Ah, Sanity: Far Cry 3 Dodging Ubi PC Delay
Good things come to those who wait. And admittedly, Assassin's Creed II (and its assorted pseudo-sequels), Driver: San Francisco, and - based on what I'm hearing - Ghost Recon: Future Soldier are pretty solid, but were they worth the long, cold nights we endured in anticipation of their arrival? OK, yeah, probably. But the time-honored tradition that is the Ubidelay arguably serves little-to-no purpose, and much like its nearest cousin - an inflamed, seconds-from-bursting appendix - it's a vestigial pain that needs to go. Fortunately, Far Cry 3 - at the very least - appears refreshingly willing to show it the door.
"I believe [it's launching day-and-date with console versions], because Far Cry has a huge PC fanbase," lead writer Jeffrey Yohalem told RPS during a quick E3 exchange. "You know, I played Far Cry 1 on PC, and it's definitely very close to my heart."
"For me, personally, as a PC gamer, I want the same experience that console players are getting. What I found recently is that PC versions offer what they claim to be a better experience, but oftentimes it removes pieces of content from the console game. I don't like that. To me, it should be the ultimate version of the game that's on consoles, because it's a more powerful platform."
So then, that means September 4 in the US and September 6 EU. Meanwhile, Far Cry 3 also took center stage during both Ubisoft and Sony's E3 press conferences last night, and those showings produced some rather ho-hum-looking four-player co-op (think Left 4 Dead, but with mean men and exploding bridges) and a very, er, revealing demo. Lives were lost, tribally tattooed breasts were fondled, etc. Yohalem, however, insists that it's not purely about titillation.
"We put the player into situations where they expect things to happen in a certain way, because Jason is a 25-year-old from Los Angeles," he explained. "It's essentially the Western world's view of what's supposed to happen in a videogame... In our case, we saw all these tropes in games that have been so trodden – so ground-in – that players don't even really think about them anymore. So that's when a medium is ripe for an exploration of itself. So we basically turned the camera back in the direction of the creators and said, 'OK, let's make a game about games.'"
So, in theory, it's an exploration - in some ways, nearly a parody - of how truly silly these games are. Will it actually succeed, though, or will it merely end up scraping the bottom of the same barrel as everyone else while shouting "No, no, you guys just don't get it, obviously"? Here's hoping for the former. In the meantime, though, there's a new trailer cut together from footage of the E3 demo. Also, it's slightly NSFW - though not quite as, er, in-your-face as the actual demo was.
