I recently started what is most likely my 45th or so playthrough of FC2.
I did it for one specific reason, to try and best capture why it is still the best of the series, and to see which elements of FC3 and FC4 might help round out the most immersive shooter ever offered.
So then, the focus is not to praise FC2 as the pinnacle, but to highlight its bits of perfection, and see how the features of the later games can make the best even better. I'll try to keep it brief where I can, and explain the nuances where required.
GPS/Map: (FC2 Solid Win)
This feature from FC2 is probably the single most important element for immersion. By calling the map up with a keystroke, you are presented with what you want to see, when you want to see it, and with varying levels of detail (zoom). When the GPS/map is stowed, there is no HUD, no "tagging" no objective markers, nothing on the screen to add child-like simplicity or gameplayer hand-holding.
It is the ultimate design in my opinion, one I honestly expected to become the norm for many games. Imagine my disappointment with FC3/4 with their mini-maps, HUDs, constant objective reminders, and all the other junk on the screen which ruin any hope for immersion.
FC2 also provided a much less obtrusive "hit" indicator onscreen when you are taking fire. Much less obtrusive that is, than a big honking semi-circle/arrow right in the middle of the screen.
Open world: (FC4 Solid Win)
While FC2 "started" the concept of open world FPSs, the later games delivered on the promise. One of the project managers for FC3 stated "If you can see it, you can get to it in FC3", and he was true to his word. No more channeling of gameplay using narrow canyon walls or mountain sides. FC2 also had invisible borders where your character was 2 feet away from a great place to hide or what have you, but the exclusion overlay made it inaccessable. Any future games must allow full access as in FC3/4.
FC3 let you "there", FC4 added the grapple hook which is the icing to the cake. Only trouble here is as is getting to be a habit, the grapple is overdone. Instead of simply providing access to difficult areas, the grapple was used as part of "challenges". Not so much to demonstrate a skill as it turns out, but to challenge you to see if you want to play an adult title with child-like features!
Animals/Crafting: (FC3 Solid Win)
FC2s animals were "nice to see", but essentially useless, and accordingly, not very well programmed with regard to their actions. Even if you didn't like crafting for upgrades (I didn't mind it), you could literally just sit and watch the animals interacting in very believable fashion. Some people hated the crafting, I thought it added a nice way to explore, made the animals persence a genuine part of game play, and was a pretty creating subsitute for having to buy everything with diamonds from cases that still continued to flash after the diamonds were removed!
FC4, as is seemingly getting to be a habit, took the animals over the top, and made most (even me!) wish they weren't even there. Why does Ubi tend to take something good and overdo it to the point of destruction? The elephants in FC4 were great, they fit the area, and I'll admit no end to comic relief of using them to trash the enemy. Seeing my elephant grap a heavy by the leg with its trunk and smack him on the ground was seriously one of the highlights of the game. But the eagles, why? Who's idea was it to make the eagles such a pain in the bu tt? My guess? The developers resident stoner came in one day and said "doods, I have a great idea..." and since he hadn't contributed anything else, they decided to put in his "eagles attack everyone, all the time, just for the f of it" in to justify his still receiveng a paycheck.
Supplies: (FC2 for the win, but only partly so)
The gun shops were obvious and believable (except the same guy at every shop!). If nothing else, you always new you could get whatever you needed at 4 spots on the map at least. In FC3 the fast travel was overdone (or, overdoable by the player), so resupply was as easy as hitting the completely impossible/unbelievable star trek transport button. (Yuck). FC4s omage to the Sherpa was a nice touch, but a fully stocked arsenal on foot was pretty ridiculous. Anyone on the dev team ever consider limiting the sherpas to just ammo/health? FC2s use of weapons crates in safe houses was while not at all believable, was a pretty creative way to shorten the time to gear up or refresh weapons when needed.
Scale: (FC3/FC4 Solid win)
Back in the day, FC2s map seemed huge. The reality is, the vehicles were slow, and your character not only walks slow, but is apparently quite out of shape only being able to sprint a few tens of yards at best. Still, getting to the gun shops was a pretty big trip without taking the bus or a vehicle. Add to that, the difficulty of gameplay was such that a long trip was something to be worried about because your enemies could waste you in a couple of shots rather than your being a bullet trap like in FC3 and 4. FC2 again used the safehouse upgrades as a means of making things more accessable, but you couldn't buy this if you wanted to, you had to do the buddy missions. That might sound like a complaint, and it is, but only because the mantra with FC2s release was "play it your way". Well, it's really play it Ubi's way or suffer isn't it?
So, a redone FC2 (or FC5, please?) would benefit from being very much larger map-wise, but then some means of resupply has to be available without fast travel or unreasonably long trips (balancing act).
Ambiance: (FC2 Solid Win)
The sounds of the wild in FC2 are almost perfect. The birds calling, the crickets chirping, all of it came together and made for a genuinely enjoyable "listen". You felt like you were sitting in Africa listening to nature. If I were to complain at all, it would be the cricket sounds were not spacially correct, you could hear the same cricket at the same volume 30ft way while walking. I realize getting it right for character movement is much harder than sitting still, but we ALL have what amounts to supercomputers on our desks these days, it's just a matter of dedication on the part of the dev team.
In game characters: (FC3 Solid Win)
Much has been said about Vaas. It's true he makes the game worth playing, which is why things go downhill so rapidly after you dispatch him and set your sights on Hoyt. But, that's one of the things about gaming that tends to get on my nerves. The devs want you to loathe him and want to take him out, but in doing so they are micro-managing your gameplay into a gigantic scripted event. It's 2015, we have the technology to do better. Thats one of the things I liked about FC2 so much, you were a mercenary, you when to take someone out, but things changed when you got there. And like any gun for hire, it was entirely believable that you would work for whomever had the cash, pretty much conscience free (again, like a mercenary!). It was only Ubi's attempt at a moral dillema at the end where you have to kill your former buddies, where you felt even a pang of angst, sort of a shame they had to write it that way, but lets face it, Ubi seems to have a penchant from taking any sense of accomplishment or enjoyment from the end of the FC series as a whole. ( I don't know about their other games, I don't buy many, maybe 6 since 2005?
Weapons Damage: (FC2 partial win)
FC2 had a nice, if limited set of weapons. The ratio of cost to power semed to make some sense, at least you didn't get "free" ones for radio/bell towers, remember, we should be back to the GPS/map model by now! FC3 and FC4 both brought some serious firepower, but changed the balance in a detrimental way. In FC2, it seemed the enemy could do more damage to you with a couple of shots, while you could blast them with a PKM and they'd drop you like a fly. In FC3/FC4 thei dynamic seems partially reversed, you can soak up a lot of damage, and the enemies go down a bit easier. A simple balance is all that's required, if I can hit an enemy 12 times at 50yards with a shotun before he drops, it should take him 12 shot to take me down at the same distance. Where FC2 edges out the other two is more believable firepower. Let's face it, the Ripper, the Shredder, and the Buzzsaw are all a bit overkill. Once you have the Ripper or especially the Buzzsaw, you are as close to invincible as you can get without being a total whimp and entering a "God Mode" cheat code. I'm not saying get rid of them (after all, I know how not to use them if I don't want them!), but we all "win" if the effects are at least believable.
Exterior Ballistics: (NO Winner, Ubi doesn't know how)
Every single weapon that discharges a non-self-propelled projectile follows the same rules of physics. That is, if fired level, a bullet leaving a barrel will hit the ground at the same time as one DROPPED from barrel height at the same time. If you don't know this, your should, it's elementary. And so it should be elementary in games that the bullets follow the laws of physics too, the math is not at all hard or time consuming, there is no excuse NOT to do it right. On the bow, they let you buy a sight that helps you estimate the drop, so they know it exists. They even get the trajectory for a thrown rock or grenade largely correct! But for guns, they just ignore physics, pretend the bullets are laser beams, and arbitrarily make the bullets dissapear after a certain distance based on the weapon/caliber. This is useless, this is childish, and takes the reward for marksmanship away! If there is any reason for ignoring exterior ballistics, my guess is they are afraid people will learn how guns actually work.
Above I referenced only gravity's influence, the fact is there are several more non-negligable influences on a bullets path once fired, but still part of "exterior ballistics". The most influential is windage. A moving body of air (wind/breeze) will carry a bullet in its direction of travel by nature of the density of air. that is to say one can expect dense air at 10 miles per hour to have a greater impact on the flight path than less dense air, say a valley vs a mountain top. The physics is solid, if you know the temperature and altitude you know the density, and once you determine the speed the air is moving vs the profile of the projectile and its sectional density, you know, with great percision, how far the the aimpoint the bullet will be "blown off course". The trouble in the real world is thee can be several different masses of air between you and your target, and they can all be moving at different rate or directions. In the field, you can use the motion of the grass or leaves (or even specialized shooting flags) to estimate these influences. My longest shot on a Prairie dog (imagine a 1 liter soda bottle sized target) is 1069 yards. For that shot, the wind went from right to left, to left to right, to right to left again, all at different speeds, and there was probably some sinking/rising going on I couldn't discern. The point is, at that range I had to aim nearly 20 FEET high, and about 14 FEET left in order to have the bullet dispatch the target. Wind and density are 2 of the 3 most meaningful influences. (Notice all of the colorful flags in FC4? Darn near DESIGNED to help you calculate windage!)
The last effect I'll choose to discuss is the coriolis effect. This is a physical deflection based on the rotation of the Earth itself! In essence, while it's influence is small, it is not zero. Basically, there is a difference in impact if you are shooting East to West, North to South, and angles in between. However, I will conceed that the impact is small enough that only games or simulators interested in providing world-class accuracy need ever bother with it.
Conclusion:
Well, that about does it. FC2 was (and still is) awesome, but could benefit from some enhancements from FC3/FC4. What it doesn't need are time wasters like poker playing*, car driving or "lost letters". (*I'm not talking about the Poker with Sam and Hoyt that were "part" of the game storyline). In other words, if the devs are sitting around trying to dream up content, how about more story missions, implementing exterior ballistics, or something adults might appreciate in adult titles? And before those who find physics inconveinient, I propose exterior ballistics be enabled/disabled via menu seletion, that way if you want to ignore reality you can, just don't claim to be "a great shot" unless you have adult mode (eterior ballistics) "on".![]()
That balistics thing is all true, but i think, for the type of the game fc is, it would be a bit tedious to have to work out wind and drop for every person you shoot. Modern sniper scopes have dials to turn which puts the centre where it needs to be acounting for the wind and drop. This (imo) would be better in a seperate game dedicated to sniper based things. Fc games have loads of other stuff to worry about and i think this would become an irritant.
I am unsure about where you are coming from on the fast travel thing, because you say the bigger maps are great, but you dont seem to like the driving much, so without either of those it would take a LONNNGGG time to get anywhere.
I dont share your enthusiasm for fc2.... it was the first fc game i played and it just seemed to become very samey and repetitive. I think they integrated a couple of its more interesting bits into fc4 (longinus missions bring back the diamonds and the chosing sides has returned in decent style because of the amita/sabal stuff)
I totally agree about animals being excessive in some cases though. You site eagles as your particular bugbear, personally i get really effed off by wolves and dohles, but essentially i am with you.
Markaccus,
Only in FC2 were the vehicles too slow, I'm sure the devs did this otherwise the map would easily demonstrate it's small size. So, vehicles are fine for getting around, but I dislike the fast transport in general because it's just too easy. I want to plan, I want to take risks, and I want to "pay the price" if my plans fail, not just hit a warp key and go hide like a little girl. Its about immersion, about being invested in the level of reality that can be brought to bear by technology, not hidden away to make me "safe".
As far as scopes go, a mil-dot scope would be ideal, you don't have the adjust the reticle, just offset the aimpoint within the view (Kentucky Windage). While I realize it would turn off those who want laser-like performance (totally fake), I'd much rather keep genuine retained velocity energy out to the real limits of performance rather than have a developer decide a .50 cal bullet disappears or becomes ineffective at 720 yards. I'd be willing to give up windage so long as the one unmittigatable truth of drop was paid homage to.
I mentioned eagles mainly because there is little danger of an eagle actually attacking a person anywhere in the world unless you are caught disturbing it's nest. Packs of dogs and wolves? Now that is a plausible real danger at least, but as usual, Ubi chose to overdo it to the point of ridiculousness.
The attraction to FC2 for myself and many others is the lack of onscreen disturbances, and none of the outright offensive kiddie junk like tagging, constant objective reminders, and the arrows pointing you to an enemy that has spotted you. No serious gamer wants or needs that kiddie junk, and anyone who considers themselves a capable gamer and DOES like that junk cluttering up the screen is sadly mistaken.
You complain of repetativeness, well, what's a mercenary's job? Pretty much to go out and do bad things for people for money. In that regard, FC2 pretty much hits the mark, and I personally have no need to collect trinkets, lost letters, play side games of driving skills or cards, there are much better driving games if I had that interest, and I'd play cards with my wife and friends.
I think there could be certain things done to add realism (i think sniping is a little too easy but wouldnt want it too involved) . There could be an option to enable manual scope adjustments if people are interested, with the reward being more xp for the kill. As for warp travel, they could maybe reduce the number of outposts that create a fast travel point, having them only at major outposts and towns, and also restricting their use at certain times (eg if you are nearly dead because you got into trouble).
As for collectables et.c.... well thats a matter of what interest each gamer. I prefer more variety in an open world game, thats why i play them. Sometimes its good to have a distraction from the basic "shoot em in da face" line. I suppose the advantage of open world games is that you can chose which of the extras you want to do.
Good point Viragoxv535. Although I would say (being 2015 and all), the FC2 weather should be used as a starting point, and expanded on appreciably.
There are plenty of other nuances to address, some people find the FC2 fire effects were more convincing.
The other thing I didn't address is environment destruction. FC4 seems to allow more of the infrastructure to be damaged, but I really can't see why even that couldn't be expanded on. And while on that subject, that damage and vehicle placement should have an element of persistance, where the damaged areas and vehicle placement are actually written to disk, and would persist for that entire playthrough, or some reasonable amount of time were it can be assumed actual repairs have had time to take place or somebody else pirated the vehicle.
Also, in all releases of the game, enemies are far too fast at turning around and chasing you down while driving. The realistic approach would be they turn around and perhaps gain on you quite slowly or just manage to keep you in sight, but this instant 180 degree turn and on your bumper or crashing into the side of your vehiclewithin seconds is just silly.
Can't believe I forgot to include a triple thumbs up for the recurve bow.
In FC3, I collect anything and everything I can find, do the assasination mission, basically anything I can do to afford the recurve bow as early as possible. I know it can be had by liberating a tower (ugh, still don't like it to be that easy) , but I use it SO OFTEN, it's my first goal in FC3 and 4. I might be able to find out in game somewhere, but I'm certain my bow kills are at least over 50%.
Beyond that, there's really no need to discuss removing weapons that are too stupidly powerful (Buzzsaw?), after all, if it makes it too easy, just don't use it. The nice thing is the devs have a pretty well stocked library of weapons at this point, eliminating even some of them just seems silly because it should be all about the gamer's choice IMO.
Changing gears here:
Does anyone know how/why "tagging" ever got implemented? Was this an original (bad) Ubisoft idea, or did they see somebody else had it in a popular game and decided we were all stupid and needed it too?
I understand (but still do not appreciate) the mini-map HUD junk, I mean the original FC1 had it so there is some arguement that could be made that it's part of the series legacy. But when they nailed it so perfectly, and enhanced the immersion so deeply with the GPS/Map in FC2, that should have been the standard going forward, and we could all laugh about the original Crytek FC1 was the one with the kiddie hud mini-map junk that Ubisoft was brilliant enough to send to the scrap heap.
Tagging is probably essential if you want a decent stealth aspect. There are that many baddies knocking around outposts that if you couldnt tag them, you would be nabbed every thirty seconds. In real life,you would be able to hear where people were, but this is difficult on a game, so they must have needed something to balance the game between stealth/fps/open world.
Far cry 2 would have been a better game with more of the stealth aspects from later games imo. All you really had was that dart gun, and if you so much as farted in the bushes, even with the camo suit, some one 100 meters away would see you.
That's the point though, really. If the gameplay is designed such that you "need" tagging, then change the design, because tagging is, in my opinion, breathtakingly stupid.
While I pretty much loathe people stamping their feet and carrying on like children with regard to an adult title, I won't be buying the next Far Cry if is "needs" tagging to work. Now that is a multi-facet statement, if the gameplay design is such that you have no hope to succeed with tagging turned off, or if tagging is otherwise "pretty much required", then that game is not for me. Put the effort into making their movement audible like the real world, and if they sneak up on you, well, that's what I intend to do to them, so that seems fair, and a whole lot better than seeing through wall.
There is no such thing as tagging in the real world, ergo, it doesn't belong in any adult title. If, as a developer you make the choice to make the gameplay rely on tagging, you are specifically excluding people like me from interst in your product.
Seriously, you think tagging is acceptable?
Yeah but in the REAL world it is harder to sneak up and be sneaked up on. We do not have the advantage of realistic surroundings and noises when we play a game. The tagging aspect is there to replace the noises and peripheral vision we cant have in the game. I can't really think of a better way to do it tbh.
I am not being funny, but it seems like you would prefer to play a fps with little or no side content, than a modern open world epic like far cry?