The Wasted Potential of the Far Cry Franchise

the definition the definition the definition I killed you once any definitions did I ever tell you the definition of insanity [Music] Far Cry is a franchise that has had many ups and downs over the years and is one of the only ones that I can recall to have done about everything right just never all at once while there are some exceptions to the rule you can point at almost every Far Cry game and name at least a handful of things that it did outstandingly well arguably better than any other game in the industry at the time and yet every iteration also suffered from issues that are so detrimental to the game in some way shape or form that have well and truly prevented this franchise from reaching its full potential for over two decades now so why is that why is it that over the span of 20 years a multi-billion dollar developer and publisher has not been able to truly capitalize on the potential of one of their most popular products and even more interesting how is the franchise managed to stay relevant despite all of that the answer to that question is a little bit different with each game but the overarching theme that seems keep coming back is a simple tug of war a never ending tug of war between passion and greed Innovation and deadlines between time and money to see how this war started and how it is possibly still going on we have to take a look at the future the future of video game Graphics 20 years ago it may not seem like it right now but back in the year 2000 this was the future of video game Graphics what you're looking at is a tech demo for the cry engine that's called Exile or Dinosaur Island which for its time pushed more than just a few boundaries in the world of video games it has larger than ever before draw distances and cutting-edge lighting and Reflections just to name a couple of examples how does this relate to Far Cry is a question that you might have well it's because this engine is the same engine that to some degree is still used in a modern Far Cry games today surely it's been renamed and modified just a tiny bit but this this is where it all started developed by crytek which is a name that you might know from the crisis games of course they brought this demo to the Nvidia boot at E3 1999 and pretty much managed to sign a deal on the spot Nvidia I was so impressed with the demo that they decided to later ship it with their new GeForce 3 lineup of graphics cards as a benchmarking tool to show what their gpus can do and with just a little bit of searching it can still be found on the internet today and even played although since it's just a tech demo the gameplay leaves quite a lot to be desired Nvidia wasn't the only one interested though in the stack demo as Ubisoft was also roaming the sweaty boots on the E3 show floor and They too had an appetite for pretty looking things so on top of the Nvidia deal crytek also signed a license agreement with Ubisoft that then tests him to make a game based on this engine that's not a bad first showing by any means especially not since crytek had already been working on turning the stack demo into a full-fledged game for quite a while meant to educate people about the world of dinosaurs while also frying your graphics card at the same time but there was a problem because Ubisoft they wanted something else they wanted something with just a little bit more action titles such as Grand Theft Auto 3 and Halo Combat Evolved had been making the rounds in the minds of many players so their line of thinking was if they could just create a game like that with shooting but have it look similar to this then surely they'd be striking gold as a result Dinosaur Island was canceled and in its place came a game which would be a first person shooter instead set on a group of mysterious small Tropical Islands but of course dense forests and a lot of vegetation this game would be named Far Cry foreign within just one year crytek had already cooked up a working demo version to then be showcased and playable for the public at E3 2002 but uh this demo though it was looking a little bit rough in comparison to Dinosaur Island and it had shooting mechanics that would really want to make you vomit just after a few minutes of playing it had a level of detail nowhere near that what was previously showcased and honestly just didn't look very promising at all now of course it's not like kritec had not been working on the game very hard or that the engine simply wasn't capable it was simply the fact that this was their first game ever created and a lot of the work that they've been doing so far wasn't stuff that you wouldn't necessarily see back in this demo I'm talking about weapons that are not used in a playable part of a demo or concepts for levels that the public never really got to see this may or may also not be the reason why pretty much after the 22 showcase the game went dark for another two years for Ubisoft though the longer than expected development cycle was more than worth the wait because Far Cry when it released instantly became one of the biggest best-selling franchises that Ubisoft had the rights to only to be bested by Prince of Persia but let's be honest trying to outsell Warrior within the same year was released that was a lost fight from the start returned those are some very conveniently placed subtitles yeah I think they knew what they were doing against the expectations that the 2002 demo might have given players Far Cry delivered on the graphical promises that Dinosaur Island initially showcased and it came out with levels that have far more detail and stretch much further than any other game released that year the leap in graphical Fidelity was pretty much unheard of at this point and that in and of itself was enough to sell over 700 000 units in just the first four months of its release aside from its Graphics the game was also priced around its time for its very Advanced physics system a physics system that you wouldn't even see in a lot of modern games released today of course it wasn't really alone in that uh games around this time tried to push this a lot more with Half-Life 2 also being a good example but the way it's taken advantage of throughout the campaign in Far Cry was something that a lot of players really liked it comes in the form of small puzzles that require you to push away a bunch of floating objects to review a hole in the floor or even something things that actually affect combats like being able to shoot down the chains on a bridge which will then drop it meaning that you can't go across anymore even indoor areas benefit a lot from this physics system as players are able to shoot at hanging lights that react to the bullets in a well I wouldn't say a realistic way but definitely in a way that is much more impressive than what most other games were able to do in 2004. [Music] but history has time and time again shown us that good graphics alone does not automatically mean that the game is going to be good as a whole and Far Cry is no exception to this while the shooting mechanics were miles above whatever this wobbly mess was it is still obvious on many levels that crytek simply could not figure out how to make the combat work across those very long distances you see in gaming today if you want to develop a game the idea for the game usually comes first and then an engine is either chosen or custom built around the game's needs later but with Far Cry it was quite the opposite there was an engine that was really good at a couple of very specific things and now a game had to be built around the engine to Showcase those things to the best that means that while yeah the levels are really really huge but the gameplay and specifically the enemy AI hadn't really been developed too much with those longer distances in mind in fact much of the AI in Far Cry 1 often showcase some comical scenarios that at best really take you out of the experience hey there buddy what are you doing there oh my god dude is he just gonna stand there do nothing contact this this is Peak game development right here so what do you do when you're cry Tech and you have these large open-ended levels with a somewhat limited AI how do you make the game difficult well there's a few ways actually one of them being creating tankier enemies or faster enemies or simply add more of them on the screen at once and those are all approaches that crytek definitely went with in some of their levels but another blanket solution that was also added is to just make the detection range of the AI very very large pretty much as long as the AI has a direct line of sight on you and they're looking in your general direction they will spot you even if they are on the other side of the map I am not exaggerating enemies often see you even before their models have spawned in seeing as Far Cry is labeled partly as a stealth game you'd expect that there'd be some more advanced stealth mechanics and although crawling it is still space through some very thick bushes might prevent you from being spotted here and there a lot of the foliage in this game doesn't actually break the line of sight of the NPCs it's only the big chunky object so even if you believe that you're sneaking around to the enemies you might just be right out there in the open oh and to make matters a bit more interesting if just one NPC spots you all of the NPCs have spotted you might imagine all of this has a pretty big impact on the moment-to-moment gameplay because while the Gunplay might have been good enough to work at a medium to short range most of the weapons in this game simply aren't accurate enough to hit enemies from afar consistently and well the combat simply hasn't been built around long range encounters the one area where this really becomes clear is by looking at the visual bullets that come out of your gun and then looking at where the bullets are actually Landing because while you can easily follow the bullet trails with your eyes the real bullets the ones that actually do damage are pretty much hit scan and they differ by quite a large margin what really doesn't make this any easier is that enemies often do not really react to getting hit with bullets and even ragdolls often glitch out or freeze mid-air now this was a common issue from games released around this time but it just so happens to be that in Far Cry it is a bigger problem because it makes it really difficult to see whether or not you're hitting an enemy that's very far away from from you you might actually hit them with the invisible hitscan bullets and seeing the enemies not react and seeing your bullet Trail going far to the other side so then you'll try to lead your bullets which then results in you not hitting anything it's this constant back and forth of figuring out what to do with your guns that really hurts the Gunplay throughout the whole game finally enough this also means that all the indoor areas and all the indoor levels that Far Cry 1 has are actually some of the best ones these levels are supposed to be more difficult as the game throws the mutant enemies at you and just has a lot more enemy NPCs in there altogether but they actually play out as some of the easiest ones because the difference in your visual bullets and the actual bullets isn't that large and the enemies even though they can detect you while there's enough walls around you at all times not to mention that enemies won't spawn into rooms until you're right next to that room [Music] do something you see that oh another door I hope there's no NPCs behind it wait what now we're not here today with this video to take a really good look at every minor flaw or every misplaced prop in a game from 2004 but when Shooters like Halo 2 are released the same year and do the Gunplay much much better on a console of all things if that it is obvious to see that even for its time the gameplay of Far Cry left much to be desired and as far as the story and the writing goes oh this is probably far cry's weakest Point hello are you there pick up the radio if you can hear this who are you I'm the guy who's going to tell you how to survive how do I know I can trust you how about the fact that I haven't turned you in good point by the way name's Jack Carver you must be Jack how did you know that the characters not only just seem to forget what they had talked about 20 minutes ago the game is also all over the place when it comes to the tone one moment it takes itself somewhat serious because you're trying to stop the bad guy with what seems like quite some urgency and then the next moment just keep your eyes on the Jungle Jack now that we've got some I would like to formally apologize to both of my Christian viewers for playing this game something that's also interesting to look at are the reviews for Far Cry back when it came out with most of the official game critics giving it an 8 out of 10 9 out of 10 or even a 10 out of 10 simply because of the looks alone there was a definite hype around the game despite of its shortcomings but you only have to look a couple years or so further to see that the looks alone did not make it stand the test of time very well Ubisoft though was a little bit ahead of the curve here instead of enjoying their success with Far Cry sitting back and taking it slow they understood the importance of capitalizing on hype the very first thing that Ubisoft tasked crytek to do is to Simply do it again but this time they'd have to do it on Console you see I mentioned that outselling Warrior within was a lost fight from the start and that was well because the game was pretty good but also because of the console Market Warrior within released for the PC the Xbox the PlayStation 2 and even the GameCube and if you know just how popular especially the PlayStation 2 was around that time well then you also know that Far Cry never really stood a chance regardless of how good the game actually was so what would be a good way to make a lot of money with a little effort it is simply to Port Far Cry to the console games and release them yet again but of course that was a problem the cryengine was built from the ground up to take full advantage of the high-end Nvidia graphics cards which meant that bringing out a Far Cry game for consoles would require them to make a whole new game entirely using a version of the engine that was very heavily compromised this is where things got a little bit hairy crytek was and still is a company that takes great pride in their technological achievements that's what they're all about so when they had an engine that could do so much at the time but had to be limited to doing so little because of consoles nearing the end of their life cycles they decided to go a different route not too much after Far Cry 1 released it was revealed to the public that crytek split but Ubisoft and instead signed a deal with EA to develop a new game franchise that would be specific play for the PC this game would later become crisis which I'm sure you at least know about because it used to be the best looking game for many years to come and a running meme every time a new cycle of gpus launched Ubisoft wasn't left hanging dry completely though and had their own game Studio Ubisoft Montreal finish up the console version of Far Cry 1 which although it had to be built all the way from the ground up it just took them one and a half years to make releasing in September of 2005 under the new name Far Cry instinct Far Cry instincts is quite the unique package featuring a campaign where you still play with the same main character but it is in fact a game made up of entirely new levels with a completely new narrative to follow one where instead of fighting mutants you actually get to turn into a mutant and acquire powers like running really fast and punching enemies really really hard oh my God maybe not so surprising at all is that a lot of these gameplay changes are very similar to some of the stuff that players get to do in crisis running faster punching harder even though crytek dipped very early on in the project their DNA still runs through Instinct it's just that in one game you have all these abilities as a mutant and in the other game you have a nano suit and yeah if you hadn't noticed already Far Cry instincts is not a pretty looking game not even for its time not even for the platform that it was released on basically every part that gave Far Cry 1 is unique look and identity has been Stripped Away completely all just so that they could get a running version for the Xbox big open levels with large draw distances you say well not anymore levels are completely linear and it's not just the draw distances that are very bad it is that also a lot of the game logic simply ceases to exist just 20 meters in front of you both of course enemies are still visible from medium ranges but you'll find more than a few occasions where you try to unload a magazine onto an enemy or into a fuel canister to blow something up only for the bullets to disappear somewhere in the middle because of all of this it's maybe a good thing that the AI in this game is even dumber than that it was in Far Cry 1 because yeah all the weird things that made the AI laughable at Best in its predecessor it's all still present here it's just that the detection range of the MPC is an instincts has now been dialed back so far that it is often difficult to get spotted at all got it the numbers people watch out is he gonna see me he's not he's not gonna see me up and at him oh my god dude damn straight keep it tight okay I'll just take out this guy oh he's too far away it's too far am i handing the push no he's just too far away don't take any chances we've got them outnumbered uh wow this game's really good this is Peak game development right here what the hell even when the combat does work as intended it still just doesn't feel great with the number one issue being the incredibly rough aiming mechanics crytek or Ubisoft clearly did not know how to make the aiming feel good for the controller yet because there is some really really weird aim acceleration going on in this title that makes it so that the reticle Almost Doesn't move even if your stick is like halfway to the left or the right but then instantly jumps the max speed the moment you cross that 50 mark this makes it almost impossible to do any precise Corrections it means that a big part of the aiming has to come from moving the character to the left or the right to basically align yourself with the Enemy now the Band-Aid fix for this that Ubisoft implemented was to just have a very large amount of bullet magnetism where bullets curve the enemies even if you're not really aiming at them and it obviously comes with a whole bunch of other issues like not being able to shoot enemy Claymores unless all the enemies on the screen are already dead because the bullets will just curve away from the clay marks towards the enemies to top it all off the visual bullets are of course still also very obviously disconnected from the actual hitscan bullets but it's less of a problem this time around because combat mostly occurs on shorter ranges because the maps are very small but yeah it still feels very weird to get hit from an enemy helicopter that's not even remotely shooting bullets in the same direction that you're actually at a big center point of the combat system would of course also be the mutant abilities that I mentioned earlier and in all fairness especially the punching can both be fun and very useful from time to time but most of the abilities also have their own set of issues that just make the game a very painful to play at times the punch has an insane insane amount of tracking foreign is even strong enough to push you through some invisible barriers that put the player down in places that they were never supposed to be at more often than not though the tracking also just bugs out completely and gets you stuck suspended in mid-air or behind an object which often means that you just die this issue is compounded by the fact that the enemy that you are targeting with the punch also has a 100 accuracy on you during the launch the developers probably realized how overpowered this punch would be in a game that can often be very stingy about Ammo drops so they wanted to make going for the sponge a big risk meaning you can only really do it when the enemy is reloading or when you have a lot of Hell to spare but because of the way it bugs out it's a huge risk oftentimes without the reward the faster Sprint ability I found to be a bit more useful but only the Sprint from the start to the end of the levels without bothering too much with the combat even if you try to use the faster sprinting in combination with shooting your guns it oftentimes just doesn't really work because of the weird aim acceleration you know it can be difficult to line up shots already when you're standing still or just going at walking speed but it's like actually impossible to do it when you're going through levels at three times the movement speed it's painful though because I really see no reason for the game needing to be this way seeing as it was built specifically for the consoles and I'll again point the finger at Halo 2 and say that that is how good the game could have felt the only conclusion that I can really come up with is that the game was rushed out of the door once again because Ubisoft needed this game to ride on the hype of the original Far Cry and that just meant that it had to get out of the door as fast as possible meaning they had no time to refine the gameplay or pretty much anything for that matter because trust me when I say it's not just the controls that suffer from a lack of Polish you have helicopters that are meant to chase you but then they run into a mountain and disappear without a proper explosion but then the sound of the bullets from a chopper Gunner scraping by still continues to play because that's scripted because the chopper was never meant to crash in the first place foreign boss fight where the way that this boss kills you is by throwing stuff at you but if you get on one of the three turrets in the arena it will block all of the incoming projectiles because well the turret is in between you and the boss or just look at this beautiful view from this balcony that's part of the final level no I'm not out of the map and yes that is two sons because they just flipped the sky box upside down thinking that you wouldn't really see down that far this game this game is rough and what is perhaps the worst part is that rushing this game out of the door as fast as possible actually worked out for Ubisoft even though the game just released on Xbox alone because they couldn't get a working PlayStation version within a reasonable amount of time it still sold over half a million copies on the good words and Promises of the first far cry alone so naturally Ubisoft does but jubisoft does best they do it it again and they have Ubisoft Montreal release another Far Cry game also for the Xbox this time only six months after the release of Far Cry instincts the name they gave it Far Cry Instinct Evolution although the name is a little bit misleading as this title does anything but evolve the franchise in the modern days of gaming instincts Evolution would be considered as a DLC you play as the same character with the same abilities the same horrible Gunplay you fight the same enemies there's the same gameplay issues it is just that this time it's set on a bunch of different Maps tied together with a new storyline that once again both of my Christian viewers will certainly not appreciate I need help with something something dirty none of the previously mentioned issues are fixed in this title except for the levels maybe being a bit more open-ended allowing you to take on some encounters in a couple different different ways but it also comes at the cost of reduced performance overall even worse level design and the chance for objectives to bug out and soft lock your game the fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me saying really took its effect here though as it seems that this second game flopped hard over its lifetime it didn't even manage to sell a hundred thousand copies and even if we add the Xbox 360 release of it on top of that well it barely makes a difference the game did not sell at all and when Ubisoft tried to release an even more botched up version for the Wii console calling it Far Cry Vengeance it did even worse than Evolution clearly what little development time they were putting into these Abominations simply wasn't paying off anymore so it was time to either drop the franchise completely or change the plan of action luckily for us the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 the Next Generation consoles they both had just released and after all all these subbar releases Ubisoft is finally ready to give Far Cry a proper shot so in the following year 2006 they signed their final deal with crytek to obtain all of the rights to the Far Cry franchise and they also got a version of the cryengine that was used for Far Cry 1 with Ubisoft would then modify and rename to the Dunya engine which would also Mark the beginning of the development of Far Cry 2. Far Cry 2 released in October of 2008 and came out as an open world game as opposed to a game with a more linear story structure turning to the open world genre was a smart move on Ubisoft as the GTA franchise had heavily popularized it and everybody was on the lookout for that next game where you're allowed to do whatever whenever and with Far Cry 2 the wherever also became a selling point set in the lands of Africa you play as a mercenary who is tasked to kill a man named The Jackal who has been supplying weapons to both sides of an ongoing Civil War nowadays if you hear Ubisoft open world game you probably know what to expect at least for a good part because they're well known for copy and pasting many existing mechanics from one game to the other but back in 2008 this really was not the case if anything Ubisoft was kind of fresh to the open world genre and so a lot of the stuff that you'll see in a Far Cry 2 is very different from your typical open world game that you see today and that's for the better or for the worse okay you don't look so good you tired Far Cry 2 was essentially the second open world game that Ubisoft Montreal had ever created only preceded by the original Assassin's Creed and again maybe Warrior within if you want to count that so while the Dunya engine provided players with plenty of eye candy finally being able to let loose on the new hardware of the Next Generation consoles it is the gameplay that really is a mixed bag which has resulted in Far Cry 2 being the most divisive game in the franchise even to this day it's often loved by many players for the amount of effort it takes to keep the player immersed into the game worlds in ways like having the map be an actual world map that you physically pull out of your pocket or by never taking you out of the first person mode orders are to terminate well that didn't work out the way they planned I'm still breathing and you're the one with malaria just as often though the game is also disliked for the repetitive nature of all of its missions and for many of the gameplay gimmicks that just seem to get in the way of the fun because the game is so dead set on immersion fast travel is very very limited only possible through one of the five bus stops which are located on the outer edge of the map and because of this at least 50 percent of your gameplay will be just driving around trying to get from one destination to the other of course the tolerance that players might have for this varies wildly as part of the audience is really looking for that immersive Sim but I think where it gets especially tedious is when around the halfway point it is revealed to the player that there is a whole second map to explore with a whole lot more rivers and mountains that make getting from one place to another anything but a straight line the long traveling times are compounded by the fact that the map is littered with enemy outposts and random Convoy is patrolling around which will always shoot you on site and even chase you pretty much around the whole map trying to shoot your vehicle down no no I'm just trying to get to the mission just trying to get to the mission fine fine where are you fine the boat no okay I guess they're not coming oh okay weapon oh my god dude I just die already oh more more where are they even can't see [ __ ] okay no need to just repair the car real quick again and then we are good to go just stop of course in the later far crys you can clear out his outposts which would then alleviate some of this pressure and clear out some of the enemies in the area but in Far Cry 2 the moment you leave an outpost after you clear it out the enemies just respawn and there is no way to get rid of them a bit more permanently this means that oftentimes during missions you just want to get from point A to point B to do the actual missions but on the way getting there you'll be drained from not only your time but also your resources because yeah healing syringes ml grenades and everything else is very limited in this game with weapons even degrading after some time causing them to lose accuracy causing them to Gem and even causing them to just break mid-fight completely of course you can always pick up enemy weapons which you'll learn very fast at the weapons that the enemies have are always in the poorest of conditions possible Ubisoft Montreal fully delivered on their vision for somewhat more hardcore and raw open world game set in Africa but they seem to have little concern for how fun that would actually be so how fun this game is really depends on the type of player that you are and even in what kind of mood you're in what is perhaps the biggest flaw though is that the whole main storyline revolves around fighting for one side or the other you pick a side of the Civil War to get more information on where the Jekyll is but after every single Mission The Briefing they will always tell you something among the lines of hey this mission is secret so even people from our side will still shoot you on site don't forget this is secret missions your fellow guys don't know you don't expect any help out there nobody else in API knows about this other soldiers won't be friendly keep your head down nobody knows about this copy UFL and every time they say this it just feels like a cop-out for not actually building out any consequences for fighting for either side yes you have the choice of which Mission you want to play but the outcome will always still be the same no matter what you do much like you cannot take over outposts and clear them more permanently nothing you do has an actual impact on the game world what's even stranger is that this is definitely not a technical limitation either as friendly AIS or AIS that simply don't shoot at you are everywhere around the game as well you have bodies which can help you out in combat when you go down and there are plenty of no shoot zones where unless you fire your gun first enemies will not shoot at you either and with the fact that none of your decisions matter and none of the outposts are permanently cleared It ultimately makes most of the players not care for the outcome either way and they will usually just resort to whatever decision requires the least amount of effort pure4 is a man you've got to kill he'll screw you over just like he screwed us think about it it takes one phone call I can make this happen I can fix it with the guards you know you do make a good point but the thing is you're over here and the other guy is all the way over there so another thing that really doesn't work with the game is that it has a lot of really unnecessary gameplay features that just get in the way one that is of course often mentioned is that the player has malaria which requires you to do some fetch quests in order to get more pills to survive there's a lot of ways in where it doesn't really work people don't like that you have to take bills mid combat at random and also the extra trips back and forth really prevent you from just following the main storyline but the part that I just found inexcusable is where if you actually keep track of your pills and try to manage it like a resource the game just outright scams you and takes away your pills just to halt your progress because you're going through the story too fast I remember doing two or three of these quests in a row without needing to take any pills in the meantime which would amount to about six to nine pills because I think you get two or three each but then the very first time I actually needed to take a pill I took one and then it showed me that the cam was empty so I had to go do another fetch Quest despite a couple of those odd design choices though the game has actually improved a lot compared to Far Cry 1 or the Far Cry instincts games for that matter AI still have the occasional problems with bullets not really going where the NPCs are aiming or with enemies outright shooting you through walls but overall the stealth works a lot better and it's more fair when it's night or when it's foggy you can actually sneak up on enemies but the enemies are also not blind to the point where you can just run at them and they still won't spot you and yeah this is an open remote game and it does feature a fully Dynamic day and night cycle something that it also proudly shows off every time you decide to take a nap to save the game something that also cannot really go unnoticed is that with Far Cry 2 the multiplayer really started popping off for the first time this is for a big part because of their map editor which is by large and far the best map editor that any console game has had up until that time Far Cry 1 also had a map editor and even Far Cry instincts had one but the one in Far Cry 2 was far more easy to use and very very Advanced long before a forge on Halo 3 or Halo Reach really started to become a thing I was actually able to dig up some of the Far Cry 2 maps that I had saved on my 360 copy of the game and I found some Classics such as a Jurassic Park remake or were on SpongeBob although it doesn't really look like SpongeBob from down here the open world the multiplayer Boom the map editor and the fact that Far Cry 2 released for PC Xbox and Playstation meant that despite some of the design flaws and it's controversial reception it still sold almost 3 million copies during its release quarter this ryzen popularity result in the pre-production for the next Far Cry game pretty much starting right away and even though no time was wasted the full development cycle for what would become Far Cry 3 still took a total of 4 year years which was the longest development cycle for any Far Cry game up until that point and even to this day this long development cycle was in part because the idea of what Far Cry 3 should become changed a couple times during the development as lead staff at Ubisoft Montreal switched throughout production but it's also because with Far Cry 3 the developers very carefully collected and considered all of the feedback that was directed at Far Cry 2. I'm sure many of you watching this must already know that Far Cry 3 became a mass hit as a result of that and really put the franchise into the eyes of the mainstream audience so I think now it's time to take a good look at what made Far Cry 3 so special uh apart from the obvious of course in many ways you'll find that Far Cry 3 is a direct response to many of the shortcomings that Far Cry 2 had dislike The Bleak color palette of Far Cry 2 well let's fix that by making everything such a bright green color that it borders on being cartoonish dislike the respawning control points well here's control points or we'll call them outposts now that will permanently stay captured and also rate the surrounding area of any enemies one shoe captured it sprinting or driving around a map too tedious you say okay well here's unlimited Sprint right from the get-go and an abundance of fast travel points that you can actually fast travel to whenever you want bonus points for putting a lot of those fast travel points right next to the mission areas and in the case of the second island even to areas you have never visited before it's too difficult to see enemies mid-combat sometimes okay well we are already fixed the colors in the game now let's just give the enemies bright red shirts and introduce a tagging system that will let you permanently track them once you've spotted them even through walls yeah that one was maybe a little bit too much by far and why the biggest Improvement that Far Cry 3 has made is that it takes a lot more effort to create exciting main missions actual main missions not some side mission disguised as a main mission where you have to drive halfway across the map just to kill one guy only to drive all the way back Far Cry 3 has a story with interesting and memorable characters and a good amount of missions that sent you to places that are otherwise not accessible only to present you with big set piece Moments One mission you could be running into everybody's favorite psychopath so they say to me they say boss who the [ __ ] is it going to be then or three well the next mission sends you off exploring some ancient caves in search for some sort of knife or you simply jump out of a plane with a wing suit or you get to use the flamethrower to set fire to a wheat Plantation while blasting Skrillex in the background the open world also received a much needed facelift if you wanted to do anything in Far Cry 2 that was not a main mission you would be destroying a convoy or taking out a high value Target or getting more malaria pills deliver these Transit letters and you'll be assured your medicine and that that got still pretty fast and really only results in the player having more diamonds than he knows what to do with since anything that you would be spending diamonds on is unlocked by doing these side missions in Far Cry 3 though uh well the side missions have a bit more spice and variation watch Towers aside of course you have races for supplies animal hunting you have a bunch of side quests with dedicated dialogue and even the ordinary takedown missions have a Twist to them where it asks the player to take out the Targets in a certain way none of those side missions are that notable or special but it's a big difference from Far Cry 2 and most importantly all of this content is tied together with a Sandbox that encourages you to jump into fight rather than punishing you for simply existing killing enemies gives XP loot money and often refills your ammo instead of leaving you with less than you had before the fight it also has a very generous autosave system which unlike the Far Cry 2 safe houses just puts you a minute or two back if you happen to mess up and about that sandbox there's uh there's quite a lot of toys to play around with I wouldn't really say that the weapon Arsenal is larger or better than what Far Cry 2 had but because of weapon degradation and limited restocks and resources you oftentimes just ended up using the same weapons in Far Cry 2. No one is gonna pick up an enemy weapon knowing it's probably gonna Jam every other magazine nor would you be very inclined to try something new over the safer option when dying potentially means losing a lot of progress so not only does Far Cry 3 suddenly allow for all of those more Niche weapons to be valid options it also added a whole bunch of new stuff on top of that like the brutal stealth takedowns or the ability for wild animals to get involved in fights and even the addition of more human type enemies such as for example the Heavies I will not lie and say that everything about the sandbox is perfect or as polished as it could have been with the Enemy AI still being quite special at times but because you're likely to mow through a lot more enemies a lot faster the lacking AI isn't as much on the Forefront combo come out something that also cannot be understated is how much the performance of some of the actors helped lift the package as a whole it's really no secret that the story of Far Cry 3 by itself is a pretty mediocre at best with plenty of plot holes like the player having to wait for a specific boat to be fixed while also coming across a million very useful boats throughout the whole playthrough and a bunch of deus ex machina moments that just don't make any sense and push the plot forward in a very strange way and let alone the dialogue between Jace and the main character and some of his friends but it's within the performance of villains like vaten Hoyt that you can look the other way about all of the shortcomings and still somewhat feel connected to the story Island for the head of Jason Brody honestly if you think of Far Cry 3 you probably think of these two characters and of course the game cutscenes helped a lot with this delivery and gives even lesser developed characters a proper although be it more brief moment in the spotlight no matter how bad the dialogue can be at times the delivery of it is miles above any moment that Far Cry 2 provided where characters just spurted out a bunch of lines like they were freestyling on Rap God and you're just standing there waiting to receive your payment the moving Target you'll have to pick a spot on the road and wait for him to come to you that little opinion will be in a great big SUV and kill the cop and make it messy we need you to send a message I did not understand any of that I've got a good feeling about this how about we pay you right now for the weapon the only thing that really really hurt the presentation of Far Cry 3 is honestly just the UI we really went from going the extra mile to minimize the Hut as much as possible to a clunky and overly messy menu that takes far too long to open and go through sure more features were added to Far Cry 3 such as crafting which often required these type of menus to be somewhere in the game it's just that this UI is so bulky now with all of its additions and it's just one of those moments where you really won't appreciate the clean look of Far Cry 2 unless you've loaded up Far Cry 3. I think this is really one of those rare cases where that complete 180 and Direction wasn't needed at all and staying on the topic of a clean look for a bit it's also very noticeable that Ubisoft Montreal was in a constant fight against the current console generation nearing the end of its life cycle the PlayStation 4 and Xbox box one would not be released until late 2013. that is still a year after the release of Far Cry 3 which meant that it was stuck with just a PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. both being about six or seven years old at that time Far Cry 3 was still developed using the powerful Dunya engine and it would have been able to release Cutting Edge visuals similar to what Crisis 3 offered around the same time but instead many many cutbacks and compromises had to be made in order to get this game working on the consoles there's these weird 2D shadows and ambient occlusion behind every object to try and create some separation but it doesn't really work a lot of the times and just creates this weird inverse halo effect with a line of pixels in between the character and the shadow that still lets True Light you have these beautiful jungle areas on the ground but you have a horrible popping mess once you get into the sky and there's this strange blocky most like fade effect that makes everything look blurry almost all the time there's a bunch of ambient light everywhere even in places where the area should really be darker and there's a lot of visual artifacts the moment that you introduce translucent surfaces or Reflections and no the game did not run at a stable 30 frames per second either you can take a look back at the digital Foundry analysis from around the time that it released and it shows frame rates as low as 15 on the consoles and even the PC Port today takes a dump the moment you try to allocate up more CPU cores than the few the game was designed to run on killed I need to find my younger brother and four other friends where this would have been enough of a reason for many people to outright disregard the game in today's environment in 2012 it was a little bit different and people were a lot more forgiving for this sort of stuff the more casual twists on the game and its many many additional features such as a dedicated Co-Op campaign a return of the Beloved and improved map editor and the somewhat improved multiplayer still meant that Ubisoft pushed over 4.5 million copies just within three months time now 4.5 million is nothing to scoff at but truth be told it was a big year for gaming and an even bigger year for Ubisoft in general Just Dance 4 and Assassin's Creed 3 two Ubisoft games released that same year sold 8 million and 12 million copies respectively within around the same time frame so yeah Far Cry 3 sold well but not extremely well it hadn't really caught on in the way that Ubisoft had hoped yet and this this is where ubisoft's next strategy comes in the development for Far Cry 4 had already begun over at Ubisoft Montreal and the plans for that game wasn't going to be changed too much but wouldn't it also be really convenient if there was another Far Cry game in between there to keep the hype train going keep the momentum going I think you probably know where I'm going with this because besides Far Cry 4 Yuba South Montreal also got to work on a DLC for Far Cry 3. this DLC had the sole purpose of getting more eyeballs on the franchise and draw in more of that in-depth audience so the requirements for this were that it had to be Standalone and it needed to be something that would be so out there and so wild that it would at least show up on everybody's radar for just a tiny bit of time and this this is where we get to Far Cry 3 blood Dragon thank you do I really have to say more okay I'll uh I'll keep this one brief in case you haven't picked up on it yet Far Cry 3 blood Dragon changes the setting from a bunch of Tropical Islands to something heavily inspired by 1980s futuristic movies instead of Jason Brody you play as a cyborg that can do about anything that Jason could do only 10 times better I'm just your everyday U.S military Mark for cyber Commander alrighty you need to clear me a path to the reactor so I can turn the power down I'm no cyber Soldier right instead of more cinematic cutscenes or those close-up face-to-face conversations that you had in Far Cry 3 the story is told almost entirely through these retro style animations with a dialogue almost always being extremely cheesy on purpose with it not only trying to parody pretty much everything about the 1980s but also taking shots at the shortcomings that the franchise has had with previous iterations mostly with Cry 2 which has really become their favorite punching back ever since Far Cry 3 popped off the style really is a love it or hated type of thing you cannot play this game and try to immerse yourself like some players might have been able to do in Far Cry 2 or 3. blood dragon simply never takes itself serious enough for you to do that but on the other hand if you ever really wanted to know what a very heavily modified Far Cry game would play like well this is it and surprisingly in combination with the already existing Far Cry sandbox it all actually results in a pretty enjoyable gameplay Loop the player runs faster so you don't need to get in those clumsy Vehicles who keep breaking all the time you jump higher and take no fall damage so you can leap frog from Cliff to cliff without worrying too much about losing a few minutes of progress you even start off with a lot of the abilities that would have needed to be unlocked in Far Cry 3 through the skill 3. one example would be the throwing knife takedowns which now have been changed to sure can take down really most of the tools that you would need to make the best use out of the sandbox is either there from the get-go or unlocked very early on I just hope this new c4000 is as good as the old c400 foreign Ubisoft definitely took note just how much Outpost Liberation was a hit with the fans and how creative players got once they were given the tools so with blood dragon they basically created Outpost Liberation the video game and threw in a whole bunch of extras on top of it and yeah this also means that previous issues that Far Cry 3 had have not really been looked into at all and are still very much present and that includes the somewhat limited AI to this unfortunately also affects the only enemy type that was supposed to be a threat the blood dragons which often end up just standing in a single spot trying to hit you when they're clearly cover between the two of you or they simply die at random there you go however because the game is already so silly to begin with it doesn't really hurt the overall experience you're not being pulled out of your immersion because any of these things happen it kind of adds to it in some moments if I'm going to be honest which I know sounds like a bad excuse but it's true the style of the game even works well to hide some of the graphical blemishes that plagued Far Cry 3. blood dragon needs less vegetation to fill out the map because the player runs past everything with a lot of speed anyway so a lot of Threes would really only get in the way and with a constant fog on the screen hiding most of the objects that are further away the game also doesn't need to worry about the popping issue it all combines to deliver a DLC that's while by no means is perfect was definitely worth the 15 price tag and resulted in a lot of positive media coverage as well it never ended up being a bestseller or anything which Ubisoft only shipping about half a million copies two months after its release but the big victory for Ubisoft was into other areas firstly the positive coverage and the reception of blood dragon caused the sales for the original Far Cry 3 to Skyrocket once again which was still the full price game at that point but also and maybe more importantly it really kept the iron hot for Ubisoft just long enough for them to reveal Far Cry 4 at E3 2014 which would then also be released in November that same year and yes this doesn't mean that Far Cry 4 barely had a two-year development cycle and will soon see what that meant for the game but at least on the sales side of things Far Cry 4 ended up being a massive hit shipping a record-breaking 7 million copies in just six weeks time beating the Assassin's Creed franchise that year and making it the 8th best-selling game of 2014 despite only coming out six weeks before the end of the year Far Cry 4 for a very brief moment in time was the game that everybody was talking about hell even I did back in 2014. first and foremost the driving seems to be a lot more versatile and smoothened when compared to the previous Far Cry type but we don't have to look at those videos now do we my point is Far Cry 4 was very big for Ubisoft surpassing their own already sky-high expectations but one does have to wonder how they managed to do it in such a short amount of time and which Corners were cut in order to make that happen yeah write the part of the video where we're gonna have to take a really good look at Far Cry number four or you know number nine at this point but Ubisoft put the four there so it's it's number four to start this off let's get the elephant out of the room it is no secret that Far Cry 4 is very similar to Far Cry 3 in many ways Ubisoft said themselves that they didn't feel the need to reinvent the wheel once again when Far Cry 3 was already such a huge success and honestly I can't really blame them for it either for a good couple of years everyone wanted to be the next Far Cry and even now many years later some of the smaller design choices and things that were first done in Far Cry 3 can still be seen back in all sorts of titles like the fact that climbable Ledges are indicated to the player with a bunch of ropes hanging off the edge because everybody knows if a ledge doesn't have these type of ropes it is probably not climbable so if so many other games are trying to be more like Far Cry then why the hell shouldn't Far Cry simply be more like far cry it makes sense and this means that gameplay wise we see a lot of the same stuff that we saw in Far Cry 3. the combat mechanics the weapons that you have available the enemy types that you're fighting they're all near identical and even the main mission structure thematically hits a lot of the same Beats from being a guy that doesn't really know too much about the world that he's in and needing to look at religious pets to strengthen yourself exploring ancient caves to fight lost objects to eventually overcome a bunch of over-the-top bad guys and yes there's also a main mission which includes the burning of drug Fields with a flamethrower however since the formula was still relatively fresh at the time I think that the copy I'm facing if anything did a lot of good for Far Cry 4 as it allowed the developers to put their attention elsewhere than trying to fix something that simply isn't broken the player sandbox for example is much more fleshed out especially on the movement side of things players now have a grapple hook which can be used to climb up steep rock walls and swing over some smaller crevices that would have otherwise had you walk all the way around you can fire guns while driving you can buy the wingsuit for the low low price of 25 000 Kira money right from the start of the game which then speeds up travel time on foot a lot as she can activate the swing suits jumping off of very low latches and then get a big boost in movement speed as you fly down and on the enemy side of things there's a whole bunch of new stuff too stealth has been updated with the ability for the player to move dead bodies around after you've killed them and not just with a drag after after a takedown kill there are enemies that even though you attack them with your camera their Mark still goes away after a few seconds because they're stealth enemies good thing on Ubisoft for realizing that tagging enemies permanently is kind of overpowered where Far Cry 3 starts off slow and takes a while before you turn into the killing machine that you are Far Cry 4 practically begs you to become a mass murderer just a few hours into the playthrough and the developers take no hesitation to fully lean into this by adding harder outposts in the way of fortresses which have about triple the amount of enemies guarding it and then sprinkle a scoring system on top of it based on how flashy your outposts takeover was and whether or not you were spotted and to top it all off almost the entirety of the game except for some specific missions can be played through in Co-op now which has the ability to elevate the moment-to-moment fun to a whole new height and is a much better Middle Ground solution than creating an entire separate four player co-op pain that would only take away development time from the main game so with all of that being said I don't think it's too difficult to see why copy and pasting so many different things within the sandbox worked out so well it is because every part that was taken straight from Far Cry 3 also had some additions to make things either more streamlined more fun or provided a Twist to it that wasn't there previously yet unfortunately for Ubisoft simply copying pasting stuff isn't really that applicable to other areas of the game like for example the main campaign where you can't just use the same characters to form a new story for the most part at least and it is here where that two-year development cycle really hurts more than anything Far Cry 4 has just like Far Cry 3 its own list of messed up villain-like characters that you have to get through in order to beat the game in fact it has more of them especially if he also counting the leaders of the golden pads who you think might be the good eyes at first but as you'll soon learn they both have their own set of issues so you're forcing the people to join golden path I'm sacrificing our liberties for peace later get in line or get out of the way now more is usually better but in the case of Far Cry 4 it isn't because this game is also a little bit shorter than Far Cry 3 with less actual main missions to complete now I wouldn't say that the average playthrough is shorter because there is a far higher chance for players to get lost in the more involved open roadside activities what's your fact yeah as long as you keep quiet prepare for the best baby you want it fast or slow what do you think you're doing but it does mean that's all main story characters get far less screen time and this you never really get to love or hate them as much as anyone in Far Cry 3 taking vas for example you run into him on six different occasions that is quite a bit of time to build up a rivalry Buck then makes you run all around the island for so long that you want nothing but to kill him by the very end of it and Hoyt is present from the very start and gets his own arc once you get to the second island now compare all of that to the four major villains in Far Cry 4. we have the player that's the first one on the list and even though you can see him do his thing at the very start of the game you basically knock him out the first time you get a face to face and that is then the end of it nor is the second one and someone you meet in the wildest of ways but you also kill her the second time you get a face to face if even if you don't intend to kill her the game kinda does it for you good riddance I guess then we have Yuma The Deadly Second Hand of pagan you see her once in a cutscene for like 20 seconds and then the second time you see her you don't even really kill her you go into this dreamlike boss fight thing and kill some random dude who surprise surprise was actually Yuma in real life and as for Pagan himself even he could have been on screen a little bit more although I will say you do hear him a lot through the radio talking to you which makes up for it quite a bit I've been thinking about my image on the world stage and I think what I like is a celebrity endorsement if the dictator of Turkmenistan can get JLo to sing him happy birthday then who's to say I can't get my fading star of yesteryear let's see how much Kanye is going for do you follow him on Twitter oh I would love to shoot the breeze with that young man what really hurts the most about this is that the writing for a lot of the characters has actually improved quite a bit when compared to Far Cry 3 and all of these villains could have been very interesting on their own the way that the player talks to his daughter just before he's about to torture someone for his own enjoyment I feel like that's about as messed up as anything that you saw in Far Cry 3. Far Cry 4 never gives enough time to develop any of these characters the game also tries to go back to the Far Cry 2 style Mission structure where you are forced to pick a side in this case either the site of amida or Sabal and what type of mission you get can vary quite a bit depending on the choice you make here but just like with Far Cry 2 the gameplay consequences are usually extremely minimal if there's anything at all and the real crime is honestly that you can't even sight with the real opposition Pagan Min it's usually about halfway through the story where the player will start to realize that these two are just as bad as the supposed bad guy yet no matter how many times Pagan invites you for dinner and offers to Simply talk things out you can never just say yes Ubisoft Montreal even realize that this was probably something that the players would have wanted in Far Cry 4 which is likely why that hidden ending where you just wait around for 10 minutes at a dinner table exists at all but obviously due to the shorter development time this is not something that could be fleshed out any more than that it was the fact that the game had to be released for the last generation consoles was another thing that limited the developers in the things that they could do the sandbox was more expanded yes but not every part of the gameplay had gotten that much needed overhaul and the best example that I can think of to Showcase this is by simply looking once again at the AI in Far Cry 4. come on I want to see you please [Music] what the [ __ ] just happened for the first time ever Far Cry Now leans very heavily into friendly AIS that in combination with a wildlife creates this world where you run into a weird mess of fighting NPCs basically all the time the upside of this is that the world feels much more alive with things going on even if you're not really a part of it but also more often than not it Just results in these comical encounters where nothing that the AI does actually makes any sense and you just have to go with it [Music] now while these type of things were funny to see in a standalone DLC that doesn't take itself serious at all I think tonally it doesn't really work in the same way for Far Cry 4 and that goes double if you consider that there's a Karma system now which adds and takes away points based on how many friendlies you save and get killed and also with how seriously the game takes itself narratively speaking before the war I was six years old my parents told me I had to marry six you really can't have it both ways you can't have a game that tries to be super serious but then have almost all of the combat encounters that include friendly AI be so comical that it just completely pulls you out of the experience even the animals which are supposed to be extra dangerous now still have so many targeting and patting problems with their AI that they can often be manipulated by just stepping back and forth around some objects which will cost them to either completely bug out or run back and forth at you and even graphically and within the engine the developers did not have enough time to completely polish up the rougher edges putting aside the horrible block like popping the weird shadows the Halos around objects the engine also simply fails to utilize the system's Hardware to the fullest extent in much of the same way that Far Cry 3 filled to do being very much CPU limited which often results in stutters and low frame rates even on PC and even on the Next Generation consoles now I'm not going to go full digital Foundry here because none of these problems are game breaking or anything but it all does once again just show that Far Cry 4 could have used a lot more time to polish up the rougher edges and that it could have released in a much better State than that it eventually did but you know what 7 million copies sold is still 7 million copies sold and with such a large player base it was also about time for Ubisoft to seriously consider releasing DLC Packs post launch because double dipping on the seven plus million user base was simply an opportunity that could not be ignored so both Ubisoft Montreal and supporting Studio Red Storm entertainment went on overtime to bring some DLC to the table as fast as possible and both of these Studios had a DLC ready within just months yet as you might expect from any DLC delivered in that sort of time frame it wasn't much more than an asset flip that reused as much of the already existing things as possible in escape from durgas prison the first DLC released you simply spawn into a radio tower without any weapons or upgrades and you have the task to make a 2d extraction point to win the game you have 30 minutes to do so and completing outposts or side missions gives you more XP and dying means that you have to start all over again then we have the second DLC which would be called overrun which simply turns smaller parts of the open world into multiplayer PVP maps where you have to capture the area in the circle and uh yeah that's it at the end of the game Whoever has occupied the zone for the most amount of time is the winner basically they put a capture Zone in the center of the map and call it a day so it was a fantastic opportunity for everyone I don't really think I want to blame the studio here but it's worth knowing that both of these DLCs of course cost money going for 10 and 5 respectively this double dip would all be closed off by one final DLC release named Valley of the yetis which is a bit more in line with what you think about when you hear the word DLC but is in all honesty still pretty bad with the DLC that basically turned those high mountain Himalaya missions into a smaller new open world for players to explore and gave it a new storyline that centers around you guys State the yetis that doesn't sound too bad at first Until you realize that aside from the yeti enemy the DLC doesn't really offer anything new and even the two to three hour campaign is horribly repetitive in structure May missions are presented to you not in the form of an interesting conversation with either Sabal or Amira but through a radio that lets you speak directly with the bad guy hello who is this does not matter who I am what matters is that I have your friend and I am going to kill him that's [ __ ] who the [ __ ] wrote this dialogue this is horrible then between every main mission the developers batted out the runtime of the game by having you survive waves and waves of enemies every single night the first time is alright but by the fifth night you really just want to get it over with and the open world itself is also not that impressive while I've always agreed that an open world High Mountain Area was missing from the base game this iteration is so rushed that it doesn't even feel good to play in fast travel has been removed entirely because the area is so small that to extend the runtime they just decided that you would have to walk on foot some of this can be circumvented by simply killing yourself after completing every Mission which will then respawn you at the radio station where you can start a new Mission but this is of course nothing more than a dumb workaround because the developers were too stingy to add fast travel it's actually comical how the Standalone DLC released by themselves two years earlier is now retroactively mocking their own design choices what is perhaps the most frustrating is that this DLC strips away any and all progress that you've made with your character in the base game so for this three hour campaign they expect you to start fresh with your skill tree crafted items and weapons and do it all over again cherry on top was that when Ubisoft released the trailer for Valley of the yetis it would be sold for 15 just like blood dragon but you could also buy the Far Cry 4 season pass for just ten dollars and then you would save 20 on all the downloadable content for Far Cry 4. get this season pass and save 20 on new downloadable content sounds like a reasonable deal until you learn that value of the yetis would also be the last DLC that would be made for Far Cry 4. yet despite their shitty practices it did not stop the momentum for Ubisoft sales for the game climbed up all the way over 10 million after Valley of the yetis launched and although the money mate with all this DLC and the season pass will likely never really be revealed to the public as we'll soon find out with Far Cry 5 it must have been enough to change their whole post-launch model and fully lean into monetizing the game with post-launch content Ubisoft has always had a neck for capitalizing on successful Far Cry releases with sloppy and rushed cash outs but it is at this point in time that things truly started to change for the franchise and where Ubisoft slowly started digging a hole for themselves that to this day they have not been able to climb out of yet so let's look at the situation it is March of 2015. the DLCs are out the door but the development for Far Cry 5 had not even begun yet and this was some bad news Far Cry 4 started development pretty much as soon as Far Cry 3 was out the door and even with the heavily heavily copy and pasted mechanics it still took them almost two years to make and still resulted in a albeit fun very unpolished product how on Earth were they going to make Far Cry 5 in just one and a half years and have it not be a complete train wreck the simple answer is well they weren't care of yourself deputy but after seeing the impact that keeping the momentum going ahead on the sales they couldn't simply not release a fork right next year so to keep the train going instead of developing Far Cry 5 it was simply time for yet another spin-off which would really be a two-for-one hit as it will allow them to cut things like multiplayer the map Creator social features Co-op and all of that other junk that just gets in the way of releasing games fast and instead it would allow them to just create a single player campaign and take big creative risks with it as well so that's the path that they chose and in just one year time they managed to deliver a full price spin-off title set in the year 10 000 BC they called it Far Cry primal [Music] just one year of development time for a triple A game sounds like a recipe for disaster but credit where credit is due Far Cry Primal shipped mostly bug free and is a future complete package that for a good part delivers on the fantasy it Promises of course it still copies a lot of the existing mechanics the models and the animations from its two predecessors to make it all possible even going as far as using the Far Cry 4 map as a starting point for the map in Primal and then modifying it where needed but with the setting being a lot different this time around forcing Ubisoft to pretty much change the whole weapon Arsenal it still manages to set itself apart enough to where it feels like a completely unique game in the franchise I think it's fair to say that the map has been changed enough to the point where you'd never really recognize it if you weren't specifically looking to compare it to and even then it might be difficult it also really doesn't hurt that the game looks significantly better than Far Cry 4. the decision to not release this game for the last generation and consoles opened up quite a few doors draw distances are much better and although the infamous blocky transitions still exist they are much harder to Spot while playing which is definitely also in part because there aren't any vehicles to drive or helicopters to fly other than riding on an animal if you want to count that but being grounded and moving at a slower pace through the world with nothing but large trees right in front of you it works wonders to hide most of the engine's imperfections and truly puts this game a notch Above the Rest at least visually the focus of the main campaign is then also cleverly designed around exploring this world Primal still has a main storyline of course with more traditional unreals missions and bigger set piece moments but the majority of the game revolves around searching for other primates with special skills to help build up your home camp and increase your tribe's population more primates means you get access to more skill trees more abilities more weapons gadgets all that stuff some of which are even required to progress through the main story like for example needing the ability to craft a poison antidote to get to one of the main bosses of the game so yeah I guess in that sense you could say that the storyline progression is in some ways gated by the exploration of the world but it's never done to the extent where it really gets in your way and you have to run errands for hours on end if anything it's quite the opposite it promotes exploring this world in the way that you want to and it is here where I think Primal is at its best players simply have a lot more freedom than ever before to decide where they want to go which key tribe members to search for first and which one to do last or maybe not at all I would even go as far to say that the early game in Primal brings back something that was lost with Far Cry 4 and that is the need for survival in Primal you aren't a crazy killing machine from the get-go you have to put in a lot of effort to become one and you only really become one at the later stages in the game unfortunately though it is also that as you get stronger and as you become that crazy killing machine the gameplay of Primal gets significantly worse because with many of the changes to the sandbox there have also been a lot of oversights that turn the gameplay of Primal really just into a laughing stock that couldn't be further away from what I feel like would be the intended way to play there's a couple subjects that people often point to when they talk about the lacking combat sandbox for one is that the melee combat is too simple and that it should have been a little bit more developed seeing that this game has so much of it compared to other far cries the only thing that Primal added is that you can now also do a heavy attack in addition to the normal attack with your melee weapons which is simply not enough to create meaningful depth to the engagements most of the time and it just results into players spamming their buttons to win and then another thing that people often point to is that you have the ability to train animals now and that's a really nice addition a great feature that gets to the setting but it also has the ability to make the game way too easy at times because the enemy AI they just tend to get laser focused on your bet while you can do most of the killing or you can also just leave it all up to the bat go go go go go go go go hardest difficulty by the way yet both of these problems they peel in comparison to some of the newly added stuff in the player skill trees that have the potential to completely break the game like for example the ability to heal up while sprinting which causes a lot more problems than I think the developers gave thought to on paper it probably doesn't seem all too strong Until you realize that the only ranged weapons that the enemies have in Primal are of course bows and Spears which all move through the air a lot slower than bullets do so if you have a bunch of slow-moving projectiles that you can easily Dodge while sprinting and if you can heal whilst printing then nothing is stopping you from just sprinting around and healing up all the time even on the hardest difficulty of course Far Cry has always promoted aggressive play with cool animations and more experience per takedown but the one area where it has consistently constrained the player is exactly with its Health as healing would always take you out of Sprint remove your ability to shoot and just [ __ ] you all together even in blood dragon where you play as a cyborg this is the case and Primal is the prime example of what happens if you remove this limitation that doesn't mean that the game can't be difficult at times though because to make this game a bit more challenging the developers also shoved in one of the worst things to ever be added to the Far Cry franchise boss fights and I'm not talking about the interesting kind oh no no I'm talking about the kind where the bosses are normal NPCs but they have a million HP ah throughout your playthrough you will run into a few of these either guarding one of the bigger outposts or being the main objective during one of your missions and every time you get to a boss fight it is a horrible time waste of an experience none of the mechanics in any of these boss fights are interesting or special and yet all of these bosses have a boatload of Health that will take you a very long time to get through thank your enemies is actually somewhat of a problem throughout the whole game where the weapon economy just doesn't really work around that too well I'd say that weapons are fairly balanced going up against normal enemies and even against wild animals but since almost every enemy type from all the previous Far Cry games have basically been copy and pasted right into Primal without much consideration for how that would actually work we also have Heavies in Primal in Far Cry 4 Heavies weren't that much of a problem because she would have a rocket launcher grenade launcher or a 50 caliber sniper specifically to deal with them but in Far Cry Primal all your ammunition is very costly you have to craft every bow and these Heavies they can tank 20 or 30 bow shots before going down so the best way to deal with them is just trying to kill them with melee weapons you can compare it to trying to kill a heavy and Far Cry 3 with the machete which is not very efficient in in case you're wondering Far Cry Primal really wants you to use these alternative methods to try and take these Heavies out like luring out deadly animals from the Wilds to take on these Heavies for you but oftentimes those things are very time consuming and sometimes it still doesn't really do the job it just creates this Gap where either enemies are super easy to take down or they take forever to deal with okay look at this guy before he's finally [ __ ] dead that's all my arrows let's try a couple spares Maybe nothing works nothing nothing at all except for that tiger no and uh while we're on the topic of wild animals [Music] there are a lot of them but even the hunting mechanics fall flat in many ways because it relies on gimmicks such as Hunter Vision that marks enemies and animals with a yellow or red outline now honestly this might just be a personal preference but I've never been too big of a fan of special Vision in any video game because it oftentimes is just too strong not to use and pushes the player to use it all the time as a result Far Cry Primal is unfortunately no exception to this Hunter vision is useful literally all the time even against human enemies which means that oftentimes players can just walk into enemy camps or through every mission in a straight line with this Vision enabled for the whole part and any enemy that would have been hidden or would have been harder to see is now instantly visible and if it isn't the heavy or a boss it will be a one-hit kill with a bow it's just yet another thing that points towards a lot of these mechanics being copy and pasted in in from previous Far Cry games or from other open world titles Without Really spending the time to fine-tune or balance that thing still work within this game most of the effort has definitely been spent on creating this immersive world it's just that when we get to the gameplay that's when the whole thing falls apart if you take all of this and then combine it with the fact that Primal was just a spin-off title released only for the next gen consoles that didn't have multiplayer or Co-op or a map editor and was also the subject of an audience that was starting to grow a little bit tired of the underlying formula then you'll find yourself a game that simply did not sell as well even more concerning though at least for Ubisoft is that they now found themselves stuck again in the same position that they were in before starting the work on Primal they needed to push out a new Far Cry game preferably as soon as yesterday while also barely having started the production on the next Far Cry yet another spin-off wasn't going to cut it this time either because you can only do so many spin-offs before the spin-offs become the main brand so they were finally forced to bite the bullet and announced that the next Far Cry game would take more time to develop and that it wouldn't be released until at least 2018. on top of that Ubisoft Montreal would also receive a lot of help from Ubisoft Toronto this time around which is another Ubisoft studio with no less than 500 developers at the time so what does all this extra time and Manpower do for the franchise well in the case of Far Cry 5 a lot of good actually because Far Cry 5 is by many players considered to be the last good Far Cry game so uh why don't we find out what it means to be the last good Far Cry let's have a good look at Far Cry 5. [Music] foreign right out of the gate Far Cry 5 truly feels Like A Step Above either Far Cry 4 or Primal visually speaking the developers went above and beyond to upgrade and optimize as many things about the engine as possible and it shows not only does it look better it also runs better which really just goes to show the type of magic proper optimization can do for a game something that especially Far Cry 4 really could have benefited from as well Graphics aside it's safe to say that the rest of the game also received a much needed facelift animations are touched up giving them a new look but also a new tighter feeling the user interface has been redone entirely with the removal of the minimap replaced by a compass wheel on top of the screen which actually has quite some effects on gameplay too by forcing players to be a bit more aware of their surroundings instead of Simply reading enemy positions off of the mini-map it's small things like this that really had the potential to elevate Far Cry 5's gameplay to a whole new level of course previous Far Cry games always gave you the option to disable the minimap on the UI panel which would then also make the combat harder but you'd also lose out on a bunch of nice features that had nothing to do with combat difficulty like the simple ability to find shop locations or the ability to use GPS in vehicles neither of which are super important but Far Cry 5 cleverly offers The Best of Both Worlds through this Compass wheel and alternative methods of including the GPS in the game virtually every part of the UI has been redone and almost everything is an improvement and that is really the name of the game with Far Cry 5 because the moment that you finish the tutorial you'll realize that even when it comes down to the main campaign structure Far Cry 5 is nothing like its predecessors for me so don't worry the game for one takes place in America Montana USA USA USA which definitely Alters the tone quite a bit welcome to the Disco Inferno man it's my special place where I can just be me but what's more important is that for the first time ever the main campaign is not told in a linear way and you are pretty much free to do whatever you want from the very start it still of course enters around a couple of big bad villains who killing will be the main objective of the game but instead of going Mission by mission to get closer to the ultimate finale all of these guys are in control of a part of the map and it is by causing trouble or completing missions in any of these parts of the map that you can get closer to them now this system it's not perfect but it does work very well to enhance the best parts about Far Cry as much fun as taking over outposts could be in Far Cry 3 and 4. it never gave the players any tangible reward for doing them other than maybe an extra fast travel point and enough experience to unlock about half a skill point and that ultimately meant that players always had to choose whether to make progress through the story or to Simply continue exploring the sandbox and take over these outposts on their own terms Far Cry 5 simply comes in and says why not boat and essentially gives you story progress for taking out these outposts that's not to say that it doesn't have the equivalent of main missions to also build up your reputation because it has a lot of main missions and they all give you a lot of reputation too but for the first time ever you can now also choose to ignore those missions and just build up your reputation through everything else in fact it's not uncommon for players to reach the end of the game with many of the main missions left uncompleted and it's this Freedom that truly elevates the moment-to-moment gameplay to a whole new level yeah probably but I just want to see if we can get there you can destroy it wait that's a mission okay yeah do that damn yeah so that actually gave us enough experience to go kill that guy now oh yeah talk about making exploration rewarding better yet a lot of these open world activities are often cleverly intertwined with the main missions in a way that makes progression through the game feels fast and very natural for one Mission you might have to help steal a plane but instead of it just being an area specifically built for that mission the plane is actually kept at one of the outposts this means that if you haven't cleared The Outpost yet before starting the mission it will likely also be something that you do during the mission which means that you're hitting two flies with one stone and getting double the reputation for the time you put in it gets even better though because once you have the plane you're very much encouraged to use it during the mission to take out as many of those silos as possible each of them also giving you more reputation this really is the difference in just the real design while other open World Games often try to get every last minute of Play Time Out of You by cramming the world full with out of place Collectibles or obscure things to find Far Cry 5 lets you do it all at once which in a weird way actually incentivizes players to go and do more of it precisely because it isn't such a chore and you don't feel like you're just being dragged through the mud for more play time there is one big issue with the system though and that's that every time that you hit a reputation milestone in any of the three zones you get forcefully kidnapped by one of the bad guys and put through one of the bigger main missions this is usually done because they shoot a bliss Bullet at you or something among the lines which will then knock you out only to wake up next to the bad guy and while it comes as a nicer price the first sign of that happens by the 8th or the ninth time that you get taken away you're definitely starting to feel the repetition and even if you try your best to avoid any enemies once you're on The Hit List the game just knocks you out anyway and you still wake up next to the bad guy wait what I think I just got that's exactly what happened to me once that's that's when the game says no enough I mean it kind of sucks but on the other hand if that's the price we pay for all this Freedom that we have I'd say that's a bargain with all of that good being said though it is now time to take a better look at the sandbox because while Far Cry 5 might have more weapons vehicles and toys to play around with than ever before not every change that was made has necessarily been for the better and it pretty much just comes down to the developers adding too many toys to this game that are far too strong and completely trivialize the rest of the game even on the hardest difficulty one example of that would be to look at the stealth mechanics which absolutely received a lot of refinement with this title I already mentioned the lack of a radar forcing you to be a bit more aware but bullets in this game now also have a lot more travel time forcing you to lead your shots at a distance a considerable amount which in turn makes it more challenging to go for that stealthy play style because with just one bullet missed the enemies are on high alert but then the game also has these consumables which not only make you move faster and more quiet but also allows you to punch so hard it basically kills everything with a single hit you have a consumable that marks every enemy automatically within a certain radius from you and you've got one that gives you a bunch of damage resistance too now consumables are nothing new to Far Cry I mean Far Cry 3 had these sirenches that gave the player boost as well but in Far Cry 5 these things are so strong and do so many different things that reduces the gameplay of Far Cry almost to a point-and-click adventure game and that is just one example another one would be the fact that Vehicles can now be bought at a garage or a helipad with a single one-time purchase for it to be then used whenever you want sounds like a cool idea to be able to get your own collection of vehicles the same way that you collect a whole bunch of weapons Until you realize that among these vehicles is also a mini chopper with machine guns and Rockets that the enemies in this game are are just not capable of dealing with I am not exaggerating when I say that the moment that you purchase a chopper like this you basically finish the game and everything that you do from there on out is flying from one objective marker to another objective marker to mow down a dozen and a half of enemies only to repeat it until it's time for another kidnapping even a lot of the main missions allow you to keep using this Chopper when those same missions were clearly not built with a chopper in mind allowing you to spawn kill enemies that would otherwise be out of sight and completely bypass the intended way to go through these missions outposts also become a joke as enemies barely even shoot back at you even traveling through this world with a chopper becomes a boar because you never really run into anything special and everything just starts to look and feel the same that is not to say that I didn't like the environment of Far Cry 5. In fact when you're on the ground I believe that Far Cry 5 is the best looking Far Cry to date Perhaps it is the Western setting that the game has that makes it feel a bit more believable because I've seen these types of environments in real life a lot at least a lot more than the mountains of kirat but whatever it may be the world of Far Cry 5 feels like the most believable one yet but that all changes once you're in the air the moment you step into a helicopter or plane not only are they popping enough objects a lot more noticeable something that I honestly barely notice on the ground but you're also missing out on so much character that has been put into this world and it removes any and all Random Encounters you might have otherwise come across the argument that could be made against this is to Simply say well if you don't like the chopper don't use it in which case yeah that's a fair point to make and that goes for the consumables as well and I guess a bunch of other things within the sandbox too but I firmly believe that if all the most efficient ways of playing a game are also the opposite of what makes that game good then that is a flaw with the game design and not always the fault of the player which is a point that we'll come back to a lot when looking at Far Cry new on and Far Cry 6. may God have mercy on your soul Far Cry 5 also really makes me believe that Ubisoft has absolutely no clue what to do with its boss fights I'll be the last person to say that the QuickTime events from Far Cry 3 were the Pinnacle of game design but each boss fight in Far Cry 5 is not only just bad they are also so different from each other that it feels like Ubisoft Montreal was just testing stuff out with his boss fights to see if anything would work and so as a result we have three boss fights and none of them work and they all don't really work for different reasons the one against John seat pushes the player into a dog fight in Planes which could work out well but since you don't have to take him out from a plane if your plane gets taken down the mission doesn't reset Jon just ends up flying in circles until you eventually shoot him down with a gun from the ground which then has the potential to result in one of the most anti-climactic takedowns I've ever seen in the video game the one against Fates is also really out of place because her whole thing is that she drugs your mind and tries to control you from within and some of the gameplay moments and missions that you get while trying to get to her they're actually really cool I feel like this storyline had the potential to turn into something special but just as you think it's about to get good and interesting it just turns into this weird boss fight where you're shooting teleporting and flying versions of her with guns because you're hallucinating and then against Jacob seed you take out some radio towers playing a song and after you're done with that he's just waiting there on top of a mountain peak if you try to shoot at him with for example a sniper he will go down but he will just get himself back up which then indicates to the player that once you get up there there's probably some more of a battle there that you have to go through to kill him but instead of there being some nice fights you just kick him twice and he falls over dead die now or you die later it's up to you but either way you won't die a hero the thing that hurts the most about this is that all these characters are extremely well written and acted some of the best in the franchise with attention to detail that reaches into every inch of this game your friends have been taken and tortured and it's your fault countless people have been killed and it is your fault the world is on fire and it's your fault was it worth it was it you have enough time with all of them to really get to understand what makes them tick and it's obvious that they really are the focus when compared against your forgettable companions or even your mute self I almost want to believe that Far Cry 5 ended the way that it did because the developers simply did not know what to do with the final boss fight and how to make it satisfying so instead of just giving it a weird and unsatisfying ending they just let the bad guy live no matter what the last big elephant in the room for this game which I'm sure is on the list for everybody that just as much looked at this game is the inclusion of the many many micro transactions you see Ubisoft did take a lot more time and manpower to develop Far Cry 5 but that also meant that they wanted to see a much bigger return on investment and the only way to do that was by Jam packing the game with stuff that you can spend your money on we're talking weapons Vehicles skins you name it the main character might not have any dialogue throughout the whole main campaign but a whole character customization system was still add it just to lean into that personalization aspect that some people tend to get lost in I will say that almost everything in the shop can be unlocked with in-game money as well if you're willing to play the game enough but I'm also sure that you can see how Ubisoft up those prices in the store just a little bit to see if they can perhaps persuade someone to make that extra purchase there was any hope for peace and this is something that they pulled off very successfully by the way as it's been reported that Far Cry 5 was the second biggest launch that Ubisoft had ever seen grossing around 310 million US dollars in the first week alone only beaten by none other than the division yes I'm not kidding the division was that big and no I don't know why they pretty much benefited franchise please stop asking me about it in addition to these microtransactions to even further boost up the revenue Ubisoft also had a bigger than ever post-launch content plan this time around that would take the player to three different unique settings in order of release we had hours of Darkness lost on Mars and dead living zombies and although admittedly yeah each of these DLCs had a unique setting not yet seen before at least in the Far Cry franchise you might also know that due to the very short development time given to all of these projects they all ended up being pretty mediocre at best wait am I Reviving you right now but I could still revive you hours of Darkness was the first one to be released coming out just two months after the initial release of the base game and takes the players to a Vietnam setting where your stranded in the middle of a war zone and you have to make it back to the extraction point to win of course it doesn't take a genius to see that this is exactly like the escape from durgesh prison that was released as a DLC for Far Cry 4 but instead of reusing the already existing open world a new albeit smaller map was made specifically for this DLC initially this might give you the impression that's the plan for hours of Darkness was to take everything that worked with escape from durgesh but to do it properly this time with a higher production value but don't let the good looks fool you because well yeah it evolved in that way with its production value it is also missing all of the key gameplay features that made escape from durgesh worth playing in the first place for starters there's no timer you don't have to get to the extraction Point within a certain amount of time you just have to get there which then removes the risk versus reward factor for doing anything and if you die you don't start from the beginning you just respawn much like in the base game there isn't really any incentive for clearing anything on the map as you don't have to unlock your perks all over again or get experience and on top of that you also don't really have to prepare for a final holdout fight at the end because the moment that you enter the helicopter you can't really be killed anymore I I don't think the helicopter can crash should it be no I don't think it can crash I've been trying for a while though gonna can the driver crash though no okay yes yes you can that is nice to know there's nothing stopping you from picking up a random assault rifle and making a b line straight to the Finish which is also the most efficient way to play this game there's some stuff you can do on the map like capturing an outpost or two or taking out some propaganda but the only reason that you would realistically be doing this is simply because it's fun the one nice feature that was added is that you can occasionally call an air strikes to help you out which if the DLC was more difficult could have been an extra resource to keep tabs on but precisely because it is already so easy and you really don't need to kill any enemies it ends up being nothing more than a gimmick used only because it looks cool it's pretty obvious that the idea and the concept for the DLC was nice and if they worked it out a bit more it definitely could have worked but instead it was so Barren and short of Baseline mechanics that it often just resulted in a one hour play session that offered zero replayability which then result in a lot of people complaining that the DLC was too short and didn't have enough content which Ubisoft did take note of because for their next DLC lost on Mars they made sure players would not be able to run through it in just 30 minutes being released in just over a month after hours of darkness and also developed by the same Studio Ubisoft Chung Hai with yes all three DLCs for this game got outsourced you'd think that lost on Mars would be another short-lived experience and you'd be very very wrong taking place on well I think you can figure that out lost on Mars feels a lot more fleshed out at first players get thrown into an open role that they are free to explore with access to a bunch of new weapons in a spacesuit with a jet back that adds a whole Third Dimension to some of the fights in a way that Destiny players now would be very jealous of and yeah these weapons are pretty powerful and all completely unique from a laser gun to a pistol shoots explosive plasma and the best part is is that these weapons can even be taken right back into the base game to create even more chaos and an even more unbalanced sandbox on top of that there's also a lot of Voice work that was done for lost on Mars a bit too much if you ask me because uh your companion in this DLC is her a character that's been a part of the franchise since Far Cry 3 that keeps appearing in every single game as a running joke among the Developers tried to join them I mean I mean it just seemed like a good idea I mean they had all these guns food fine ass females and I mean those are three things I'm really all about then then they start listing off all their dang rules man no fornicating turns out that means [ __ ] no no alcohol in the wild mountain partying man no thank you and well the thing with her case is that you either love him or you hate him because he really really doesn't know how to shut up why are you on Mars to save the Earth man what from an alien invasion yeah the only problem is what the [ __ ] Kurt I didn't ask for this well it was fine in the base game because you only have to play with him for a handful of missions in the DLC he is just always there and he just keeps going and going and going and man does it get tiresome at times that really is just thing with this DLC it just keeps on going and going and going because to extend the runtime they filled up this whole map with copy and paste radio towers and outposts and the same alien boss that you have to kill 15 times and in order to beat the game you have to do everything you have to take over every radio tower every Outpost because well that is the main objective there isn't much else there is a mission at the start of the DLC that's a bit more on Wheels and then there's a mission at the end of the DLC once you have that hundred percent completion but everything else in the middle is just the same site content over and over again even the more special dream-like sequences simply reuse areas enemies and mechanics from the base game that it just throws at you at random in a desperate attempt to mix things up having fun clearing those outposts no okay here's a random Yeti to kill Hurts the Most they said this DLC could have been as good as Far Cry 3 blood Dragon as it essentially fills the same role it's an out of place setting that fully tries to lean into a type of fantasy the players have enhanced movement there's strange enemy types there's a heavy Reliance on The Outpost formula to carry itself you really don't have to look far to see some of the similarities but where blood dragon got the balance right and injected Enough original content in between the usual stuff lost on Mars slows down to her crawl in the middle forcing you to travel to every last inch of the map to reach that 100 completion before you can start the last mission and it is here where the novelty of the setting no longer has the ability to carry the rest of the game just like ours of Darkness lost on Mars is a prime example of what happens when the main selling point for Far Cry DLC becomes having a new map without actually flashing out the formula enough to make it worth playing then last on the list of subpar DLC releases is debt living zombies which this time does not present the player with another empty open road map but instead offers seven different missions that are more on reels where you're basically pitching an ID for a movie as a starting filmmaker but then you play out these scenarios as they are pitched as you might imagine it's not a DLC that takes itself very serious and it often throws a bunch of [ __ ] at you in order to try and force out the left I think this story would be better told at night but it mostly just feels really cheesy which is not something that I needed more of after 5 hours of listening to herc the thing is though with this DLC is that without any substantial mechanics it just ends up being a zombie chord or shooter that relies all too much on its comedy angle the zombies themselves of course use the same AI that the Angels melee enemies in the base game use with all of them just running in a straight line so even the combat is a lot more simplistic than it was in the base game the truth of it is is that Ubisoft simply didn't care too much about how these DLCs would be received they had them done by a different Studio that was less experienced with the Far Cry formula because yeah DLCs are good and they earn a lot of money but you know what does even better you know what would probably earn even more money oh I think you know because while Ubisoft Chiang Hai was working on these DLCs they had Ubisoft Montreal work on say it with me this time yet another spin-off title in no less than 11 months after Far Cry 5 the base game released not the dlc's just a this game the next Far Cry was already in store this time with a post-apocalyptic setting that was based on the ending of Far Cry 5. this is where we get to Far Cry New Dawn before you showed up everything was [ __ ] great then you came along with your fancy train and your fancy people trying to make this place into something Far Cry new Don is often looked at as the Black Sheep within the recent Far Cry releases but not for the reasons that you might believe the biggest criticism that this game received at lunch was that instead of it being a standalone this simply could have been a DLC for Far Cry 5 especially considering that the developers reuse the Far Cry 5 map similar to how Primal used the map for Far Cry 4 as a starting point I believe though that this negative sentiment had a lot to do with the player base getting fed up with all of Ubisoft City practices at the time Half Baked DLC releases a very expensive in-game store and that new Dom drops not as a good DLC but as a whole separate product if you actually put the two maps together and compare them the same way that you would try to compare Far Cry 4 with Primal you'll find that a lot of work has actually been done in udon to visually separate itself from Far Cry 5 and with the game not being a full price title and also taking place in the same location or according to the story it is all the more excusable to Simply reuse the map layout it almost feels like Ubisoft has their own separate formula for their Far Cry spin-offs compared to the mainline series because the way that new dawn took the map from a previous Far Cry is not the only thing it has in common with Primal in fact the whole mission structure of these two games are identical New Dawn 2 requires the player to grow their home Camp by searching the lens for Specialists that once you bring them back have the ability to give you a lot of benefits sucks my dick from the back wait what and since it is a spin-off title that also means that just like with Primal there's a lot more room to try out a whole bunch of new things which in the case of New Dawn meant that they turned Far Cry from a shooter to an RPG with all the stuff that usually comes with that tanky enemies weapons and vehicles that come in different tiers of Rarity and a lot of different currencies how exciting the likely reason that this RPG system was pushed so hard was because of the success of the Assassin's Creed franchise at the time that managed to rpgfi itself very well and clamped out of its slump because it gained a whole new fan base as a result so for Far Cry to also try this out that didn't necessarily have to be a bad thing but with just 11 months of development time there was no way that they were not only going to make a new Far Cry game but also revamped the whole formula and do it well it really is no surprise then that far brand new Don is exactly what you get when you take a first person shooter and slap some RPG mechanics on top of it the player sandbox for one is where you'll see the first cracks in the system because Far Cry has always put a big emphasis on variety and all the different tools that it gives to the player sometimes a bit to a faulty extent but when you start putting Rarity tears on every weapon on every vehicle from white to Blue to purple to Gold then well all of the weapons that aren't the highest possible tier currently available to you is suddenly going to be very unoptimal to use and in Far Cry New Dawn the differences between just a single tier they're huge with the damage often doubling at the very least this still wouldn't be as much of an issue if higher tiered weapons were readily available after you had gotten your first few much like every other RPG kind of does but that's not really the case in New Dawn it is quite the opposite actually weapons picked up from enemies or found all around the world are always in the lowest tier possible and the only way to get a higher tier weapon is by upgrading the weapon crafting station at your base and then spending a very large amount of materials to unlock just a single weapon it's in some way similar to the weapon shop in Far Cry 5 except the currency prices are far far more outrageous especially for the top tier weapons while playing through Far Cry 5 yeah I felt the impact of the shop but I also felt that I had enough money to get around most of the time if Far Cry knew done though throughout my entire playthrough I was only able to craft one gun and it wasn't even of the highest Rarity it was this purple sidearm I did have a blue SMG as well which I got from the Ubisoft Club as some kind of reward but that aside this meant that during my entire playthrough of the main campaign I was stuck using either the SMG or the pistol because everything else did very low damage this of course hurts the gameplay Loop of Far Cry New Dawn in so many ways because where you would previously be able to pick up weapons from dead enemies if you ever find yourself out of ammo and where you're otherwise able to creatively get yourself out of Nessy situations in yield on you'd be out of luck because yeah you can pick up that RPG from all those enemies that you killed just don't expect it to do any more damage than a single shot of your pistol what's worse is that Far Cry New Dawn also adopted the same challenge system that Far Cry 5 introduced where you have to get kills in specific ways to unlock more perks this is something I didn't really cover when talking about Far Cry 5 because realistically with a video like this there's only so much you can talk about and in Far Cry 5 it was never too big of a deal because switching up my weapons was always easy to do fun and sometimes just as effective but again in New Dawn it is precisely because you're stuck using only the high tiered weapons that you often really have to get out of your way to do any of these challenges it also really doesn't help that most perks that you unlock are the most basic of things that would be given to you by default in any other Far Cry you even have to unlock the ability to take down enemies of each tier level because Ubisoft really wanted to make sure that stealth takedowns wouldn't be a way to circumvent the enemy scaling which then kind of defeats the purpose of playing stealthy at all after you've disabled the alarms at the outposts because you won't be able to perform a takedown anyway thank you the issues with this RPG system run much deeper though and it won't take you a lot of play time to see how these large amounts of Health remove a lot of the fun from Far Cry as well instead of going to the world and running over some enemies with your fast vehicle you hit the enemies now and they lose about 10 of their health instead of being on the hunt for cougars I am now on the hunt for level three cougars you can call me Nana the most comical thing is is that despite ubisoft's best efforts to gate the power of the player solely behind the Rarity of their weapons they forgot all about the Special ammo types and well the armor penetration rounds in particular they have the ability to completely bypass the whole game's RPG system the thing is despite mudon being an RPG game enemies still always die with a single headshot which was the one rule that Ubisoft did not want to break so in order to make an is tanky they simply gave them a helmet that takes about as much bullets to kill as shooting them on the Bollywood you might see where I'm going with this but it just so happens to be that the armor penetration rounds still penetrate through helmets just like they did in Far Cry 5. and so with these type of rounds you can kill every single enemy in just a single bullet even the Heavies or most of the bosses because only their body and their helmet Health had been accounted for when scaling the difficulty pistol beats boss pistol beats Chopper pistol beats everything and of course the last one bugs out that's that's classic Far Cry right there even if we ignore all of the previous issues there's still more because with these tankier enemies that generally take longer to kill they also have the ability to perfectly demonstrate just how dated the AI can feel in Far Cry foreign ly bring up this point for Far Cry Primal or for Far Cry 5 because in all fairness improvements have been made over the years and with an open World sandbox this varied unintended things are bound to happen every now and then it is just that this limited AI is especially noticeable when the time to kill is that much longer because the dated Behavior gets a lot more time in the spotlight they even introduced a couple of boss fights in this game where you have to kill a very tanky animal and if you've been paying any attention to this video at all you can probably guess how those type of fights play out some of you all might call this cheesy and I don't disagree it's just that if you're gonna build an arena specifically for this boss fight then you should probably also make sure that the boss can actually properly move around and set Arena I don't know just an idea you'll be self to do with that as you will New Dawn also further solidifies the notion that Far Cry boss fights and Ubisoft are not a good mix because another thing that new Don has in common with Primal are those bosses that just have a lot of health and that's their whole thing you really only get to experience this at the end though when you have to fight the main antagonist and then also Joseph's son that somehow also turns into an animal and is with these boss fights where the armor penetration rounds don't work because none of these bosses have a protective helmet despite their lack of protection though the boss fight against these girls still took me 25 minutes to complete with most of that time spent running around trying to collect ammo and then unloading clip after clip into their heads which worked well enough because their AI often bugged out and just stood still doing nothing but that is still 25 minutes of my life that I'll never get back something that probably also didn't help too much was the game's constant desire to try and be edgy all the time with villains that honestly tried too hard to be cool and seem to have no depth to them other than a sad backstory that's only revealed to you in a flashback which marks about as many storytelling sins as this video has minutes this time though they finally saw the results of their shitty practices back in the sales new Don only sold 13 of the copies that Far Cry 5 did and was widely considered to be a massive flop being shook by the poor sales of this game Ubisoft wasted no time and moved on to the next and the most recent Mainline entry in the franchise which for the first time ever would have Ubisoft Toronto as the main developer and would also be given a full three years of development the most that any Far Cry has had since Far Cry 3. so does the story of Far Cry end on a good note because of all these changes well I think it's time to finally find out isn't it it's time to take a good look at Far Cry 6. if there is one thing that the extra development time did for Far Cry 6 it has to be quantity because this game is Big much bigger than any of the previous Far Cry games and it isn't just empty landmass either there are over 100 Missions of which at least 50 are mandatory to beat the game which also makes it by far the longest campaign yet the main story is set up very similarly to Far Cry 5 where the map is divided into three zones controlled by three different bad guys and taking them out will eventually allow you to get to the main villain which in this case is Anton Castillo a dictator that runs the lens of Yara and this time instead of playing a mute custom-made character like your boot in Far Cry 5 or a new Don you now play as Dany who is anything but a mute bystander Danny [ __ ] say something IO the focus of the story is therefore also a lot more pointed towards Dany in the player and a lot less around its villains they're still there of course and you both have a few altercations with Anton before the end of the game but it's a large difference from how the franchise has presented these moments since Far Cry 3. you'll actually be removed from the first person perspective now in cutscenes and you see those play out more like bits from movies with all sorts of wild camera angles that being said there is actually a problem with the way that these cutscenes are implemented that affects the game on quite a large skill because one big disadvantage that these third-person cutscenes have over the first person perspective is that they can be much more difficult to weave in between gameplay without it feeling disturbing if you've watched the start of this video then you'll see that Far Cry 1 was kind of the extreme example of that where the cutscenes would just come in like a jump scare was it that way it was that way get out of my way you can never really tell oh my God that's so loud why is that so loud I hate cutscenes in this game and in Far Cry 6 that isn't the case but because they still require some type of transition it means that these cutscenes can only really happen at specific moments usually before and after a mission which means that during the mission you're gonna miss out on a lot of those more memorable set pieces that Far Cry 3 or Far Cry 4 were very easily able to weave in between the gameplay bits think of all the best moments that you have from Far Cry 3 4 or 5 and you'll probably realize that a lot of those actually play out during a cutscene yet it doesn't really feel like that because it keeps the first person perspective you have been a naughty little [ __ ] haven't you and it is exactly because Far Cry 6 only uses these more traditional cutscenes which for the most part are placed either before or after the missions of course with some exceptions that most of the meat in the middle Falls a bit flat because it is all up to the gameplay itself to create those grandiose moments which most of the times it just doesn't Oliver any anymore at all hello the best example that I can give is to look at one of the major story developments during one of the missions in Far Cry 6 where you have to infiltrate a big hotel and take out a character named the dentist in many ways this mission is very similar to infiltrating the plur's so-called city of Bane in Far Cry 4. both of these missions have you sneak in through the back of a truck both of these missions require you to take someone out with a big reputation and both of these missions will have large implications for the development of the story in Far Cry 4 this Mission I think is one of the best there's light affecting visibility there's a mandatory amount of hostages that you need to rescue before being able to get to the plural blood isn't meant to be kept inside you there's dedicated dialogue from all of the NPCs around that are both there for shock value but also for the humor I like the Knight less chance of being attacked and then the mission ends off with a very intense cutscene where you get a close face to face with the plur which as we talked about earlier is unfortunately also the last time that you see him but now let's take a look how this type of mission plays out in Far Cry 6. [Applause] Elena the dentist is dead La morale is safe not only is the bad guy taken out with just a quick two bullets Danny then also starts talking loudly over the phone right after the kill which of course the NPCs don't pick up on at all the hotel taking it they have tortured their last gueria here now of course I want to make it clear that I wouldn't want the NPCs to react to my character's random chatter they never have not even in Far Cry 4. Amita I found Pagan I'm on his heels must have been the win but if we just look at the way that this is delivered it's all off in so many ways and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that the game isn't delivering those intense moments in the first person perspective and you end up with this mess of a mission where to compensate for the lack of action they just make you shoot at more enemies this is why I believe the story of Far Cry 6 oftentimes has very little weight to it and that obviously also has an impact on the gameplay because if you stop caring about the why then the only thing that is left is the what and what you do during most of these main missions is really nothing special show you where to find meat or fish to cook or plant-based food for the good of your soul Far Cry 6 has so many copy and paste objectives in their main missions that I've honestly just lost count it's almost always a variation of either defend this area or get that item you gotta hack this thing oh there's reinforcements you gotta heck that thing oh there's reinforcements collect supplies collect medicine collect weapons collect a book collect a person of interest and that last one is especially a fun one because it usually also turns into an escort or bodyguard Mission and no the AI still hasn't really been polished up which can get especially frustrating if you're trying to get them from point A to point B what's that is that him is he uh wait what oh he's what the [ __ ] oh my god dude I think so I don't think so okay he's got the car he's got the car placed no he's going back in no he's going back out can do this right something that you might have also picked up on already is just how much Ubisoft tries to push their diversity agenda with this game which is just another Factor as to why the story Falls flat so often now I'm not saying that the depiction of woman has been the best in previous Far Cry games which through some humor I hope I have already made very clear but with Far Cry 6 they went way overboard to try and correct this and it just feels very out of place at times a lot of characters in this game simply feel like off the reals teenagers that care more about diversity and inclusion and partying hard than about the lives of the people that they're killing and they're such over-the-top caricatures of that type of Personality that it further just removes any more weight that the story could have had [Applause] [Music] this generation isn't lost now I am not saying that the game does not have any memorable moments because it has a lot of memorable moments like storming the castle with a tank to take out one of the generals or the final mission where you get to use a uniform to infiltrate on Anton's Private Island much like you have to do in Far Cry 3 to take out Hoyt but these moments are only cool again because they have weight to them which most of the game severely lacks and everything I just said still wouldn't have been that big of a deal if the game at least had a strong gameplay Loop to back it up but even when we look at the sandbox there's just a lot of stuff here that doesn't really work and goes against almost everything that Far Cry has been known for for the past 10 years and if you really start breaking things down you'll see just how big of a mess Far Cry 6 really is let's start by looking at the stealth for instance which has always been a big part of the Far Cry franchise and has actually been reworked significantly in Far Cry 6. in most of the previous Far Cry games you might remember that the AI really worked more like a hive mind especially around outposts you can kill an enemy in complete isolation but if he were to let's say spot you for just a second before you kill them everybody else in a pretty large radius would instantly know of your location even if very little sound was made now Far Cry 6 changed that and NPCs are now all truly independent from each other they can see you spot you scream for help but if no one else is in range to hear or see it no one will come to help the same goes for the alarms shooted with a silence weapon and chances are no one will even notice unless they see it happen right in front of them which wasn't always the case in previous far cries now of course the system is a lot more forgiving but with the right balance it could have also had the potential to elevate the Stealth gameplay beyond what other Far Cry games have been able to offer so far yet unfortunately it's because of the sheer power that the player has yet again that these changes to this dealt have only resulted in negative effects first up the mini map is back and it is stronger than ever before instead of enemies being marked by a precise dot or Arrow they're now indicated by a Red Cloud which might make you believe it isn't as good as before but the NPCs will always be exactly in the center and so all of this does is extend the radius from which you can see enemies on your minimap because the edge of those clouds appear far before the sender of it it also lets you see enemies aluminum app before you've officially spotted them so you always know if there's anyone around don't you the second issue with the stealth is well the audio because it's really really weird you could be running around and shooting at people in the open and oftentimes enemies 20 meters away still will not hear a thing now part of this has to do with just how strong the silencer seems to be in this game but there's a bit more to it almost every building in this game seems to have its own sort of Sound volume which completely blocks off any and all sounds from the outside [Music] oh this for one results in some very harsh transitions when entering or exiting buildings but it also affects the hearing of the NPCs because you can go around tearing up the place on the outside of the outposts only to find AIS on the inside of buildings that aren't even alerted yet this is not a bug it's a feature which is the first time in my 10 years of YouTube that I've had to use that line unoramically my guess is is that the developers wanted to go for a more Dynamic Sound System than just a plain old that we've had for multiple games in a row now but they went a bit too aggressive with these sound volumes and in combination with the silencer as long as you stay out of direct line of sight of the enemies you'll be pretty much invisible to them even to extreme extents which well I assume you can understand how this would affect gameplay and difficulty nothing then another issue with the stealth and the combat is that once again armor penetration rounds are back which have the ability to instantly kill almost every enemy in the game much like in Newton but it gets even better because most weapons now also have a 100 first bullet accuracy and that sounds nice on paper and would be really nice if the game was a competitive shooter but in a franchise like Far Cry where the consistency of a weapon would often be a major consideration when choosing your Loadout especially at medium to long range it actually takes away quite a bit because it means that many weapons are perfect all-around weapons with one hit kill potential at any range always use the right tool for the right job except every tool is the right tool for all of the jobs and even if you don't have the right tool for the right job well then you don't have to worry either because instead of having to carefully put together a well-rounded Loadout that can deal with a variety of enemy types in Far Cry 6 you simply carry all of your weapons all the time weapons can be purchased from vendors or found around the world and once you have purchased any weapon at all it goes right into Your Arsenal where you can grab it from the menu at any time it reminds me a lot of Destiny where through the use of your inventory you can swap to pretty much whatever you need at any given encounter except in Destiny there are some big limits put on that in more difficult content Far Cry 6 doesn't really care about that in fact when you swap to another weapon you haven't equipped for a while it will likely have full ammo so if you're willing to spend an extra couple seconds in the menus here and there you will never ever in this game find yourself in a spot that you cannot get out of because there's always another RPG or another big explosion weapon fully loaded right there in your back pocket I think all of it just comes down to a lack of vision there's so many gimmicks and features that have been added to this game and it has simply lost a bigger picture as a result of it I will admit that a lot of these additions are pretty cool I like the fact that enemies don't shoot you on site in this game apart from any restricted zones I like how every Outpost is a well-crafted building with a story and a purpose to the world and how a lot of the roads have these checkpoints that you cannot just speed past or the enemies will use spikes to flatten your tires I can see that the developers are trying to respond to the shortcomings of previous games by making the RPG mechanics not so Steep and finding a balance that still respects the Far Cry formula or how about those anti-air missiles all around the map which have to be cleared first before you can use air vehicles in set areas probably a response to the chopper being so strong in Far Cry 5. I can point to all of that and say that yeah the Far Cry franchise is still evolving and the developers are still trying but it is also because so many unnecessary additions have been pushed into the game that have such a detrimental effect on the game that it just breaks it in a whole bunch of other ways if you think that I might be exaggerating let me give you the example with one of the suprema weapons which are these big weapons that kind of act like super abilities all doing their own big attack on a longer cooldown which is cool right well yeah but here's also how one small addition to just one of these suprema weapons completely ruins the movement sandbox for Far Cry 6 because in addition to having the big attack it also has a small trust ability that pushes the player forward a considerable amount now that is pretty strong especially because it doesn't have a cooldown this results in a lot of things it can be used mid combat to avoid a lot of fire of course since enemies won't be able to hit you as easily but it also removes the incentive for players to get in vehicles a lot of times especially because the roads in this game are very swirly and often broken up by water but it also has the ability to break Falls because you can use this trust right before you hit the ground from a very large drop and you will take zero damage it also leaves a fire Trail so you can also use it to dash through a whole horde of enemies which will then automatically die to the fire if you simply don't feel like dealing with them at the moment you can also use that fire to inflict damage to yourself to proc certain skills that give you even more damage resistance and even more move speed this is just a small side effect of one of your ultimate abilities and it has this much of an effect on gameplay the trust ability could have been a really cool addition and I'm not saying that it shouldn't be in future Far Cry games but clearly Far Cry 6 was not developed with this in mind and so it breaks more than that it adds to the game and it's quite sad to see because the things that have needed actual Innovation for over a decade now in this franchise are just left to be as bad as ever boss lights being one example the boss fights are once again all pretty bad all for different reasons one time you're fighting a helicopter with about 10 times the amount of health of other helicopters and then when you kill the pilot it is in the most uncinematic way possible foreign why are we not building further on the possibility of choice like what was hinted at in Far Cry 2 or 4. why is it that killing this fat guy on this boat or not killing him doesn't really affect the story in any way shape or form I don't think it said it would require too much time because again the story of Far Cry 6 is long and they have so many missions I think it would have been more than fine if the campaign was half as long and if a lot of these missions had been gated by choices that you make during the story to Branch off in different pets people often say that after Far Cry 3 every game is the same but now having played all of them I've got to disagree with that a lot surely that statement has to come from players who haven't actually played the games true and true because while yeah Far Cry 4 was similar Far Cry 5 did truly innovate while making some missteps along the way and then Far Cry 6 came in and absolutely butchered the formula in favor of more gimmicks I bet Juan's already giving you his right to for the right job talk ending the video on a somewhat higher note you might also be aware that Far Cry 6 has DLC like a lot of DLC even more than Far Cry 5 had and some of it is well surprisingly good the first bunch of the DLCs are called Insanity control and collapse and even though they're sold as separate packages going for 15 each they're all pretty much identical to each other with the only difference being the character you play as and the overall team with each of these you get into the minds of either Vos Pagan or Joseph with the goal to collect three pieces of an object which would be either a dagger a golden mask or a cross where these DLCs heavily differ from the main game is that it has Perma dead and it sort of plays out like a rogue-like experience where you start out with nothing and you lose all your stuff when you die but you can also upgrade your character during a run with things such as extra health and all of that will carry over to Future runs around the map there are a bunch of challenge just to do missions to complete enemies to kill and all of that will give you more currency or new weapons and of course you have the chance to find one of those three pieces that you're looking for which if you're successful you'll then be test to go to an area to defeat 5 waves of enemies and basically survive and get out these DLCs work well because for once you're not a murder machine right off the get-go and death has some serious Consequences Health doesn't regenerate automatically and the healing syringe has a longer cooldown so in a way this survival element that has been long lost from Far Cry is making a serious return which then introduces a certain risk versus reward factor to everything starting a difficult challenge might outright enjoy run right there but if you manage to pull it off you'll be all the stronger going forward you've done what I wanted go clean your eyes because of this a rogue-like experience it also means that the RPG mechanics are a little more at home here with the option to increase the real difficulty of a run which would then give you bigger rewards as well with more money and because you're also in the mind of someone it is a bit easier to swallow the idea of fighting enemies that are a lot more tanky still though these DLCs are not perfect each of them have a big boss fight that you have to go through as well and each of these bosses there again just normal NPCs for the most part that oftentimes get stuck and just do the weirdest of things when you're fighting seat drop it's fast she even turns into an animal for the last two portions over health bar and uh well you know what that means right fighting an animal in Far Cry Just find the nearest shoulder High Rock and you've basically beaten the game foreign there's something to be said about how these DLCs were released to separate packages too instead of just one bigger DLC because they're all they're all so similar from objectives to weapons to character upgrades like the upgrades you get for Pagan Min are identical to what you would get for Vos or for Yosef and for each DLC you have to start the progression all over again which I think Hurts The Experience quite a bit as nice as these pieces of DLC are for a roguelike experience they have very little replay value because you can get to the ends pretty much on your first run since you're forced on the easiest difficulty until you beat it which means that by the time you can make it more challenging for yourself there isn't anything new to discover but had all these DLCs been part of the same package then each of these Maps could have automatically pushed a higher difficulty but of course it also means that these DLCs couldn't be sold separately for 15 each I get it then there's also one more DLC a major one that was released this December actually which went for twenty dollars and is called Lost Between Worlds which is another roguelike Perma that game mode although this time instead of exploring an open road map you go through smaller more linear levels that are connected through portals each area has kind of a unique look to it and often revolves around a central mechanic that range from being kind of nice to play around with with requiring a little bit of exploration to Simply pressing a few buttons to make some crazy move around the map enemies are also very weirdly colored red and blue and your weapons have two ammo types to match that red or blue the goal is to travel through enough levels to get five crystals after which you've beaten the game and the whole DLC is uh it's kind of just meh it's fine I guess the idea that I got from this DLC really is that it's just one giant experiment where the developers were able to throw in as many one-off ideas as possible to figure out what works and what doesn't and that's it some levels offer mechanics that make the game almost fall into the puzzle game genre but the levels are so short that they never have enough time to become challenging enough and in some cases the game outright just gives you the solution because it thinks players are too dumb to figure out what Clues could mean on pieces of paper it's the same with the combats you know there's two enemies two ammo types but why you can change these ammo Types on the fly it takes less than a second to do and it offers no meaningful depth to the combat it's just there because they want to test it out I guess there's some nice environments there's a lot of cool stuff in here but it's all just too knee-deep to leave any sort of impression if anything it just further solidifies the points that I made with the base game that the developers just add so many things to these games now but ninety percent of it is meaningless and doesn't really help the Far Cry sandbox it just gets in the way and I really do believe that as long as the bigger issues at hand are ignored in favor of more stuff to make more explosions with the franchise will simply keep declining and yes it is declining and has been for a while now don't let the statements made by Ubisoft tell you otherwise fiscal year 2022 may have been the best year for Far Cry ever but that is only because of things like the in-game store the rather successful DLC releases the many crossover missions with the likes of stranger things Rambo and a bunch of other actors that I'm sorry to say I don't really recognize we're both named Danny and that'll get awkward and there's of course the fact that they released a Game of the Year Edition for 120 dollars essentially re-releasing the game uh when Far Cry never even won game of the year with the excuse being that well it was Game of the Year for some people so that is why there is a Game of the Year Edition the constant trip flight editions of the back of nostalgia or pop culture have done a very good job of keeping this game in the spotlights for longer than that it probably deserved but if the core gameplay of the mainline entries doesn't take a 180 turn fast this franchise will be next on The Chopping Block sometime within the next few years especially now that Ubisoft is downsizing and yes I think that that would truly be a shame because the way I see it this franchise still has a lot of potential that in all of its 20 years has not fully realized yet there's so much still that can be done to make the Far Cry experience better other than just adding more stuff and that also means that however unlikely it is it is still possible that the best Far Cry game ever could actually be the next one but yeah that was the end of the video it's been a very long one so I just want to thank you for watching if you made it to the end at all I'll be back in a few months with another video I'm not sure about what yet but I'll try my best to keep it under two hours next time no promises

Channel: MarcoStyle

Views: 2,880,364

Keywords: Far Cry, FarCry, Far Cry 1, Vaas, Far Cry 3, retrospective, review, impressions, wasted, potential, of, the, Franchise, ubisoft, rise, and, fall, years, later, marcostyle, evolution, what, went, wrong, monetization, funny, moments, highlights, reveal, far, cry, vaas, best, characters, DLC, lost, between, worlds

Id: K8sBtXZVxzY

Length: 150min 5sec (9005 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 14 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/SolitaryLek9151]

I already watched it, and I don't think he really explained the "wasted potential" too well. But I do agree with what he said about each FarCry having its own handful of strong points and good points.

Especially his criticism of 2's Dialogue and the open-world gameplay as well as lack of diverse missions.

And how in 4, the side villians don't appear as much as they should, and it makes it harder to hate them. And, of course, Ajay has a severe lack of dialogue in most moments.