Thoughts on Far Cry 6, while I tackle an outpost

Just found this on my hard drive, I think I never put it up cos the game footage got cropped wrong, but actually it's mostly fine. I played first, then talked over the video, so it's a mix of general critique and commentary.

[@QuintenLansu]

I worked on this game! I was the Lead UI Programmer at Ubisoft Berlin, and I worked for about twelve months on a really cool and innovative gameplay feature that riffed on New Dawn. And it was mercilessly cut from the game entirely. :)

[@AverageAhmad]

Can you tell us what it was or would that get you in trouble?

[@livinggarbagetruck]

MGSV is my favourite example of the open world outpost format, because the objectives aren't always the same. Sometimes I want to capture a specific soldier for their abilities, sometimes I just want a Hall & Oates tape.

[@segue2ant395]

Far Cry 2 was my favourite - the story was more-or-less awful but I quite liked the tone - and the progression felt tight. The way the desperation and futility of the early game opened up into the power-fantasy of the late game felt well-paced to me. The lack of UI meant you never felt like your hand was being held, too. It's interesting, seeing which lessons the designers took forward - the non-respawning checkpoints being more satisfying and less threatening, a tonne of UI overlays making stealth explicit, and removing the creep in favour of a constant power-fantasy. Don't get me wrong, I love the feeling of capturing an outpost as a silent assassin (or crashing a fuel truck loaded with explosives through the front gate into the animals pens - whichever feels appropriate) - but I do wish they'd carried some of the powerlessness and cruelty of 2 further on into the series. I haven't played 6 yet - but having watched this I feel like I probably owe it some time. Anyway. Nice video, made me think, like the format.

[@thisidforsjit]

Yeah the grim and gritty tone and almost sim like elements of Far Cry 2 is why its still my favorite. I totally get why its not for everyone, but i personally find that combo alot more engaging thematically and mechanically

[@Notemug]

I remember when Tom first mentioned his love of outposts, talking about Far Cry 3, on a Crate and Crowbar episode. By that point I too had finished all three Far Cries, but I was like... wait, all he cares about is *what*? He has since managed to bring me closer to his way of thinking. : )

[@0shii]

What's really interesting is I think I probably played a completely different game that was also called Far Cry 6... I also focused on outposts as a nexus for fun, but I tend to only play a slapdash stealth that lasts only up until I inevitably attract attention, after which things get pretty loud.

[@4videovideo]

I am of the opinion that it absolutely matters how much I have to "play the game in my head" to keep it fun. That thing you said about the stakes "feeling real"... they stop feeling real the moment I have to start pretending I can't do things that I obviously can (in the context of the game).

[@benhickson6149]

Stealth and subterfuge is really your Jam. You should do a ranking of your favourite stealth games and why.

[@beflyaudio]

I really relate to this kind of mindset. Im a big fan of playing various games like these with personal achievements and limitations in mind. And only stealth/action games that Ubisoft usually does are the kinds of games that let me have that kind of experience where i can try anything, take on any challenge, set any limitations, and the game will follow through and let me have my kind of playstyle. I think most of the hate comes from people not realising you dont have to do the parts of the game that you dont like if you dont like them which has always been the point of these formula games. I remember clearing all FC4 outposts without finishing a single story mission, and the game does not resist a single bit, and it felt great. Another part of it is that people tend to cling onto extrinsic rewards much easily than intrisnic, and end up, as they say, optimizing the fun out of the game and abusing its flexibility to just get to the reward quicker, and the reward itself is just kind of meh, because the game itself is quite easy as it is. Which is why brutal games that have a vision and punish you hard for not following it have so much praise, its much harder to optimize your playstyle without having to engage with every aspect of them. You are naturally funneled to see it from its best side.

[@LordHengun]

Lol, I just wrote a comment describing the exact perspective you're talking about. I'm one of those players who find the path of least resistance and stick to it unless the game forces them to adapt. I can totally see how the Far Cry series rewards self-imposed restrictions, and if you kinda want to externalize the reward for that creativity it would be great for streaming as well!

[@beflyaudio]

​@@LordHengun Yes. Its not a bad relationship with games per say. Just different ways to engage with them. But when you stop enjoying something you gotta think about if you're approaching this from a good direction. But it would also be really great if Ubisoft could learn from those kinds of games a bit too😅one could hope.

[@LordHengun]

@@beflyaudio I keep coming back to FC because it's a safe bet for a chill time; I know I'll get a really polished experience that always feels good but isn't super rewarding for me at the end of the day. Like I said in the other comment, I think "the right tool for the job" is a step in the right direction, but the system doesn't go far enough (at least on normal difficulty). Like there's almost no problem that can't be solved with a silenced armor-piercing round so there's no incentive for me to experiment. A game I think does this sort of thing really well is Tom's own Heat Signature! Basically, there are more types of problems for you to face than you have tools with which to easily overcome them, so you need to be creative WITHIN the limitations of your kit and really make the most out of the equipment you have.

[@Erin-ks4jp]

Yeah these are pretty much my exact thoughts too. Far cry games aren’t especially deep nor particularly creative most of the time, but they have some solid game design and a good formula for fun with the outpost mechanics. And they do it well.

[@wittyadrian]

I really enjoyed Ghost Recon Wildlands for the same reasons as you listed. Such a shame that Breakpoint didn't deliver on that at all (at least for me).

[@georgeparkes3863]

The most discordant thing in these games is the main character is the ‘hero.’ However they ruthlessly murder 100s or even 1000s of people. Hard to love a serial killer even given the vicious enemy in power.

[@paulv8773]

I only played the first three games of this series and I thought the third game was a huge step back in a lot of ways and that's why I never picked up another one. I really enjoyed the second one, the game really hates you and I found that enjoyable for some reason. Also doing arson was so satisfying and could also be very effective or or it could be suicide and you didn't know which until you tried it. I think with the third game this series went from being its own thing to being a Ubisoft Game(TM) and I had played so much Assassin's Creed that I was just completely over it. (I played all the Assassin's Creed games to completion up until Revelations and got entirely sick of that series and stopped playing them altogether. Although I did pick up Odyssey a year or so ago and that was ok for a bit, but I barely made it past the tutorial island on that one.)

[@user-mk4cl3gc1f]

Спасибо тебе большое за ролик)))

[@fluffy6923]

I've never played Far Cry as a stealth game. For me it was always action shooter, so we aren't really outgunned, you can play it as a shooter. Although I didn't played Far Cry 6 yet, but I did played Far Cry 1-5. In my cycle story of far cry is never mentioned.

[@IainCheyne]

Not my kind of game but you make it look and sound very good. When are you coming back on the Crate and Crowbar? 🙏

[@LordHengun]

I recently played through Far Cry 6, and my biggest issue is that the game feels good. Like, it feels TOO good. It ALWAYS feels good, so there's no need to ever switch up my playstyle and engage with the majority of game systems. Maybe it's different if you bump it up to hard difficulty (I almost always play on normal for a first playthrough since I assume that's the intended experience) but the whole "the right tool for the job" thing is a step in the right direction but you never HAVE TO engage with it. 95% of problems this game throws at you can be solved with a silenced gun with armor piercing bullets. A headshot will always kill an unarmored target anyway, and I never saw the point of using poison/fire ammo - why sacrifice raw damage? The obvious answer is "because it's fun you nerd", but I have a tendency to optimize the fun out of games like this, I suppose - I find a strategy that works and I don't tend to change tactics unless I have to. And Far Cry never makes me. I love playing different classes in an ARPG or using different decks in deck builders, because you HAVE TO adapt and find new strategies. Far Cry feels good, but it's always comfortable and almost never rewarding because of it.

[@peezieforestem5078]

But is this really the criticism of the game or the criticism of yourself?

[@LordHengun]

@@peezieforestem5078 It's a criticism of the game from my perspective, as well as some thoughts on why it didn't click with me. It's not a bad game and I can totally see why someone who's more into self-imposed restrictions would really like it!

[@driver3899]

Does this mean that the new first person game, Heat Signature 2; 2 Hot 2 Handle will have outpost ships and star fortresses we can approach from any direction? Or could you please make a spiritual successor to AC 4 black flag where you sail around raiding costal forts? I would like to play both of these

[@iwantagoodnameplease]

Wow, when did they get to 6? Last I looked it was 3.

[@garygordle5146]

i take it you lime immersive sims and a good bit of mgsV?

[@Quimbyrbg]

Far Cry was fun on the Original Xbox because of the open world element, but the story was unabashedly awful. I skipped the rest because I could get my open world fix from Mercenaries and other similar games, but when I eventually bought FC5 on the PS4 I was really happy with it, as I felt the other open world games were becoming more overwhelming in their tedious BS stories. Again, the FC5 story was stupid, but it felt like a spiritual sequel to the open world games like Mercenaries in how it let me ignore it all to go tackle compounds however I pleased.

[@figrollin]

Persistent drive for autonomy.

[@vak2586]

You don't like 3? That's a hot take. Why not?

[@gausgrin649]

Michael Mando did a fantastic job potraying Vaas as authentically unhinged. But whatever depth Mando may have used to inform that performance was not reflected in the story. Not in a literal sense, not in subtext. Outside of how fun it was to watch Vaas cutscenes, the story has nothing going for it. It has exactly one idea with potential which is a Californian pretty boy finding a purpose through violence and chaos, but it's totally vapid. People only think Jason's story arc is deep because they love the game and choose not to investigate it for even a millisecond. It really doesn't have much substance beyond the initial writer's room excitement of "Oh what if he was like a pretty boy but then he got jungle fever?" It's as if there is literally no writing beyond the prompt itself. I agree with his take that Farcry never had a grace to fall from. Vaas set the standard of "The story is only good if the antagonist radiates fun charisma". The idea of a game being totally shit or amazing based on if you liked the charisma being radiated from one single character in the 10-15 minutes of cutscenes he appears in? your criteria is pretty specific and weak.

[@garygordle5146]

@@gausgrin649 well said

[@Robofrosty]

@@gausgrin649 Where are people claiming far cry 3 is deep?

[@oldvlognewtricks]

⁠@@Robofrosty Because people equate ‘I like X’ with ‘X is deep’ and feel sensitive when attention is drawn to its shallowness - forgetting it’s perfectly fine to enjoy something even though it’s paper thin

[@Pentadact]

Oh, I was only talking about the story. Game-wise I like it more than 1 or 2, although these days there's no reason to play it over the later entries, whereas 2 is still unique.

[@Fallen_Ninja]

Yea.. but… no editor.