attacks should be seen as a gameplay mechanic, so much as another scene setting tool, just like heat haze on the horizon or birdsong in the background. It was a not-so-subtle reminder of peril and it humanized the protagonist in a way that you don’t often find in FPS games.
16/11/2012 at 20:19 SuperNashwanPower says:
Its a bush, not a bunch of miniature trees. The graphics are just a bit shit and have that cardboard cutout thing going on.
17/11/2012 at 11:37 Arkanatos says:
It is a good shrubbery, I like the laurels particularly…
17/11/2012 at 11:46 SuperNashwanPower says:
WE WANT A (photorealistic, HD textured, tesselated, small space ambient occlusioned) SHRUBBERY
17/11/2012 at 18:09 Arkanatos says:
If only we knew someone who arranged and designed shrubberies for a living… ENTER: ROGER THE SHUBBER!!!one
16/11/2012 at 23:15 lhzr says:
what’s weird is that the local druglords couldn’t get together enough people to properly defend their “miniature forests” from pyromaniacal american fratboys..
16/11/2012 at 23:23 Stevostin says:
I am with you on this. African Setting was very interesting. I wonder if like me you did cut the music to discover the marvellous job on ambient sounds ?
17/11/2012 at 09:52 Freud says:
I think you have to separate the environment from the setting when it comes to FC2. It wasn’t the jungle or savanna that made it work. It was the hopelessness, cynicism and nihilism that created a very strange game. Basically you didn’t have the choice to be a hero. You did have the choice to act even more despicable than you had to. It created a very unique gaming experience.
I don’t think FC3 will go in that direction, even though it seems to have a little bit of darkness to it.
16/11/2012 at 19:05 MonolithicTentacledAbomination says:
Far Cry 2 wins purely by virtue of being set in African savvanah and jungle, and the speed at which the main antagonist talks.
16/11/2012 at 20:28 BreadBitten says:
…and to think, the same guy also voiced Max Payne. Man, everyone in that game talked like their plane was going down or something.
16/11/2012 at 19:06 DanielBrauer says:
What are those tiny pine trees at 0:53?
16/11/2012 at 19:07 MrLebanon says:
that’s what i was thinking… terrorist tree farm?!
16/11/2012 at 19:09 Text_Fish says:
That struck me, too. Also, I made you look QUITE the fool by editing my first post without checking if anyone else was talking about it already. Sorry about that.
16/11/2012 at 20:44 DanielBrauer says:
I will carry the shame with me always.
But we can both be ashamed about our lack of street cred, because BAshment is probably right.
16/11/2012 at 19:55 BAshment says:
think its cannabis.
16/11/2012 at 19:08 d3vilsadvocate says:
Gosh, I was excited for this game, now this trailer kinda killed that. The graphics look like WOW in this trailer, probably reflecting console graphics.
Also, I’m getting a very strong FC2 “erring-around-like-an-idiot-shooting-the-same-guys-over-and-over-again” kind of vibe out of this.
I sure as hell won’t preorder.
16/11/2012 at 21:42 ffordesoon says:
What version of WOW are you playing where the graphics look that good?
16/11/2012 at 19:09 Unaco says:
It could root through my bins and get my dog pregnant, and it’d still be better than FarCry2 imo.
Also… No Oceans tag, surely? You can’t just laugh it off Jim, can you? Will John be writing something decrying this? He could make a lot of puns about Islands and Oceans.
16/11/2012 at 19:17 Text_Fish says:
Do you keep your dog in a bin?
16/11/2012 at 19:20 Unaco says:
No… What sort of arsehole would keep a dog in a bin?
16/11/2012 at 19:30 Text_Fish says:
The same sort of arsehole who’d get his dog pregnant, I guess.
17/11/2012 at 06:35 frightlever says:
pregnant dog + time = puppies
Puppies rock. It’s almost a shame you have to chuck them in the bin once they stop being cute.
16/11/2012 at 19:22 Lord Custard Smingleigh says:
You don’t?
16/11/2012 at 19:32 Text_Fish says:
I’ve never owned a dog so I didn’t realise it was normal practice. I’ll be sure to do so if I ever do get a dog though as I wouldn’t want to trample on dog-owning tradition.
16/11/2012 at 19:23 Sleepymatt says:
What’s worse is, his dog is male…
16/11/2012 at 19:33 Text_Fish says:
There’s a mum joke in here somewhere, I just know it.
16/11/2012 at 19:40 Sparkasaurusmex says:
RE: oceans- I guess the initial reaction is to laugh it off because it’s not NA getting the game first. But yeah, it’s still oceans on the internet.
16/11/2012 at 19:20 Crimsoneer says:
From what I saw at Eurogamer and Rezzed, this is going to be awesome. Fixed FarCry 2′s repetitiveness, and added awesome progression and open world-ness :)
16/11/2012 at 19:21 Beernut says:
I didn’t follow the coverage of the game up until now, but loved the original Far Cry’s open Terrain and its possibility to approach outposts in a variety of ways. I’d love it, if they could bring back this feeling of a persistent environment (i.e. NO re-spawning stuff all over the place, yes I’m looking at you, Far Cry 2 or scripted events).
What’s curious though: The trailer contains a lot of scenes, in which everything seems blurred and/or grainy. Is this due to the capturing method or scaling of this particular trailer, or is this the quality we can expect from the final game on PC?
EDIT: Watched some other trailer, which looked much better. So it’s just poor encoding I suppose. Happy now. :)
16/11/2012 at 19:27 moyogo says:
When people take digs at Far Cry 2, I really get in touch with my inner angry-internet-man.
It had mapz!
16/11/2012 at 19:32 Shooop says:
It had a lot of things going for it. Really, it did. But all it took were two really, really stupid design decisions to spoil it for me.
16/11/2012 at 19:41 Zogtee says:
Someone handed me a gun. I used it once and it broke. Also, I had malaria.
16/11/2012 at 20:18 SuperNashwanPower says:
Also the “only one gun of a particular category” system that meant you could never have all the best weapons in the same loadout and the ways that some weapons that clearly didn’t belong in the same category were put together.
16/11/2012 at 23:42 Stevostin says:
Well actually the weapon slot system is something I really digged. It was simple, but it forced you to choose a certain combination. I also liked the malaria. I never got why it was annoying people. Sure it forced you to do some trips sometimes, and to deal with ressources (a bit) but really it’s nothing more than any game that impose you food management. And that is usually seen as a cool thing. Weapon getting jammed was maybe lacking realism, but it certainly was fun to me.
The real big cons was the stupid respawn and lack of friendly npc. Beside that, it was a really great game.
16/11/2012 at 20:26 zeroskill says:
My guns never broke in Far Cry 2, possibly because the minor thinking process it took to unlock them in your safehouse and regularly picking up a fresh one when the opportunity showed it self wasn’t asking too much of me.
The entire Far Cry 2 whining orgy always reminded me of my little 10 year old brother who when he died in Super Mario Bros threw the controller accross the room and started getting super angry at our dog.
That said, I enjoyed Far Cry 2 quite a bit. It was very atmospheric, allowed me to play the game at the pace I wanted to and solve objectives the way I wanted to solve them. That is more than most other FPS can say for themself.
16/11/2012 at 20:33 Brun says:
The guns breaking wasn’t one of the biggest gripes about the game. Most people seemed to hate the respawning checkpoints, rather useless fast travel system, and the general difficulty in getting around (due to the aforementioned respawning checkpoints) more than anything.
16/11/2012 at 20:49 lokimotive says:
Yeah, for me that was really the problem. The broken gun thing actually worked fairly well for me. In fact I got so used to it that I forgot that you CAN actually pick up enemies’ guns in most games with no ill effect. It just took a little bit of careful planning before you set out on a mission. Really, most of the the unusual constraints were fine with me (gun categories, no kill zones… even the “bus” system to a certain extent). It was just the respawning check points that annoyed the hell out of me. It made the game far more repetitive than it needed to be. Plus it padded the whole thing out to much longer than it should’ve been.
That being said, of course, not having the respawning checkpoints would’ve made things feel a little too slow. It was an interesting experiment that should’ve came out better.
16/11/2012 at 20:37 Lorewin says:
In fairness, your dog was being kindof a dick.
16/11/2012 at 22:38 Arglebargle says:
Almost every major issue in Far Cry 2 (which I personaly dislike) was reported in Beta, and apparantly were just too difficult for the Dev team to do anything about other than shrug.
It coulda been a contender! But the lazy and sloppy aspects consigned it to being an also-ran.
17/11/2012 at 12:44 Iskariot says:
I would have to agree with zeroskill.
I was smitten with Far Cry 2. Just like others I saw a lot of room for improvement, but all in all Far Cry 2 was a blast to experience.
The respawning of the checkpoints should have been more dynamic, but I soon learned how to cope with them and even enjoyed playing around with them. I treated every confrontation as a minigame, trying to take out the enemy faster and faster with my dragunov. I remember some very cool shootouts. The AI was quite good, trying to surround me and stuff like that.
I really missed more people to interact with, quest givers, friends etc.
I also would have liked more wildlife. I wanted to see some lions and crocks and snakes.
I even liked having malaria. It served its purpose well and made me feel much more vulnerable and real in the game.
16/11/2012 at 19:27 Ross Angus says:
NO OCEANS!
16/11/2012 at 19:38 jonfitt says:
I think tropical islands are surrounded by oceans. Or seas. Either way, surrounding water is a requirement.
16/11/2012 at 19:41 Sparkasaurusmex says:
NO OCEANS on the internet!
16/11/2012 at 19:42 zeekthegeek says:
The big plot twist is this is just a large lake
16/11/2012 at 22:43 The Random One says:
inside of a SPACE STATION
17/11/2012 at 03:51 Ars.Gladius says:
Orbiting Mars
16/11/2012 at 19:34 Bob says:
It doesn’t look too bad to me. I got more of the original Far Cry vibe off the vid, and to me that’s a good thing.
17/11/2012 at 09:29 SuperNashwanPower says:
This. It’s the reason I’ve been excited from the off.
Also I don’t know if rps have covered it but check out the Far Cry experience on YouTube . Seriously seriously disturbing and left me with a powerful urge to kill vaas in a horrible way
16/11/2012 at 19:35 1337 says:
My god.. what would I do to get a climbing trees-feature in this game..
16/11/2012 at 20:14 SuperNashwanPower says:
Press X?
16/11/2012 at 20:49 1337 says:
Which is more of a jump than an actual ‘climb function’.
16/11/2012 at 19:43 Yosharian says:
I have to admit I was initially very skeptical of this game but I have been won over by what I’ve heard/seen so far.
16/11/2012 at 19:43 Gonefornow says:
“Every creature in the world exhibits unique instincts..”
*Shows a man shooting a gun.
Too bad talking isn’t an instinct.
16/11/2012 at 20:55 Donjo says:
There’s a talk to guns feature though
16/11/2012 at 22:10 noom says:
If only you could talk to the bears.
16/11/2012 at 22:30 SuperNashwanPower says:
PLEASE LET THE BEARS BE VOICED BY BRIAN BLESSED
17/11/2012 at 11:31 CMaster says:
HULLLOO!
16/11/2012 at 20:13 SuperNashwanPower says:
This is going to be awesome and everyone is going to go ” **gasp** I didn’t expect this to be awesome”
Some people will play it, think its awesome, then come online and say “meh” anyway.
Still others are simply from Basildon so they won’t like it anyway because not enough Subarus.
In other words I have pre-ordered so my powers of denial of any flaws have become parabolically focused. However, I do think this is going to be Far (pun har har) better than many are expecting.
16/11/2012 at 22:44 The Random One says:
It wouldn’t have to be very good to be far better than I’m expecting.
16/11/2012 at 22:50 SuperNashwanPower says:
OH ZING
Mark my words. This will get an awesome review from Castle Shotgun and you will want it :) All Y’all
17/11/2012 at 00:56 sabasNL says:
So it basically comes down to “This game has everything.”?
Well then, I would fancy a cup of coffee. Is that possible?
(yes, coffee, my British comrades, coffee.)
17/11/2012 at 09:25 SuperNashwanPower says:
The 2014 Tea War will be long and bitter.
Like a grande americano
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17/11/2012 at 06:46 Caiman says:
Their animal ecosystem is about as realistic as the Island of Dr Moreau.
17/11/2012 at 07:52 neofit says:
Eagerly awaiting the review on the 21st. It would be great if it had some PC specific information. Like the control system – straight port ‘optimized’ for a gamepad or proper, accurate mouse and keyboard? Does it have anti-aliasing? Is it save anywhere or chapters?
And how sandbox-y and roam-y is it? Some people keep saying that Crysis 1 was some kind of roamer/sandbox, but I don’t remember much freedom nor roaming in it. What I remember though is that the game suddenly stopped being fun, just like every other Crytek game, when halfway through they switched from ranged humanoid opponents to some kind of meeleing jumping armored animals.
17/11/2012 at 11:41 SuperNashwanPower says:
Far Cry 1 and Crysis were not fully open world, thats true. Far Cry had a couple of VERY open levels (the big island with the Fat Boys and the island system you explore by speedboat being examples that spring to mind). Crysis had very wide, though directed, levels (e.g. the village / school that you rescue the woman from with Psycho, and the brilliant tank level), and you could play them however you liked, and so they FELT open compared to what was around at the time. The human based levels were essentially ‘real’ locations that you could explore in a real way, but with a limited map.
IMO they were sandboxes though as you could pretty much do anything and pick up anything. I was amazed when I realised I could play the “tank level” by getting out of the tank! No tank required…
18/11/2012 at 07:43 Renegade says:
I got to have a hands on with the game at eurogamer expo they had the pc version running with choice of playing with mouse and keyboard or 360 controller. Mouse and keyboard felt fine the game itself, like far cry 2 it felt like a proper pc game as opposed to just being a port. Graphics looked great and i’m sure they’ll have all the options that we come to expect these days.
The game itself is a proper open world/sandbox so you can save anywhere. At eurogamer we got about 15 mins to play so I saw people getting up to all kinds of different things, I remember one guy proceeded to shoot friendly npcs just because he could xD