At one point they were thinking about making a full fledged sequel to Blood Dragon, but the person who would have been on that is on something else now, so I wonder if they were like "Well we can incorporate what went well there into the core series." instead.
That's what I mean. Far Cry isn't quite on the annual release schedule yet (even if it heads that way) so there would be incentive at Ubisoft to keep some kind of consistency and cohesion between the releases, especially given the popularity of Far Cry 3, and introducing drastic changes can fuck with the IP's marketability.
But Blood Dragon was a success and even though Far Cry 3 was as well they might feel growing the mainline release with more Blood Dragon-like content will help diversify the core formula in a market still pretty saturated with semi-grounded/realistic shooters.
That being said, if this is true I expect more Far Cry 3: With Monsters in aesthetics and themes, and less Blood Dragon: This is Dumb but Amazing.
This is rather bewildering to me as well. Far Cry 3 was the first game I felt compelled to binge play to completion in ages. I get that some folks didn't dig the story, but I can't see how you can take serious issue with the game play.
Stuck too strictly to Ubisoft's patented open world game design for me. Where the entire game, all missions and most mechanics/systems, are built around bar filling, fetch questing, and compartmentalising objectives into strict zones/requirements. Like there was no cohesion or pacing of the overall game design and instead it was an open world filled with
stuff; kill the things to fill the bar to get the points, visit the location and press the button to get the tick, find the bits and bobs to make the thing then do it again to make the slightly bigger thing, repeat forever until end game. Very formulaic, repetitive, and for the lack of a more intellectual word: soulless. The simple act of
shooting felt pretty great, and the audio was top shit. But it was ten minutes of good shooting stretched out over a long boring game.
Plus I thought the jungle was hideously uninteresting (personal gripe), and the bow sucked balls.
