Far Cry 2 Interview

All the hype surrounding upcoming open world FPS Far Cry 2 has so far focussed on its stupendous-looking single-player campaign. But, as we found out during our hands-on play test of the game’s multiplayer, the preview of which you can read here, the game has a hidden ace up its sleeve. We caught up with multiplayer producer, Richard Gaetan to lift the lid on one of the best kept secrets in gaming, and discovered why it might just turn out to be a better multiplayer FPS than Call of Duty 4.

VideoGamer.com: What was your approach to making Far Cry 2’s multiplayer stand out, given that it’s the single-player campaign which has garnered most hype?

Richard Gaetan: At first we wanted to keep most of the mechanics that are in single-player. We wanted to bring them to the multiplayer side. The biggest challenge was really in the level design – to keep the Africa settings, open environment. We found it was pretty tough to make sure the maps were good for all the types of player. If you’re more like a sniper then you want to have a few places where you can hide and snipe people; if you’re more the kind of guys that go with assault weapons or shotguns, then you want a few areas where you can run from cover to cover. It’s not a corridor kind of game, so it was a big challenge to make sure the floor is clear, so players can see where they have to go depending on how they play. As we have a dynamic weather system and a 24 hour day/night cycle it was a big challenge because we cannot just obviously place a light at the end of the corridor and know people will go there; it doesn’t work this way. The environment is always changing. You have to make sure the vegetation is well placed, that the buildings are placed accordingly, that the rocks create a path – and just making roads doesn’t work for everybody, either.

So it was a big challenge but I think we succeeded. We had all the single-player mechanics and knew they were working in single-player, but it was tough to bring them to multiplayer and to make sure they were good because the pace is always faster than in single-player. We had to speed up the transition from iron sight to normal view when you’re shooting, and the reload animation is also a bit faster – but at the same time we wanted to keep the essence of Far Cry 2, so we didn’t go as fast as Call of Duty pace or Quake. We changed things a bit from the single-player, but we wanted to keep the same feeling.

VideoGamer.com: With regards to elements like the weapon degradation and being able to rescue your pals, we imagine there must have been quite a lot of balancing there. With weapon degradation you want it to be there – but too much would have made it quite difficult because everything would end up breaking every five minutes…

RG: Yes. At some point the weapon jamming was at the same frequency that was in single-player, and it wasn’t working. Everybody on the team was complaining, and the testers were complaining! So we said OK, maybe we have to tweak those numbers to make sure they’re still there and they’re fun but they’re less frequent. I think we have a good balance now. If a player is really good and he lives longer then his weapon will get degraded and it will jam more often than a player that is a newbie and dies every 20 seconds. So I think it evens out, the feel, and it’s really interesting. And as you progress you will also earn manuals that will make sure that your weapon won’t jam so frequently.

VideoGamer.com: If I’m new to the game and I start playing Far Cry 2, there will be people who’ve been playing for a long time and who have access to upgraded weapons, like the scoped grenade launcher. Did you have to take steps to balance this out, so that new players don’t get completely destroyed?

RG: At the beginning we had a progression where you unlock weapons over a long period of time, and we found the problem you just explained. Good players would earn better weapons and then they would just erase the newbies from the map. We switched to the class system in which you can fairly easily upgrade one class pretty fast, even in ranked match. After three, four matches you’ll have three diamonds to spend, and if you make sure you specialise in one class then that class will be upgraded to the top. So you’ll have the automatic rocket launcher if you want, or if you’re a sniper player then you’ll upgrade the sharpshooter class and then after three or four, maybe five matches you’ll have three diamonds so you’ll have the best sniper in the game. So that really is the strategy we wanted to go with – it means everybody has fun. After a few matches you can have the best weapon in one class, and this way you really bring cool weapons for everybody, even those who are starting. As you play more and more it will mean you’ll have more classes upgraded so if you want to switch to the sniper, or to the commando class, then you will be able to do it because you have more diamonds to spend. We found in many play tests we did that at first players usually upgrade two classes that they want to play more frequently. People find that they have two favourite classes and usually that’s about it.

VideoGamer.com: It’s nice to have those options on the table in terms of the way you want to play…

RG: Yeah. And you can reset your diamonds if you’re not happy. Say from the beginning you upgraded the gunner class and then you find out that, ‘oh the last weapon is not really what I thought it was’, then you can reset your diamonds and you can spend them in another class at any time. It costs you one diamond though, so you have to think about it. In the build you saw you were not able to see what the next upgrades were for each class, but in the final build you will be able to – so you can make better choices from the beginning.

VideoGamer.com: How are you hoping the map editor will be received by gamers? What do you hope the situation will be, say a month down the line from launch?

RG: The thinking behind the map editor was to make it real easy for everybody to use, on console or on PC. I’m not a map creator at all and after a few minutes I was pretty efficient with all the tools. We think we’ll have all kinds of maps. For sure we’ll have copies of other games’ maps – I’m sure we’ll have Counterstrike maps, Quake maps, Halo maps and then we’ll have a variety of new Far Cry 2 maps that are using jungle settings, desert settings and savannah settings. So we built a strategy to make sure that when a player creates a map it’s easily available for everybody. You will be able to upload it to Ubisoft server and then people can download your map, play on them and rank them – so it will be easy to find the best maps. Also, if you’re just playing with friends and you say, ‘OK I want to test my maps before I upload them to Ubisoft’s server’, you can just host a match and people who join your match will download the map from you. So we have a peer to peer strategy and we have the server strategy.

VideoGamer.com: We heard earlier that there will be quite a few maps available online on launch day. Is that correct?

RG: We have not decided. Internally, with testers and people on the team, we made a contest to make a maps for a trailer, but we have not decided if we’re going to post them online on day one. But I’m sure the day after the game is released we’ll have thousands of maps already. It will be pretty fast. A lot of people are expecting a good map editor because we haven’t seen one in a long time, from a shooter especially. So I think it will be really fast and we’ll have a lot of choices.

VideoGamer.com: How many maps have been made internally already?

RG: Not that many. Maybe 100.

VideoGamer.com: There seems to be a massive boom of customisation with games these days… LittleBigPlanet, Saints Row 2. What do you think about that? Why is it happening now?

RG: It started with Web 2.0. You have a lot of user generated content on the web, you have Facebook and Flickr, places where you can share pictures with your friends and everything. I think we are coming to Gaming 2.0, I think this is where we’re going. With LittleBigPlanet and Far Cry 2 obviously, we’ll have a lot of user generated content that will be shared. We’ve made sure the game modes are accessible too, so it’s easy to create a map for them. With the single-player that we have we could have thought of complex game modes with a big story that takes hours to master, but then users won’t be able to create maps. So we wanted to go with the standard game mode, so it’s easier. The creation will come from the user instead of our team. The mechanics are there to support any kind of maps.

VideoGamer.com: People have already built the Eiffel tower, are you expecting more stuff along those kinds of lines?

RG: Yes. I’m sure we’ll have maps that are not really playable or not fun to play but that will be like pieces of art that are created from our editor. And we’ve seen it internally already: We have Montreal Olympic stadium built just from a few hundred blocks, so we’ll have The Great Wall of China, the Colosseum from Rome, all stuff like that, alongside a lot of maps that are copies form other games, other shooters.

VideoGamer.com: Say you make a map and I download it, will I be able to edit your map and then pass it off as my own? Are you putting anything in to protect the copyright of maps?

RG: No. Hopefully the map community will rule. So if I create a map that is good and then you say, ‘oh maybe I can change a few things there’, so you can take my map, edit it and post it online – but then people realise it’s pretty much like my map and that mine is older, so hopefully people will rate my map higher than yours and then my map sticks out. We really hope the community will manage itself and we’re pretty confident it will work.

VideoGamer.com: Did you ever consider putting in a map copy protection system?

RG: Yeah, it’s something we talked about. It would have been pretty easy to make sure that nobody can open the map once it’s done. But we had discussions for months about it. If you create a good map, let’s say it’s a team deathmatch map, and you say, ‘well OK, the map looks really balanced for both teams so it wouldn’t take a lot to make it fun for capture the diamond’, so I open your map and add capture the diamond and maybe uprising in there and then I post your map and then it’s available for everybody. By then you might not play Far Cry 2 any more, so in that case I think it’s a good thing your map continues to live over the server and in the community.

VideoGamer.com: Given that this is happening now with games like this and LittleBigPlanet, could you see a time when that kind of protection of intellectual copyright becomes a major issue, almost like it is with music?

RG: Hopefully not. It’s really a tricky question. The team decision was really to say, ‘OK we’re going to give the power to the user’, and hopefully they will do something good about it, give a good rating and everything. The issue comes when you live from it. Let’s say you create Far Cry 2 maps and then every time people play it you get money, then it would be a big issue. But as it will be free content then I don’t think it’s that big of an issue yet. You were talking about the music industry… I think it’s really sad because I saw the last album from Radiohead and how they gave it to the community and said, ‘OK, give the money you think it’s worth’, and then people were just downloading it for free. I think it’s really sad, because they live by their music and if they cannot sell it they won’t make music any more. I think people need to realise that nothing comes for free and that you have to pay. Even if you just send them a dollar, if it’s like ten million sending them one dollar they make a good living.

VideoGamer.com: Moving back to the game… We wanted to ask about the fact that you can’t pick up weapons from bodies. I understand the idea is to keep people in their class, was that something you had to have a lot of discussions about? What was the intention behind that?

RG: It’s a bit different. This is something we tried many ways. The early progression system just saw you gain weapons through upgrades: you reach level five then you get one weapon, you reach level ten you get another weapon, and then you were able to pick up stuff from the ground. The thing is, it made the progression system not useless, exactly, but it was like really chaotic because everybody could have any weapon at some time. Sometimes people had a really explosive combination, like their first gun was an RPG and the second gun a rocket launcher. It was really too chaotic and the game was not that fun. We really made the class system so that when you select one role you play it and you can specialise in it. As a team I’m sure the best teams that play together are the ones that are not exactly the same class for all the players. If you have one sharpshooter, two commandos, two gunners and then a guy with the flame thrower, then they will make a good team and they will probably beat all the others. Especially with the Uprising mode, you can have players that are less good than the other team, but if the team that are good players are playing by themselves and then the others play as a team, they will usually win the match. We’ve seen it and it’s really interesting. It gives a chance to everybody. If you just communicate, make a strategy and revive your team mates, then you’ll certainly win.

VideoGamer.com: What’s your favourite multiplayer game of all time?

RG: I think Call of Duty 4 was really good. But for sure, Halo 1 and 2 were good too. 3, I don’t know I didn’t catch that much on it. But I liked Call of Duty with the perk system; In both the single-player side and the multiplayer side the mechanics are so well tuned. It was our reference as we went along. It really established the standard for multiplayer games, that’s for sure. And then we said, ‘OK, what do they have good that we can bring into our game?’. We cannot copy it exactly because our game is a bit slower paced and the single-player, the technology and the style of the maps are really different. But we said, ‘OK, what they brought to multiplayer works and what can we use?’. I think our game will be compared to Call of Duty 4, even if it’s really quite different. I think what we bring is, I would say, the crudeness or the wildness of Africa. This is what we feel, with the dynamic world, the dynamic environment… it’s really different. Call of Duty is more military, clean cut: you learn your maps and it’s always the same, the sniper is always in the same place on the map. In our game it won’t be like that because your sniping spot could be set on fire and then you have to move and find somewhere else. So it’s a lot more dynamic than Call of Duty 4.

VideoGamer.com: Do you think it’s better than Call of Duty 4?

RG: I think it’s more fun for everybody. In Call of Duty 4, the good guys are always the same, they always play the same way. In Far Cry 2 you cannot do that. You have to adapt, you have to change your strategy. And with the map editor you won’t be able to learn your maps, because you have so many and if you want to play with your friends and with different people then you have to switch – it will be a bit of a surprise all of the time. So I think it’s more fun.

Far Cry 2 is due out for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 on October 24.