Hey all! I just saw a video about the Guns For Hire options in 5, and it inspired me to write this rather long post about why I think Far Cry has been going downhill a bit since 3. I still love FC and have already pre-ordered 5--I'll be there on release morning!--so please don't think I hate the games or anything. I just have some thoughts, and was curious to see what you all thought as well; I thought it might be an interesting discussion as we wait for the 27th.
I've heard a lot of criticism that 4 and Primal are just re-skins of 3 or copies of 3 or whatever. But I disagree. I don't think FC4 and Primal are just copies of 3; I think they're Ubi taking what they *think* was the best part(s) of 3 and magnifying them, but the problem is they're wrong about what made 3 so great, so each game gets worse--not much, but still.
Like in 4. They threw in a ton of extra side activities because people wanted more to do, but all those activities were the same;:save hostages, help Golden Path win a fight, exchange no words with anyone, it's over in thirty seconds. In 3, side missions involved people--characters--who had little stories and were sometimes funny or creepy or sad. 3's side missions immersed you in the world; 4's side missions just feel like busywork. The one exciting side activity 4 gave us (the Goat and the masks of Yalung) is a mystery we don't even get to solve, so what's the point? (I know there's that bit where some players get to hear Pagan saying he went through a period of wearing goat's blood or something, but that's not solving the mystery, and making Pagan the source of all evil in the world is just unimaginative. The Rook Islanders were real people, and some were out to hustle you and some were creepy and some were drunks and some were good, just like in real life. We get no sense of what the people of Kyrat are like; having one of them be a serial killer added some excitement to the game but when there's no solution except "Oh, was Pagan the Goat? Maybe?" that's unsatisfying and lame.
Vaas is obviously an amazing character, so they gave us Pagan Min, another really cool character. But they focused too much on making him charismatic and cool, so you never really want to beat him--and IMO, we shouldn't have had to. I think instead of what they gave us, we should have found out the truth about Lakshmana (and Amita and Sabal) halfway through the game, and joined Min to take out the Golden Path (or at least had the option). It was not as much fun to defeat a likable villain like Min, and Sabal and Amita were so unpleasant that it was hard to fight on their side.
Wild animals in 3 were deadly, exciting, and fun. So in 4, Ubi tripled the amount of them. It's basically impossible to run more than 50m or so without being attacked by something. That's not fun, it's tedious and then really irritating, and discourages me from exploring the world. I don't want to run along the hilltops (which are annoyingly hard to get to) because I'm just going to waste a ton of ammo and syringes (the auto-craft mechanic is also super annoying) in 4 like I did in 3. But I also don't want to just drive around taking in the scenery and listening to the radio--one of my favorite things to do in 3--because Rabi Ray never shuts the hell up so I can hear the music. Again, less world immersion, less fun.
The trippy "drug" missions in 3 (finding the knife, fighting the Ink Monster) were brief and, for the most part, again, fun. They added to the sense of mystery and magic around the Rook Islands and the Rakyat. Exploring the underground temples was amazing; my favorite parts of the game. They made you really believe in the story and world. Citra and the Rakyat really *did* have powers--at least, so it seemed in the game, which was the point. Jason(you) really *had* fallen into a world where anything was possible! So in 4, Ubi gave us the Shangri-La missions--which are beautiful, too, but they are not especially fun. I groan when I realize I have to go do another one. They're too long. There's not much to look at and explore. The demons are an annoyance--creepy, yes, but not *fun*, and even my husband couldn't finish the last mission. Once again, they missed what made 3's trippy magic stuff an exciting and interesting part of the game, and just threw more! harder! at us instead. Those missions don't advance the story in any way, and they're boring. (They did bring this back a bit in Primal, I will say. I thought the prehistoric "magic" was fairly well done--some parts didn't work for me, but it was better than Shangri-La.)
I don't *want* to call in "Guns for Hire," so I'm disappointed they're going to push this stupid mechanic more. When Rakyat showed up in 3 they almost always ruined my stealthy plans; it was the same if not worse in 4. (And at least the Rakyat would greet me with "Hello, brother," and share a line or two of friendly random dialogue. All I ever got in 4 was that chick with her flirty, "Hello, Ajay," or "Namaste.") Quit with the guns for hire, the point of Far Cry is to do it alone!
The thing is, the biggest thing that made 3 so amazing was the story. Ubi is now focusing so hard on busywork and bigger! Harder! faster! that it seems they have forgotten, or failed to realize, that. They're giving us less story with each FC game, and more stuff we don't need (again, like too many one-note activities, so many of them that it prevents us from advancing in the game, or Guns For Hire). Ubi seems to think that making a game harder automatically = making it better, and it doesn't. I've played 3 three or four times now, and I still haven't finished 4 (my husband has, twice, while I watched, so I'm very familiar with the whole game). I never had any real trouble completing missions in 3--the first FPS I ever played, pretty much the first game I ever played--but some missions in 4 were so hard I gave up for long stretches of time.
When I play Far Cry I want a story. I want one person thrown into an awful situation and having to use his wits and skills to survive. I want him to learn and grow and change and confront things about himself. Jason did that. Ajay didn't, very much, and in 5 the character won't do it at all. That's disappointing, and once again it's because Ubisoft think players want to "customize" their character instead of realizing there are lots of other games where we can do that.
So again. I'm looking forward to it, sure, but I'm not as excited as I was at first. And I definitely don't think Ubi is just re-skinning 3 over and over; they're moving away from what made 3 great, because they don't seem to understand what that was.
JMO, of course.
On an individual basis, people decide what the game means to them and what is important to them personally, but in the end, it's the devs who decides what makes FC FC. Really it seems like there are only like 2 things sacred to the franchise, a large rural open world, and the first person perspective. Nothing else is mandatory, everything else can change & morph be experimented with. I certainly have a laundry list of things I'd love to see them do, but I realize what each game decides to focus on & what they decide to do with it really isn't for us to say with any sort of specificity. There are plenty of people who thought the story of FC3 was just ridiculous.
Consumers can have their influence, and obviously they'd never stray so far as to alienate every fan of the brand, but not everyone finds certain aspects to be the defining element of the brand, that is different on a case by case basis... Some people think they should double down on survival mechanics, some people think they should abandon the goofy characters & humor and be more serious, some people just want it to adhere more strictly to realism. They can't please everyone, it's literally impossible for them to make a FC game that pleases everyone...
Oh, absolutely; I agree with you both that it's individual, and I'm not saying 4 and Primal weren't good or that I'm not looking forward to 5. I just thought it might be interesting to see other opinions, and I definitely don't think they're "just reskinning 3" with every game. I see that criticism a lot and don't think it's fair.
I agree that the 'reskin, copy & paste, same game new paint' complaints are blown out of proportion and inconsistent, but at the same time I can at least see why some people feel that way. I believe the problem is FC2 was very different than FC1, and 3 was very different than 2, so it seems to me that some people just got it in their head that each FC should change at that level, as if the changes between those games established a precedent that the series should adhere to with each iteration, and I just don't think that is the right way to think about it.
You have to know & understand the contexts that lead to the large scale changes between those games. FC1 was made by crytek & published by Ubisoft who bought the IP shortly after. So being the new IP holders, they made a lot of changes with their first wholly new FC game in order to establish themselves as the new developers of the franchise, so that is why FC2 was so different. However I don't think FC2 really impressed sales-wise, so they knew they needed more large scale changes, hence FC3, which sold around 3 times as many copies, something Ubi was no doubt pleased with, so they said, ok, we found a formula that works, iterate on that, hence FC3/4/P/5...
That's the way I see it anyway...
This has been Ubi's MO for the past 10 years. I've played and finished every Far Cry single player, and I can honestly say there is no "best" Far Cry or "worst" Far Cry game (well maybe vengeance), because they were so different that none of them should even be called Far Cry in the first place (except the original and instincts/predator). Since they were so different, you'll still see a few people talk about how much better Far Cry 2 was, or how much better Predator was, but the reality is that these were basically each a different game series that for some reason shared the Far Cry name.Originally Posted by sidgirl Go to original post
That being said, Far Cry 3, 4, and Primal seem like copies because they are the only Far Cry games that even used the same formula. If I had it my way, we'd be going back to mutants and feral powers, so at least you can be thankful that I'm not in charge of the series, lol.
Yeah, 10 years ago. Before the 27th I think I'll fire up FC2 for some great immersion and send a few hours romping around in that "sand-box".Originally Posted by Viragoxv535 Go to original post![]()
I also don't think that 4 and P were reskins of 3. Yes they share plenty if resources, but there was plenty of new things to do in each. I do accept that there was a certain amount of tedium in these games, but personally I think it was insignificant compared to fc2.
Having to clear out the SAME people from the SAME positions at the SAME outpost EVERY time you went through it got old very quickly for me, and having to stay still because an enemy 200m away spotted you if you so much as broke wind.
FC3 improved these thing massively, so there was no need to change it much in future games. FC4 added the outpost raids that happened until you took the local fortress, so that was a tweak, and a good one imo. This time around they are tweaking the map exploration by scrappin the tower system altogether (started to feel tedious towards the end of fc4). Looking forward to 5 a lot.
I've played every Far Cry game that's been released on a console, and while I miss the map editor of FC2, I feel the game is remembered more fondly than it deserves. It was a fun game, but there were a lot of annoyances, such as the vehicle handling and the map design which forced a lot of trekking through low-visibility jungle. I'm one of those who feels the franchise has been steadily improving, and I really enjoy the "Ubisoft game" model that's flowed through all their titles: clearly marked objectives, a balance of brief encounters and large battles, and the ability to succeed either stealthily or balls-out. So while the villain of FC4 and the plot of Primal and Blood Dragon weren't as good as FC3, the mechanics of the games were enjoyable and that's what I remember.