Far Cry 5 is set to drop in a couple of months and the usual Ubisoft discussions have been flaring up again, while little has been said about the actual mechanical changes that are coming with this new release. One of the aspects I find very interesting about this series is how, as Mark Brown puts it in his great video on the differences between Far Cry 2 and Far Cry 4, the games have all have a very similar mechanical chassis that gets put to work creating very different experiences while retaining the pillars of the franchise (open worlds, emergent gameplay, exotic setting). When the early gameplay demo footage of Far Cry 5 began releasing I remember being disappointed at how similar it all seemed to look and feel to Far Cry 4, ranging from things like the continued use of the same weapon sound FX that were created for Far Cry 3 popping up constantly to the recycled animal calls.
I've been watching more footage as it has come out and now I can't really say if those bits have actually been changed or I simply haven't noticed the repetition anymore. Either way, the lengthier gameplay demonstrations have shown us quite a bit more of how the classic Far Cry gameplay loops have evolved and it seems that are quite a few small additions and tweaks that have me curious as to how much they will freshen the experience. Just off the top of my head, we've seen:
- A UI update for the health bar and the apparent removal of the classic segmented bar, a series mainstay since its inception in Far Cry 2. I'm not sure if that means the healing system has been changed as well, but I'm sure we'll find out.
- No more machetes or knife takedowns. Melee takedowns are still in, but you can apparently now carry around different melee weapons or just use your fists, which should be a nice reprieve. It looks like they've brought along the throwing weapons from Far Cry Primal as well, so you can carry around a shovel and toss it at dudes. Nice.
- Heavier focus on more "meaningful" exploration. From what I've seen that means that instead of fast-traveling around a map to pick up missions or getting them from sobbing peasants squatting in outposts you can tackle the story in "any order you want". Far Cry stories have always had weird pacing because of the whole open world thing so I think I'm glad that they are going fully systemic with this, but we will see. There also seems to be a lot more resources and rewarding hidden caches for you to find out in the world, instead of just the usual Ubisoft letters/older kind of letters/artifact collectible set. There are also perk books... like, Fallout perk books. In MY Far Cry?!
- Hunting doesn't seem tied to progression anymore, apart from you maybe getting XP for it. There wasn't any skinning that I saw in any of the gameplay and from what I gather the skins are just for you to sell for money. I like this a lot because I have always found the "hunting" in these games (never played Primal) to be shallow and tedious, especially on subsequent playthroughs where it felt more like a chore quota you had to fill in order to have a viable character.
- You can buy and customize cars and planes and shit and get them spawned in at certain buildings. Sounds great, honestly, and really jives with the American setting.
The staple Far Cry activities all seem to be present in 5, so it'll be interesting to see if the game can manage to make itself feel like an experience that is somewhat distinct from earlier titles. It'll also be the first mainline entry on next gen consoles so I'm wondering how much a leap we can expect in terms of graphical fidelity. Even if it's a trainwreck, it ought to be a fun one with lots of emergent fire propagation.
