14 DAY TRIAL // Far Cry 4 is the next installment in the prodigious open-world first-person shooter series, and developer Ubisoft is more and more ambitious with each title.
The latest entry on the company's blog reveals some of the behind-the-scenes talks that the development team had while sketching the upcoming adventure.
"I want to be able to ride an elephant. I want to be able to ride an elephant, and I want to be able to smash it through a fortress," Executive Producer Dan Hay recalls one of the first meetings, during the time that they were all throwing ideas around, fleshing out Far Cry 4.
Far Cry 4 was Far Cry 3.5 for a short while
Hay says that the team initially intended to deliver a sequel to Far Cry 3, staying in the same location, with the same characters and protagonist.
"We definitely had the option of making a 3.5, of making a choice to just stay in the same location with the same characters. We talked about the idea of taking Jason's story and growing it, maybe figuring out a way to bring Vaas back. And very quickly we realized that it wasn't going to be a thing that we wanted to do," Hay reveals.
Fortunately, after a couple of fateful meetings where he agreed to pretty much every over-the-top feature that the team members wanted to have in the game, Far Cry 4 was born.
An evolution, not merely a sequel
"We like the fact that we're a little bit Wild West. We like the fact that somebody's going to be able to kick out an idea that people will think is way too much. And then somebody else goes, 'Maybe that's why you should do it. Maybe that's what makes sense,'" Hay says.
The developers wanted to have it all in the game: crazy vivid color, expansive mountain ranges offering gorgeous vistas, as well as a lot of exciting gameplay additions.
This "we want it all" approach to design led the team to add the ability to fly, to do story missions in coop multiplayer, to ride elephants, and all the other crazy things that players will be enjoying next month.
This time around, the team built the narrative to complement the open-world gameplay, which Hay believes is the core strength of the game. There will be a lot of missions similar to the mushroom ones in Far Cry 3, except they will fit right in and feel much more organic, much more in tune with the overall story.
Far Cry 4 is coming out on November 18 worldwide, headed to the PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One platforms.
