Your questions answered

[ninzza]

We've seen Far Cry 3 twice so far, and yet there's still plenty we don't know about the game. A couple weeks back we asked you what burning questions you had, and you responded in full force. We selected about a dozen of your best inquiries and sent them over to the team at Ubisoft Montreal.

Keep in mind, the Far Cry developers weren't ready to answer everything. They were not able to comment on matters concerning PC DRM, co-op gameplay, map-making modes or the presence of split-screen multiplayer. (We asked!)

With that in mind, let's get to some of your answers.

Question #1: are there gorilla monsters in this one? - @jerkymcjerk


You won't find any gorilla monsters in Far Cry 3 but there is a huge variety of animals to hunt (and others that will hunt you!). As far as monsters go, some of our characters could almost fit that description... but you'll have to play to see what we mean.


Question #2: will there be respawning enemy checkpoints in Far Cry3 as seen in Far Cry 2? - @PCE_Deadmeat

Nope! In fact, it's quite the opposite. The actions you perform will change the influence you have on the island and places that you secured will stay safe.


Question #3: Will factions for which you're doing a mission recognize you or will they shoot at you as well like in Far Cry 2? - @nicklohr

They will certainly recognize you as a non-threatening dude. However, you still need to be careful as in some cases, if they feel you're a threat, they might react accordingly.


Question #4: How large is the island you will be playing on? in comparison to other games. - @peat85

We prefer much more to talk about density of experience on the island rather than the actual footprint of the world itself. We could make a world literally the size of a planet, but without anything to do in it, it would be quite a boring experience!

We want to make sure that the world feels populated and dense with a lot of things to do and things happening around you. We want there always be something to intrigue you around every corner: something new to see, someone to fight, and something different to explore and discover.




Question #5: from the previews Far Cry3 seems to be closer in gameplay to the original... True? - @Zombieionism

We didn't move closer to either Far Cry 1 or Far Cry 2. Instead, Far Cry 3 is a mix of both. Sure, the setting is reminiscent to the first Far Cry, but we took the best gameplay features such as the systemic fire, combat systems and weapons from both games to create what you see in FC3.


Question #6: will there be more stealth gameplay mechanics than Far Cry 2, and can I customize my weapons? - @Ilikeindimusic

We made sure that stealth gameplay was a real option for the player inside missions and when out in the open world. We have a suite of mechanics that give feedback to the player to let them know when they are undetected, raising awareness, and finally if they are detected. The AI reacts the way you would expect from a human combatant. If they see a threat they will communicate with each other in a logical way and you can see and hear this as a player. This is a pattern of behavior that you can learn and use against the enemies to your advantage, in stealth and in action combat.

Also what was important was making sure that if you are detected it isn't game over. You can use the environment to disappear again, and use this to your advantage, and while the enemies are focused on where they thought you were, you can flank them or bypass them to get to your objective.

We also brought back the rock distraction mechanic from the original Far Cry, you can throw small rocks to distract and lure enemies.

The weapons are fully upgradeable. You can add upgrades like scopes, sights, and other attachments, and you can also customize the weapons by adding skins. Customization is really about letting the player adapt a given weapon to their preferred style of play. If you like stealth then you can add a suppressor to a weapon for silenced kills. If you like action you can add attachments that reduce recoil, or if you prefer long range attacks you can reduce the sway on a sniper rifle with a scope upgrade.


Question #7: will night and day in jungle result different enemies, animals etc.? and what they can tell about dogs from EDGE screenshot? - @dex3108

The night and day cycle affect which type of animals you'll encounter and the type of activities the enemies will perform. As for the dogs, they're one of our cool enemy units. You must be very careful when dogs are present as they will easily catch your scent if you come too close to them which will lead to a rush of enemies looking for blood.




Question #8: Dont know if this has been asked before but what sort of save system will they use? Will it be like the old checkpoint system? - @AndyMighalls

Without going too much into details, we made sure that the save system is forgiving and prevents from having to 'redo' long sections of navigation if you die along the way.


Question #9: will there be less driving than in Far Cry3 than in Far Cry2. - @supersterl216

A lot of people found the travel in FC2 quite challenging, but there were also driving moments when you really felt you were discovering the world for yourself, and we didn't want to take that away from the player. We want to make sure that we hold on to that good feeling of discovery and exploration.



FC3 has a much more generous fast travel system, so that travelling really becomes what it should be – your decision. You want to get there quickly? You can fast travel. Want to explore the world? It's yours to discover. And we've been working really hard on improving the driving experience itself to make sure that when you do drive around, you'll have a blast doing it.

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/122/1221420p1.html

[Binnatics]

Sounds great!! Good find again Ninzza :-X

[Art Blade]

indeed  :) :-X

[mandru]

Thanks again ninzza.  The game keeps looking better and better.

It's going to be a long wait for September to roll around.   ???

[fragger]

Thanks for that ninzza, and second these guys' comments :-X

The bit about being able to throw rocks to distract enemies made my ears prick up, that was one ability in FC1 that I sorely missed in FC2. Would have come in bloody handy in 2 at times.

And the part about being able to explore or fast-track, depending on your wants. Like it :-X

Right - day off tomorrow and a bit of dough in the bank at last. Time to visit my local PC guru and discuss getting a new gaming rig together - I have a six-month window ^-^

[nexor]

and also a big thanks from the peanut gallery ninzza..... :-D

[mandru]

The answer to question #8 was somewhat reassuring.

Question #8: Dont know if this has been asked before but what sort of save system will they use? Will it be like the old checkpoint system? - @AndyMighalls

Without going too much into details, we made sure that the save system is forgiving and prevents from having to 'redo' long sections of navigation if you die along the way.

A lot of my enjoyment of FC2 as played on the PC was being able to size up a situation, create a save point and then having the freedom to try something no matter how stupid to learn the limits of what I could get away with and also determine strategies that would most likely make me go back to the save point and give it another go.

Hopefully FC3 won't vary too far from that ideal.

I've encountered in some other games the situation where ammunition or resources spent in the process of getting killed are gone forever. To make things worse when you are re-spawned back into the game you are locked on a rail headed straight into the situation that killed you only now your resources are depleted and have no chance of reaching supplies to ever have a hope of completing what has turned out to be a premature terminal level that falls far from the game conclusion.  A pile of carefully saved up lives mean nothing if a level boss can kill you faster than you can re-spawn because you are basically confronting him naked and helpless.

A useful save utility can make or break a game for me.

[Binnatics]

I agree with the make or brake statement. My ideal is the ability of making quick saves like in FC2, but not limitless. When I went deep into the game and was playing a hard scene, I sometimes pressed the quicksave button 10 or more times. All these savefiles were held on the disc. Not that the space is a limit, it's the reload and find important saves issue. I remember it costed my old rig minutes to load the list of available savegames (maybe close to a thousand after 2 playthroughs) and when I was finally in, I hesitated to pick the right save of my desire because I was afraid to have to load the list again :D

For me, the ideal situation is one quicksave slot, that overwrites itself every time you press the button, but working the same as the FC2 quicksave option. Load all weaponry, ammo and armor etc.
Then, if you want to save an important pre-action situation or an important milestone in the campaign, you use one of the regular slots. If there are 10 or 12 of them, it's more than enough imho.
It should be nice as well if these regular slots behave as complete, independent files, so that you can save them elsewhere and re-use them when you re-install the game. Ir if you want to share the savegame with someone else :)

In other words; I want it the same as in FC@, with the only exception that the game puts a limit to the quantity of quicksave slots. The endless ability made it to become a mess on my HD :-D

[nexor]

I never do quick saves, I do a normal save or mostly "oversave"everytime just before I attempt an attack or when I know i'm going to do something stupid or daring, this way it's easy to control the saves. And I do delete them all when I start a new play through

[Binnatics]

I saved one in particular where I had completed all 100% on hard just before entering the final part. I put it away somewhere on my harddisk. Probably I won't ever load it again, it's just a fetish I guess :-D

But you're right. I should have managed it better to not have named issues. But if the game can help me do so, I'd be glad ;)

[PZ]

There is one piece of advice that I follow when saving over existing files.  That's where you save over the top of one file only as long as you are willing to go back in the list to a prior save - just in case you introduce a bug into your latest save.

I recall one time where I introduced the "everyone in Africa knows where I am even before I do" bug into a save and had to go back quite a bit in game time to get to an unbroken save.

Us PC guys are kind of lucky though, there are only 3 game slots in the Assassin's Creed games, and the saves are automatic - all to the single play through you are using.

[Art Blade]

Most games are not as restrictive as Hitman:Bloodmoney & Co which made it impossible to backup savegames. So what you want to do is backup your savegames and if you have truckloads of them, make sub-folders with a proper name so you know what is in it :)

FC2 could load lists of say 100 or more almost instantly but eventually it sloooooooowed down. So I moved the saves into my backup folders :)

[mandru]

As PZ said you never want to save a glitched file over a clean point that you may have needed to return to.   :-X

I started out playing FC2 with the habit of never keeping more than three save files for the current game.  I rotate between them by saving over the oldest and except for one or two unique save spots that I wanted to go back and reexamine I clear out all previous save files for completed games before starting a new one.  Admittedly there were a few times that this practice bit me when a glitch would sneak in and force a complete restart from scratch but I never had to worry about how much space I was loading up on my HD and even after three years of using this computer I've never had to run a defrag to compact disjointed files to improve performance.

[fragger]

For me, the ideal situation is one quicksave slot, that overwrites itself every time you press the button...

That's what a quicksave is supposed to do. There should be just one saved game in there at a time - a quick save slot ;D

I played other games with quicksave functions before FC2 and that was the way quicksaves always worked. It was a rude shock the first time I went to reload a quicksaved game in FC2 and there were about 50 of them there :o

[Binnatics]

That was my reaction as well fragger ^-^

But Art is right: Just cut-paste them into directories somewhere on your disc, and clean up the main game-directory every once in a while :-X

But I still hope they do give us the opportunity to quicksave and to have it overwrite itself :-()

[Art Blade]

Because I am a frequent saver, I nearly got a cardiac arrest when I saw my folder the first time  :o

[ninzza]

lol  :-()

[mmosu]

It's all sounding good gents  :-X
The console version of FC2 had limited save slots, and no quicksave feature - so there was a lot less daring experimentation for me  ;)

[PZ]

This time I'll beat Fiach to the punch:  the only number larger than Art's post count is the number of files in his games folder.  ???

Sorry Art, Fiach is a bad influence on me. 

[Art Blade]

As long as you don't start to sound like an Irishman, bob is your uncle. :-()

[PZ]

  :-X

[mmosu]

OH JEEZ!!! That again!  :-X

[Binnatics]

  :-X

[TheStranger]

Because I am a frequent saver, I nearly got a cardiac arrest when I saw my folder the first time  :o

I think I know that situation all too well haha. And if I'm honest I love the quicksave function in FC2 and that it doesn't overwrite old ones or has only one slot. Many times I had bugged savegames, which would be horrible if I had only one slot.