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IGN:Don't Call Far Cry Primal Far Cry 4.5

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Far Cry: Primal is big. Its trees are big, its plants are big, and its terrain is enormous. You pad around a lot in this great stretch of digital land, stealing outposts, foraging, and killing animals. Sometimes you ride the animals - bears and sabre-tooth tigers can be tamed like horses - and sometimes you have existential visions that send your character into a gold-dust-tinged delirium.

Primal is very Far Cry.

It’s something of a pleasant surprise. Without a brazen ‘5’ slapped on the end of it, it’s easy to assume Primal is something of a bridging game - after all, Ubisoft’s already trod that ground with Assassin’s Creed: Rogue. But it is, as lead writer Kevin Shortt tells me, the publisher’s “next Far Cry”; albeit one that doesn’t fit into a neat numerical box.


“For us, Primal is a full on Far Cry,” says Shortt. “The main campaign is around 30 hours, we’ve created a whole new world, new flora and fauna. it’s a full game, and so if anyone has doubts about that, they just spend a bit of time in the game to realise it’s something huge. This is our new Far Cry game.”

Shortt and his team did a lot of research to ensure Primal’s world felt fresh and new. The idea for a stone age Far Cry game had been floating around for a while, but replicating a very specific period in that stone age required a level of authenticity that meant re-skinning Far Cry 4 was not an option. “We had to do a lot of research”, said Shortt. “We had to figure out what the period was, and decided that 10,000 BC was a good period - that’s the mesolithic period - because that’s when humans went from more nomadic tribes to settling down and establishing villages. As a result of that, they started more wars, they started more conflicts, because they’re settling in the same regions and fighting over resources.”

On the fictional tribe, it's language, and acting.

Although Primal’s central tribe - the Wenja - is fictional, their behaviour has been shaped by anthropology. “We reached out to a lot of experts,” said Shortt. “There was a professor who was actually from Montreal. He knew homo sapiens and neanderthals, he’d gone to France and visited the old caves and studied all of that, so we brought him in and he was able to give us perspective on all these people.”

This research was also the basis for Primal’s invented language - also called Wenja -which came about after the team decided using English ‘popped’ harshly in the context of the game. Consequently, all of Far Cry Primal’s dialogue is subtitled. “So we created the setting, the flora, the megafauna,” said Shortt, “and then when it came to actually telling the story it just felt wrong to say “ok we’re going to do it in modern language.’ Because it was going to pop. You were going to feel it. So we did some tests, and it did pop. It wasn’t right. So we thought, ‘hell, let's make a language.’


Primal’s dialect was born from proto-indo European; considered the root of all language. It sounds very authentic on the ear, and I was surprised when I was told it was made up. Out of all the topics I discuss with Shortt, it’s this language that he gets the most enthusiastic about - after all, the initial idea to create a language from nothing must have felt like a pipe dream.

“I remember the first session I went to with the actors, and I’d just come in off the plane - they were doing it in Toronto - and I’d arrived and I walked into the studio and they were already going, all of the actors. And all I heard was Wenja. Even as [the teacher, linguist Brenna Bird] was teaching it to them, she was speaking in Wenja, and they were speaking back to her in Wenja. And it was a hugely exciting moment for me. We’d gone from this idea of making a language, and here it was, a real language. They’d taken it seriously. They’ve adapted a real language that you can start to recognise words and phrases as you’re playing the game. It was amazing seeing the actors embrace that.”

More at the link----->http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/01/27/dont-call-far-cry-primal-far-cry-45
 

Gbraga

Member
I thought it would be about how different it is from the Far Cry 3~4 formula, but instead it's about how it's A LOT of the same, instead of A BIT MORE of the same.

So it's Far Cry 3.3

EDIT: Beaten:

Given people's reception of Far Cry 4 I'd assume those people would try and call this Far Cry 3.75 or something~
 
That is correct, because it's more like Far Cry 3.75.

Far Cry 3
Far Cry 4 is more like 3.5, they changed some of the HUD and that's it.
Far Cry Primal is more like 3.75, they didn't even bother changing the HUD for this one.


edit: beaten many times - it's like everyone is making this joke. Good job Ubisoft.
 

Akronis

Member
I love how they go on and on about making the world feel authentic but the gameplay that's already been shown looks even worse than Far Cry 3 or 4 considering your weapon variety is incredibly limited and the melee combat looks COMPLETELY terrible and boring
 

blackjaw

Member
Half the fun of Far Cry was the weapons and mods and how I could change my approach based on the terrain, etc

Just concerned if they keep a typical FC approach that this will get real old real quick with a lack of weapons
 

Jb

Member
This reminds me of the AC games. Different setting, different story and characters, pretty much the same gameplay plus minus a few mechanics. Hard to get excited after a certain point.
 

BiggNife

Member
Here's the thing, though - A new environment and 30 hours of content is great and all, but everything I've seen of Primal's gameplay makes it look like they've barely changed anything from FC4. And FC4 was a good game, don't get me wrong, but after FC3 and Blood Dragon I realized I was getting a little tired of the same gameplay with a new skin.

And then they show Far Cry Primal, and guess what - it's the same gameplay with a new skin! You're still raiding bases and disabling alarms (now they're bullhorns). You're still hunting animals for upgrades. You still use bait to attract animals. You still have the same stealth execution system that FC3 had. No guns, but bows and spears that basically have the exact same applications. And none of those things are bad, but we've already had three games with that stuff in it with very little changes.

As someone who really likes Far Cry, I am getting increasingly concerned that Ubisoft is going down the Assassin's Creed hole of releasing games with more or less the same gameplay for years until people get sick and tired of it instead of giving the franchise a chance to breathe and evolve, and that's worrying. It cannot be overstated how much of an improvement FC3 was over FC2, and I'd love to see another FC game that improves on the formula like that.

Why call it Far Cry at all?, or is Far Cry now a franchise?

Far Cry is definitely a franchise, and if you watch footage of Primal it's pretty clear it has the same gameplay structure FC3 and 4 had. If they made it a new IP it would almost definitely sell worse, anyway.
 
Thats an unfortunate title and its all people are gonna focus on.

The language part sounds really cool. Not many (if any) AAA studios would make a game whose audio is not English. I always liked that about Ubisoft, they can take the odd bold step here and there. Shame that their games are so tiresome mechanically.
 
I don't dislike IGN, I rather like their podcasts, I just can't take them for anything but corporate shills

nXx3i.gif

and I liked ME3
 

Akronis

Member
Here's the thing, though - A new environment and 30 hours of content is great and all, but everything I've seen of Primal's gameplay makes it look like they've barely changed anything from FC4. And FC4 was a good game, don't get me wrong, but after FC3 and Blood Dragon I realized I was getting a little tired of the same gameplay with a new skin.

And then they show Far Cry Primal, and guess what - it's the same gameplay with a new skin! You're still raiding bases and disabling alarms (now they're bullhorns). You're still hunting animals for upgrades. You still use bait to attract animals. You still have the same stealth execution system that FC3 had. No guns, but bows and spears that basically have the exact same applications. And none of those things are bad, but we've already had three games with that stuff in it with very little changes.

As someone who really likes Far Cry, I am getting increasingly concerned that Ubisoft is going down the Assassin's Creed hole of releasing games with more or less the same gameplay for years until people get sick and tired of it instead of giving the franchise a chance to breathe and evolve, and that's worrying. It cannot be overstated how much of an improvement FC3 was over FC2, and I'd love to see another FC game that improves on the formula like that.



Far Cry is definitely a franchise, and if you watch footage of Primal it's pretty clear it has the same gameplay structure FC3 and 4 had. If they made it a new IP it would almost definitely sell worse, anyway.

This. All of this.
 
Uh huh. Sure. I think it's clear that your series has a perception problem worth examining if you have to come out and say this kind of stuff.
 

danowat

Banned
Far Cry has been a franchise for years

Yeah, but the first few iterations followed the same style of game, Primal is off on a bit of a tangent.

It's like they made a game, realized it wasn't good enough to stand up on it's own merits and thought fuck it, we'll slap "Far Cry" on it to give it some kudos.

Where else could the Far Cry franchise go next?, Far Cry : Feudal Japan? (that would actually be kinda cool)
 
Sigh. What is the point of articles like this even being written? Literally just fueling the PR hype machine for no reason other than maintaining publisher relationships, I guess? No wonder I mostly steer clear of IGN.
 
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