Interviews// Far Cry 3

Far Cry 3 was inevitable. Yet still a lot of people seemed to have been taken aback by the title’s announcement earlier this year at E3, so I guess it wasn’t exactly a sure thing amongst the industry collective.

Either way, things are slightly different this time around. You play as wandering traveller Jason Brodie, who journeys to this mysterious tropical island in search of new experiences. What he ends up getting is a series of unfortunate events that lead to the constant fighting for his very survival at every turn.

I was shown a demonstration of an early version of the game at Ubisoft’s recent Summer event, and spoke with lead game designer Jamie Keen about the studio’s new approach to the series - previously known for its somewhat commando-style approach to tropical warfare.


SPOnG: A sequel to Far Cry 2 was inevitable, but still this was one of the big surprises for a lot of people at E3. What was the reaction you got from attendees of the event?

Jamie Keen: I think like you said, it really did take a lot of people by surprise, which is absolutely what we were trying to do. So from that perspective it went really well for us. We were also really pleased to see people’s reactions to the game itself, and to hear from other fans that there’s some stuff that we need to address. The game is a work in progress, so there are still things to work out - but there’s other elements that people are really happy with. We just have to make sure that we nail the feeling that this is a Far Cry game, and that moving forward we stay on the path of how a Far Cry game should be.


SPOnG: So what kind of influences did you guys take on board when making this new entry in the series? Obviously past Far Cry games are a factor, but in terms of narrative and set-pieces was there anything that inspired you?

Jamie Keen: This is the thing - as we’re sitting and talking about stuff and working out what we want to bring to this, I think one of the things that we see in a lot of these jungle-based movies is this voyage of personal discovery. It’s a really common theme throughout a lot of war movies - films set in Vietnam and outside the Pacific - but this kind of super-oppressive environment really changes people.

We wanted to get a feeling of that kind of development with the main character here, and through his progression of the story. Let the player experience things from the standpoint of the character and make their own moral judgement about how they’re interacting with things and how that makes them feel about the game.


SPOnG: Could you give us a little more detail about the demonstration that was shown at E3 this year, and the setup behind Far Cry 3 in general?

Jamie Keen: The demo is probably about a third of the way into the game, so you’re fairly well established as the character you play, which is a chap called Jason Brodie. Initially, when you arrive on the island, you play as this twenty-something guy from the States who’s out travelling - he’s had some success in his life, and a little bit of failure too.

He’s super-cocksure though, and thinks he can deal with any kind of situation. He arrives on this island and sees it as the ultimate travel location. He quickly realises that he’s way out of his depth - it becomes clear that he has no chance of overcoming anything that happens in this place. He needs to fight to survive.

The guy that you meet in the demo, Vaas - he’s one of the crazier characters you’ll meet on the island. They’re all going to have their own agenda - not just like Vaas, all in your face and crazy. Some guys will try to help you out but could turn on you at any moment for their own gains. That’s the feeling that we want - we want the player to feel that they’re never quite sure what’s actually happening on the island, who you can trust and who you can’t.

One of the phrases we had during development “betrayal hurts more than a thousand bullets,” and that was what we wanted to convey in the game.


SPOnG: Far Cry 3 is going to be an open world game. How challenging was it to implement an open world experience into a game where the main storyline is for your character to escape the island as quickly as possible?

Jamie Keen: The escape goal is one of the various things to achieve whilst on the island. You get embroiled in various plot twists and story segments that make you realise that yes, getting off the island is the primary concern, but that’s not necessarily something you can just do right away. It kind of was, and is, a challenge to balance a direct narrative against an open world experience. We’re still working on getting that right, definitely.