Ever tried to entice a tortoise out of its shell? Picked a fight with an endangered species like a snow leopard or a white tiger? Do you know how many rocket-propelled grenades it takes to kill a rhino? Have you ever dared tangle with a honey badger?
For the record:
1. The best way is with plastic explosives and a remote detonator
2. They're more in abundance than you think
3. Three at medium range
4. No. Are you out of your tiny mind? Those things are vicious!
Players will do all of this and more in Far Cry 4. Ubisoft's open-world shooter boasts the usual aspects players expect from an FPS – a plot, colourful characters, a denouement of sorts – but its principle draw is the fact that players can ignore the narrative whenever they choose. Given the size and scope of Far Cry 4, this is bound to happen a lot.
The reason for this is that Ubisoft has gone to great lengths to make Kyrat – the fictional country in which Far Cry 4 is set – feel like a living, breathing environment, as harsh as it is beautiful. The developers also wanted to make the player feel completely like a fish-out-of-water and this is what prompted the game's narrative developer to head out the country Kyrat is based on – Nepal – and take a trip off the beaten path.
"Kyrat was the first character we designed in the game," says Mark Thompson, Far Cry 4's Narrative Lead Designer. "We started to build it based on research on Nepal – we wanted it set in the Himalayas so we could move away from [Far Cry 3's setting in] tropical islands."
"So one of the first things we did was we synched up with the guys from Vice [Magazine] and they're really good at guerilla-making travel guides. We were very inspired by their videos of Liberia. So they took us on a Vice-inspired itinerary of Nepal."
"We wanted to take players outside their comfort zone and so it was important that we as developers knew that terrain."
To hear Thompson tell it, the developers dived deep into Nepalese culture to find the basis for the lore and culture of Kyrat. It was important that Far Cry 4's environment remain fictional out of respect for the cultures it was based upon. But they also included some pretty hairy moments from their time on the ground with Vice.
"One of the first things that we did was Vice took us to a Hindu temple to witness an animal sacrifice," he says.
"It was very shocking to see. It was intense and weird. But I thought about it on reflection and spoke to the family that this happened on behalf of. They were doing it because they wanted to conceive a second child. They then took the animal home and used every part of it for food."
"It seems barbaric to Western sensibilities but on reflection it's more respectful to the animal than our sterile farming industry here."
"A lot of Far Cry 4 is about immersing the player in a foreign culture and having that culture inform the events in the game."
Kryat is far larger than any game the Far Cry team has ever worked on before – not just culturally, but in terms of depth and scope. Executive Producer Dan Hay says that the size of Far Cry 4 is wrapped up not just in the scale of its map – although it's larger than the 17 to 18 square kilometers contained in Far Cry – but also in the range of activities that are designed to lead players off the beaten path.
"Players who want to just do the main missions can do that," says Hay. "But between two mission points most players will see more content - maybe a herd of animals, or karma mission or a radar tower or a fort they can invade – and then within four hours they will totally have forgotten what mission they were on."
This is what the developers are calling the construction of the Anecdote Factory. Far Cry 4 has a narrative and plot, sure, but the developers are fully aware that the most important aim in the game's design is to gift players as much freedom to roam through the environment causing as much mayhem and exploring as much of its content as possible. This is the time sink that's bait for players to stay glued to Far Cry 4 long into the night.
"The interesting lesson we learned was that we'd made a game that had very interesting characters and a very layered story, but the reality is, the player didn't need to care about any of that," says Hay. "Players want to play the game their way and have their own fun."
In order to maintain that level of fun, Far Cry 4's developers are pushing the new-gen hardware right to the edge. On the surface, there's a lot about Far Cry 4 that will strike players as familiar – the guns, the crafting, the leveling and certain progress mechanics (such as unlocking the map using radar towers) – but the environment in the game is structured in such a way that many of the NPC AI's look at the world the same way the player does. They see opportunities and they exploit them, making them harder for the player to simply roll over.
"The player pushes against the world and like nature, the world kicks back – and hard!" says Hay.
"Freedom and opportunity and surprise; those are the ingredient of the Anecdote Factory, " says Hay. "Those are the three things we boil down to make the elixir of Far Cry."
In just a few moments, one can see what a heady elixir this is. Picture the scene. A player approaches a radar tower in a gyrocopter. Instead of landing on the ground and climbing up the side of the structure, they land on the roof. They drop down a level and hack the tower as volleys of bullets stream up at them from the soldiers below. Instead of take a zip line down to the ground, they hurl themselves off the tower, deploy a wingsuit and glide down the valley, landing in front of a truck filled with enemies. As the NPCs take cover behind the truck and begin firing at the player, they haul out an RPG and send their enemies to hell in a ball of flame.
That's just one story constructed in the Anecdote Factory. There are bound to be millions more on the way…
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