Jamie Keen: Right now, it’s kind of centred on the jungle, but we want to have a varied experience. It’s not all about going to be this oppressive jungle - there will be other environments, but we’re keeping quiet on exactly what kinds of locations at the moment.
SPOnG: The Far Cry series has always been an open world affair, but did you take cues from other games out there of a similar nature? There are some things that remind me of Just Cause 2 to a degree.
Jamie Keen: We’re looking around at all the competition out there, and if we like the way they have executed stuff then we’ll look into those kinds of solutions as well. So we’re very aware of what’s out there - we like to try and pick the best elements from the bunch and add our own flavour to it.
SPOnG: I noticed experience points coming out of enemies, and weapons fashioned from anything that can be found on the ground. How does that tie into the progression system in Far Cry 3?
Jamie Keen: Again, this is only a work in progress at the moment, but it’s something that we’re going to be iterating over the next year or so. We want the player to feel that narrative progression, but we also want them to get their own feeling of progression into the game. So if you want to approach areas more stealthily, you can build your character that allows you to do that more easily. You can craft yourself to be more action-oriented if that’s your thing, and loads of different play styles in-between.
Jamie Keen: I think we wanted someone who was maybe more recognisable to people. It was important that the main character here is something of a... I’m really hesitant to say, but everyman. We want you to feel that there’s a resonance there. That there’s elements within the game that you might have experienced yourself - you can relate to Jason, and kind of imagine yourself in his position and experiencing all the stuff that goes on in front of him. It then becomes a really personal game - ‘how would I tackle this situation?’ Most of the time I think a lot of us would wind up dead pretty quickly (laughs).
SPOnG: Vaas looks like the kind of faction leader you’d want to really avoid. You mentioned that there are other characters that will treat you differently - does that include warring factions to take the island over, perhaps?
Jamie Keen: We’re trying not to talk too much about that right now, but suffice to say that the multiple agendas of all the characters on the island is a key thing here. People in the jungle are only looking after themselves. Vaas is the classic example of what happens to a sociopath with too much time on his hands and nobody telling him what not to do. So that’s the kind of character we want in the game - those who have succumbed to the dark temptations of their personal moralities. As far as their wider factions and motivations, we’re holding back on saying anything for now.
Jamie Keen: It’s all about picking apart bits of the DNA. Seeing where it works, seeing where it didn’t, listening to the things that people were saying - we’re all massive Far Cry fans ourselves, so we weren’t blind to looking back and pointing out things that needed to be worked upon for this title.
It’s finding those elements, making sure that they work properly, and I think in terms of Far Cry 3 this personal voyage, this human-scale conflict, is the important thing here. You’re not going to be out there saving the universe, this is going to be a much more realistic version of what would happen in this situation. You’re not going to come out here to fireworks and ticker tape, this is about the fact that if you got out of here alive and managed to survive it as an individual, then you’ve won. It’s that kind of personal scale of things.
SPOnG: Are there any examples of specific things that fans or you guys have provided feedback on that you’ve changed for Far Cry 3?
Jamie Keen: We definitely had a hit list. I don’t think anyone would be surprised by the tweaking of the checkpoints for example. We want to make sure that while the checkpoints do a great job of punctuating the travel times you have, but perhaps they weren’t diverse enough. We’re definitely working on making the world feel alive as well - and fixing the fast travel too, which was perhaps a little bit restrictive in the last game.
SPOnG: Thanks for your time.
Jamie Keen: Thanks!