Robert Purchese of Eurogamer recently held a press conference with Jamie Keen of Far Cry 3′s studio, Ubisoft Montreal. At Eurogamer Expo, the Far Cry 3 lead designer stated,

“We’ve had to take a little bit of a different approach to most shooters.  In order to keep a player engaged over a period of time there are certain other genres we have to look into to keep that engagement over a longer time. So we’ve been looking at things like MMOs, we’ve been looking at other open world titles. The Elder Scrolls series is a huge inspiration for us; games like Red Dead [Redemption] and other Rockstar games as well.”

The demonstration begins by showing how big the world of Far Cry 3 is, by using a hang glider to glide across the entire island. Keen said,

“This is a really vast land mass, and a lot of shooters don’t normally have that. So to keep that progression going, to keep those different spacings of where we place stuff in the world, it’s important that we’re breaking the boundaries of what an FPS normally is. [The Far Cry 3 map is] the most complicated jigsaw puzzle you’ve ever seen in your life.”

Keen stated that he wants the player to explore the game “as if you have ADHD.” One hour you will be immersed in the missions, the next, you forget where you are after skinning a goat–a true definition of a sandbox.

“It’s important too that you feel like the world isn’t – we don’t want you to feel like ‘oh it’s this encounter again, I’ve seen this one’. You know, ‘arrow to the knee’, for example. [We don't], While the ‘arrow to the knee’ thing is actually quite cool, [laughs] we don’t necessarily want that.”

As an example in Far Cry 3, Keen mentioned watching a deer, bear, and tiger all fighting each other at the same time, human trafficking, drug trafficking, and the world talking about what you did.  Keen revealed that Far Cry 3 spawns more than 250 different encounter types and discusses how the system and manager will track your encounters based on your current console’s memory.

Other observations I noticed: The crafting system in Far Cry 3 was was reminiscent of taking camouflage and food from Snake Eater; the XP system was based off of the Borderlands or the Resident Evil 4 commerce system. Some of the music in the demo sounds like the Breaking Bad theme.

What are your thoughts on the new Far Cry game? A Game of the Year candidate, or just another ADHD Farmville toy? Comment below or in the New Gamer Nation forums.

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GuestPost represents the work of past New Gamer Nation writers. Though they may not be with us anymore physically, we know they are with us in spirit.