Far Cry 4

The Far Cry series has never had a playable woman lead. When asked if he thought a woman protagonist would work in Ubisoft's brazen and oftentimes violent open-world shooter series, Hutchinson said that yes, it could work - and it should already be working.

far cry 4

"And it was purely a workload issue because we don't have a female reading for the character, we don't have all the animations," he explained. "And so it was this weird issue where you could have a female model that walked and talked and jumped like a dude.

"So unfortunately for this one, no, but I can guarantee you that in the future, moving forward, this sort of stuff will go away. As we get better technology and we plan for it in advance and we don't have a history on one rig and all this sort of stuff. We had very strong voices on the team pushing for that and I really wanted to do it, we just couldn't squeeze it in in time. But on the other hand we managed to get more of the other story characters to be women.

"It's double the animations, it's double the voices, all that stuff and double the visual assets," Amancio said. "Especially because we have customizable assassins. It was really a lot of extra production work."

"We started, but we had to drop it," said level designer Bruno St. Andre in a separete interview. "I cannot speak for the future of the brand, but it was dear to the production team, so you can expect that it will happen eventually in the brand."

Earlier today, Naughty Dog animator and former Assasin's Creed 3 animation director Jonathan Cooper told us that animating a woman character should take "a day or two's work," instead of what St. Andre said required the replacement of more than 8,000 animations to do so. Cooper said that male animations could still work on a female form.

"I think what you want to do is just replace a handful of animations," Cooper said. "Key animations. We target all the male animations onto the female character and just give her her own unique walks, runs, anything that can give character."

The Games on Demand version supports English, French, Spanish, Portuguese. In Far Cry 4, players find themselves in Kyrat, a breathtaking, perilous and wild region of the Himalayas struggling under the regime of a despotic self-appointed king. Using a vast array of weapons, vehicles, and animals, players will write their own story across an exotic open-world landscape.

Far Cry 4 is the upcoming first-person shooter from developer Ubisoft Montreal. Set in the fictional Himalayan country of Kyrat, this nation torn apart by war draws heavily from real-world locations to make the game feel authentic.

We caught up with Mark Thompson, narrative director, and Alex Hutchinson, creative director, to find out how visiting Nepal to meet people who actually fought in the civil war helped to inspire the development of Far Cry 4.

Far Cry 4 is a funhouse mirror. I love pointing it in in different directions and seeing the way its design reflects the videogames around it. Angle it one way and the first thing you'll see in its reflection the only slightly distorted visage of its predecessor, as Far Cry 3's every idea turns formula: there's an exotic setting; an extravagant and verbose villain; crafting by way of animal hunting; a mixture of linear campaign and dynamic missions. This sequel could be considered a lavishly made standalone expansion pack and, if you enjoyed the previous game as I did, its slavish devotion to existing structures is no bad thing.

Angle it over here however, to the far corner, and you'll see in its curved surface a twisted take on everything the Elder Scrolls series has ever achieved, only with its Dungeons & Dragons influence shrunk bizarrely small. Far Cry 4 takes place in the fictional Himalayan country of Kyrat, and it's a beautiful open world, hemmed-in by snowy mountains, in which you venture through forests, stumble upon secret caves, become wrapped-up in sidequests at the risk of ever doing the awful primary missions, and earn points to be spent towards skill progression with every little action you perform.

Despite its beauty and the density of activities, Kyrat feels nothing at all like an actual world, and its mechanics are more rooted in Doom than in any RPG. There are no conversation trees, and characters with names and personalities exist almost solely in closed rooms and cutscenes separate from the broader world. You might have two-dozen methods of dealing with any given situation, and your unlocked abilities might offer you new syringes to craft or a greater reserve of hitpoints, but your main mode of interaction is always from behind the barrel of a gun.

The most interesting place to point Far Cry 4's twisted mirror however is towards that old RPS favourite - the immersive sim. Perhaps by accident Far Cry 4 is mainstream videogames' take on the same design principles that underpin a Looking Glass game.

That's best expressed by the game's forts, which were also the best part of the last game. As you drive, sail, fly or wingsuit across the terrain, smoke stacks rise up above the horizon, each one marking a camp containing half a dozen buildings, at least half a dozen guards, and an alarm or two. The challenge is to clear all the people away and to claim the camp for the rebel army you're fighting for, the Golden Path. You can approach these bubbles any way you want, and each of them is an unscripted puzzle.

Hurtling between destinations yesterday, I saw some smoke and decided on a whim to stop and take a look. There was a hill to the west on which I could see climbing points - prescribed areas where you can attach your grappling hook, one of the game's new toys. While the attach points are prescribed, the rope itself is physically simulated and you can use it to swing, to kick off from the wall, and to attach to points while falling, wingsuiting, or leaping between surfaces.

From atop the hill I get an overview of the situation. As in the previous game, your camera can be used to tag enemies on the map and confirm what type of threat they pose. I shuffle through the bushes, trying to cover every angle. I tag two snipers on different roofs, an armoured heavy carrying a flamethrower, a charger who'll sprint towards your location while lobbing molotovs, two normal soldiers, and a caged bear. Next I switch to locating the alarms - enemies will use them to call in reinforcements should you be spotted, introducing new enemies and vehicles into the mix.

Each of these targets introduces some hard rule to the situation which I'll have to bear in mind as I plan my attack. For example, I'll want to disable the alarms first, which I can do by getting close to them or by shooting them. If I shoot them, an enemy might hear the shot or the bullet, or a guard on patrol might later notice that it's broken. I can shoot a guard, but another will see the death or the body and start looking for me. If I can get close enough I can silently take down the guards with my knife and then hide the bodies, but being close puts me at greater risk of being spotted.

I've come to this particular party with a silenced sniper rifle and so I decide to keep my distance. I take out the alarm and, as predicted, a nearby heavy hears the bullet strike and moves to investigate. Heavies require a headshot to take down in a single hit and if I miss I'll only make things worse. I don't miss.

Normally I'd now move in closer and use my bow and knife to take down the rest, aiming to remain undetected while capturing the whole camp. I'm feeling jaunty though, so I take aim at the bear cage and shoot open its door with my rifle. The bear should be able to take down two of the nearest soldiers before being killed, allowing me to easily mop up the panicked few remaining.

I missed someone when tagging the guards earlier: a Hunter. Hunters are a new guard type who only remain tagged for a few seconds when seen, and when alive, they affect animals in a way that causes them to never attack guards and always attack you. They're a neat new rule that changes the way you approach camps, not so much to make any old tactic useless, but enough that you need to always make sure there aren't any in your vicinity before you let loose or lure in an animal.

The bear is closing the distance between us fast. My sniper rifle is already useless at this range, and the bow and arrow is too weak to take it out before it reaches me. I switch to my sidearm, which isn't a pistol but a grenade launcher. Three shots and the bear falls just as it reaches me, but the downside is that everyone in the camp now knows I'm here. The upside? I'm already holding a grenade launcher. I finish the camp with a flurry of explosions.

I like to complete each camp stealthily, so being spotted in Far Cry normally prompted me to reload from a checkpoint. Here, I don't need to - run to the extinguished campfire at the center of any captured camp and you can re-populate and re-play a fort over and over again, attempting to either better your performance or to complete the objective in some new way.

This is where Far Cry excels. These camps are systemic puzzles in an open world full of toys. Maybe you want to climb a higher mountain and wingsuit directly into the middle of the camp. Maybe you want to approach from a river on a boat, or swim down to find an underwater cave that loops up and inside. Maybe you want to hover above the camp in one of the new gyrocopters, dropping explosives down on the helpless guards below. Maybe you prefer your weapon loadout to be a flamethrower, a harpoon gun, an AK-47. Maybe you want to charge in on the back of an elephant. Maybe you want to chain these things together in a single, choreographed action movie assault. Maybe you want to do any one of these things, but then a passing armored truck disrupts your plans, or wild boars decide to butt you in the butt while you're crouched in your hidey-hole.

Far Cry offers consistent rules and predictable systems, and then challenges you to maintain control in a world desperate to tip into chaos. Whether you succeed or fail, it's always fun and satisfying because you know the outcome is your fault, because you still have a lot of options, and because you can always run away or painlessly retry. These camps - and other similar activities like assassination, revenge and hostage missions - don't take place in a believable world, and are obscured by both the game's story and marketing, but together they form one of the most rewarding stealth games ever made. 041b061a72