Uniqueness of Farcry | Forums

[HawaiianNut]

Whenever I play another first person shooter, I immediately notice the unique little touches that set Farcry apart from the rest.

Other than buying the name for Farcry, I wonder whether the makers of the sequel have those little touches that I love from the original, specifically:

* If you're out of grenades, you get to throw rocks at the enemy. I especially love hiding around a corner and hitting someone in the head with a rock, and having their head bounce back. Extremely minor, but something that sets Farcry apart from all the other games that take themselves so seriously. (And it's funny just to hear guys yelling in a panic when you throw a rock in their direction. Instilling fear, love it!)

* Speaking of dialogue, how much fun is it to turn on that CryVision on the binoculars, and overhear the mercenaries complaining or mocking the idiot tourist in the red Hawaiian shirt? Sometimes I'll just sit and listen to the mercenaries ruminate on the morality of being hired goons. Again, no it isn't an essential game feature of 5,000 other first-person-shooters. That's the point. It's a little, tiny touch that the Farcry makers put in that I appreciate. Is it in Farcry 2?

* Does it have a machete? How fun to challenge oneself by putting the rocket launcher and advanced rifles aside, and just charge at bad guys with a machete? Some levels, it just gets you dead. But sometimes, the enemy tees you off enough where you just want to whip out the machete and start hacking. Now that's fun. (And really, if Farcry 2 is set in Africa, where better to use a machete?)

* I like to see beautiful locations, grass waving, birds flying, even fish swimming. I like to look up at a beautiful moonlight sky, and hear grass rustling as guards try to sneak up behind me. Ambiance is a very important thing in Farcry, I hope that was a key design decision in the sequel.

So those are some of the little touches that make Farcry unique, and a real pleasure to play compared to some other FPSs I consider dull. Give me rocks to throw, talking guards, and waving grass, and I'll put up with pretty much any other changes. (Who needs mutants when a Rhino or Tiger is charging, right?)

From the preview published in the PC Gamer cover story, there was no mention of any of these things coming up in their "focus groups" where they decided to ditch everything else that made Farcry unique.

Does anyone else play Farcry for little touches like this? Just wondering. Otherwise, I'm wondering why they paid two cents for the name.

[bongomast3r]

Nice post, hawaiiannut. I also was a big fan of how you could listen into the mercenaries random rantings. It would always bring a little smile to my face in between the merciless killing. It was often funny and clever dialogue.

The atmosphere is another thing that I agree is important, like with the moving grass and day/night cycles like you mentioned. It looks like FC2 has nailed that already from what I've seen so far.

There is a machete in FC2. The machete was cool, but I'd like to see it be a bit more useful in FC2. For example it was almost impossible to sneak up on a merc in FarCry 1 and kill him with one hit of the machete, one reason being because they could detect you as soon as you got within a couple of metres even if you approached from directly behind. The ability to hack through foliage would be awesome too, although maybe unfeasible.

I recommend you watch the demo video in one of the other threads, "25 min video demo" i think the thread is called.

[HawaiianNut]

Hi Bongo, thanks.

I recently read a book on Africa's child soldiers called "A Long Way Gone", by Ishmael Beah.

Although I don't need my games preachy, I wonder if the designers of Farcry 2 thought of including child soldiers in the game. It would be a good message, especially to show the villain turning young minds to evil deeds.

But I'm guessing the game won't have any lofty goals beyond good physics, which is okay, too.

[bongomast3r]

There may be mention of it in the story or it may be shown in cutscenes, but there is no way they would have child soldiers interactable in the game, because then you could kill them. Not even GTA will go there, nobody will.

It would be very creepy and realistic to have kids walking around with guns killing people, but it's not going to happen. Plus, I think they would stray away from any strong political issues, they're not even allowed to have endangered species in FC2.