Far Cry 6s world isnt as big as Assassins Creed Odysseys, but its more ambitious

Date:
Sat, 25 Sep 2021 13:00:40 +0000

Description:
Far Cry 6 World Director Ben Hall talks to TechRadar about the overarching philosophy that the game shares with Assassins Creed Odyssey.

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Set on the fictional Caribbean island of Yara, Far Cry 6 looks to push the boundaries of what weve seen from the long-running series before, offering
not just a region to explore but an entire country.

Yaras Cuban influences are clear: sweeping vistas, vivid flora and a
guerrilla revolution brewing at its core in response to a tyrannical dictatorship. What results is a conflict set against a tropical paradise
thats brimming with culture, music and personality, but also oppressed by the dictator Anton Castillo, with its citizens harassed by his military checkpoints and patrols.

Its an environment you might not immediately associate with another of Ubisofts established franchises, Assassins Creed. But Far Cry 6 World
Director Ben Hall tells us that, while there are key differences between the worlds of Far Cry and Assassins Creed, there are some clear similarities too. Check out the best Xbox Game Pass games New games 2021 : upcoming game
release dates for console and PC Check out our best PC games of 2021 Fusing philosophies (Image credit: Ubisoft)

If theres one person who has the experience necessary to create Yaras living and breathing world, its probably Ben Hall. A senior-level designer on Assassins Creed Syndicate, before becoming the World Director on Assassins Creed Odyssey , Hall knew that taking on the role of World Director of Far
Cry 6 would present a challenge different to any hed faced before. While Assassins Creed games are third-person, open-world titles with a heavy historical influence, Far Cry games, by contrast, are first-person shooters and as Hall Points out much faster.

"We went to similar lengths of reference and research as we would for an Assassin's Creed game, so bringing that same philosophy into it was important." Ben Hall - World Director on Far Cry 6

It's a new challenge in the way you approach certain elements of world building, he tells us. But from an overarching philosophy, it remains
somewhat the same in terms of the process of building, the level of detail going into that research was something that was important that we put into this world for Far Cry. We went to similar lengths of reference and research as we would for an Assassin's Creed game, so bringing that same philosophy into it was important.

But then obviously, being in first-person, spatial awareness becomes slightly different, the focus and attention to detail at an individual location level becomes slightly different. And that's where the support of the team that
I've been working with has been phenomenal because they've helped me with that. They've got that experience from previous Far Cry games and we've been able to fuse the two philosophies together to try and build the best worlds
we possibly can for players.

While its common knowledge that the team visited Cuba as part of its
research, Hall stresses that Yara is not a replication of Cuba. Instead, the team at Ubisoft created a fictional world that drew inspiration from
Caribbean countries, including Cuba, as well as from Central and South American countries, but didnt see them beholden to real-world reference.

As an example, Hall points out some key differences between Yara and Cuba, including alligators in swimming pools (Cuba doesnt have alligators) and a lack of flamingos (Cuba is crawling with them). Its a somewhat different approach to that taken with Assassins Creed Odyssey, where the goal was to recreate environments that already exist as historically accurate as possible
so much so that Odyssey is now used as a learning tool in schools but Hall emphasizes that research still plays an important role.

We do a lot of research, and it's really important that people do that
because we're not from that part of the world, Hall says of the countries the Far Cry 6 team used for inspiration. For us, it's really important that we go to the lengths to make sure we learn as much as we possibly can. So that when we are speaking to experts, and they're looking at what we've built, we're talking about changing and tweaking little things that we've perhaps not got quite right, or that we can make better, rather than whole sweeping changes
to the world. Creating a fully realized country (Image credit: Ubisoft)

From concept to completion, Yara took roughly four years to create, the challenge being to create a complete, fully-realized country that also serves as the playground Far Cry fans expect a first for the series.

"It's not as big as Odyssey but it's the most ambitious Far Cry map that
we've set to date." Ben Hall - World Director on Far Cry 6

No matter where we ended up with the setting, it was always going to be that we were going to do a revolution that's going to be about a country, Hall tells us. And that really changed the mindset of the team, because it was now much wider, our reference and research-gathering widened out. But we also needed to make sure that Yara could contain all of those different elements that make it feel like a country, all the different layers of infrastructure, the idea of where people lived and worked, and how those things used to work once upon a time, was something that we now needed to think about.

Yaras map is the largest of any Far Cry game to date, but Hall didn't want to just go for size for the sake of size. Instead, the focus was on ensuring
that Yara felt like a country in terms of its scale, while at the same time being a realistic undertaking for players. But how does this differ from Odyssey, which boasted a mammoth map covering roughly 90.7 square miles (according to GameRant)?

Footprint-wise, it's not as big as Odyssey, which was important because we didn't want to create the same sense of emotion, Hall explains. With Odyssey, it was about exploring: taking time to explore the wilderness and find those locations. Whereas, with the Far Cry games, it's faster-paced, you want to
get to places more quickly. But we also want to evoke exploration, the sensation of being a guerrilla is about understanding the landscape that you're in, exploring that landscape you're in, and then finding things that you can use to give you one up over the military so that concept of exploration was still important.

It's not as big as Odyssey but it's the most ambitious Far Cry map that we've set to date.

According to Hall, that ambitions focus is primarily on the depth of content and the level of detail within the world. Ubisoft has created a country that has its own history, unique locations and people with their own stories and opinions on dictator Anton however, its hard to ignore the Cuban influences on these elements. Hall tells us that one of his goals was to entice players away from their main objective, to explore these more intrinsic elements of the world.

If Halls previous world-building is anything to go by, Far Cry 6s Yara looks like it will offer a very intriguing proposition when it releases on October 7, 2021 just prepare to be tempted off the beaten path. Far Cry 6 is profoundly serious and silly at the same time



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/far-cry-6s-world-isnt-as-big-as-assassins-creed -odysseys-but-its-more-ambitious/


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