The development of the FarCry series over time shows how far games have advanced throughout the past decade and a half. The first game, FarCry, released in 2004 was nearly top of the line in graphical capabilities with the breakthrough of the CryEngine software developed by German developer Crytek. The franchise was acquired by Ubisoft after the first game and spiraled into its own open-world sandbox genre with added replay value and new features for every sequel released. The game has not only expanded on it’s ambitious graphical capability but also its story and gameplay elements.
Story
FarCry 5’s story truly sets the bar. Since FarCry 2, the series has developed a large focus on the main villains in the game to keep the player interested. FC5 takes place in Hope County, Montana. A religious man by the name of Joseph Seed has gathered a large cult following which has gained much power through intimidating the county’s inhabitants. The player is an unnamed silent protagonist which serves as a deputy sent to arrest Seed along with 3 other lawmen. The arrest doesn’t go as planned and the lawmen’s helicopter crashes leaving them stranded and having to gain the collective efforts of Hope County’s inhabitant’s to overthrow the cult.
The reason why this story excels so well is because of the massive detail and strength given to it. FC5 introduces not one but four antagonists all with unique personalities while sharing a common goal. Instead of introducing a typical “There’s a bad guy and you have to get him” storyline, this one offers a more dynamic approach. The 3 endings aren’t the highest point of the game by any means but the ending which entices the player to make a choice sets up events for the next DLC game.
Gameplay
The older FarCry games introduced a stealth mechanic allowing you to sneak up on your enemies. Unfortunately, the stealth mechanics in games throughout the 2000s were not very well refined and incredibly tough to program. If one enemy would spot the player or get shot, the rest of the enemies in the vicinity would be alerted. The player could run and hide out of sight for several seconds causing the AI to forget their position and return to their idle animation.
FarCry 3 completely revamped their stealth mechanics and introduced a completely new playstyle. Ubisoft had developed the well known Splinter Cell franchise which had arguably the best stealth system at its time. Now the enemy AI had an established line of sight and sound detection. If the enemy sees the player, there is a detection meter that gradually fills. If the meter fills completely, the enemy will detect them and start attacking or alerting the other enemies.
The speed at which the meter fills depends on many different factors:
- Distance – The closer the player is, the faster the enemy can see them.
- Exposed Player Body – If the player is covered by objects in the world (i.e. grass or crates), the meter takes longer to fill
- Player Crouching – It is more difficult for enemies to detect the player when in crouch mode
- Line of Sight – The enemy takes longer to detect the player the further they are facing at an angle.
- Sound – If the player makes noise near the enemy, the enemy’s line of sight will become more focused and will gain a larger range of detection.
- Investigation – If the enemy suspects that the player is nearby (triggered by sound or the meter filling almost completely full), they will investigate their last known position and their line of sight and hearing will improve.
FarCry 5 has since adapted these stealth mechanics and largely catered their gameplay to them. The FPS control scheme is just like others in this era. They have a sprint button to make the player run faster and the same shooting controls. Call of Duty was not the first game to have a realistic weapon sight aiming system but it had adopted and popularized it from other games. This aiming mechanism is now the norm with this game and all FPSs across the board.
FarCry 5 also added more perks and abilities to unlock to further facilitate people’s favored playstyles. They stripped the perks that were a nuisance to unlock and didn’t offer the player much variance. For example, instead of perks that “allow the player to execute an enemy standing on a dock while swimming”, they incorporated perks like “carry more explosive ammo” or “allows the player to booby trap cars”.
Critical Analysis
In terms of fun, the game succeeds at appealing to hard fun, easy fun, and serious fun. Serious fun is accomplished by allowing the player to run through the game with weaker but more exotic weapons or explore other playstyles. The easy fun aspect comes into play with map exploration. The map in FarCry 5 is extremely large and they want you to feel like you’re driving on the roads in Montana. Loot crates with items are hidden in specific landmarks. However, player can choose to fast travel if they want to skip the exploration aspect. Finally, the hard fun comes into play when the player faces enemies while progressing through the missions. In this case they want the challenge of sneaking up on an enemy base and successfully clearing it out without setting off any alarms (which gives you the most points).
Within the scope of Bartle’s taxonomy of player types, FarCry 5 falls in the Killers, Achievers, and Explorers categories. Killers can find themselves enjoying creating chaos anyway they like by raiding enemy outposts and progressing through missions. Explorers can find themselves enjoying the map exploration as there are a ton of landmarks to discover. Just like the killers, achievers can also take pride in completing the missions, beating the game, and raiding enemy outposts.
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