Speaking to PC Gamer, Hutchinson commented on how reusing assets from previous games might have drawn less ire if studios had only stepped out in front of potential issues, with the Far Cry Primal controversy being a great example. “I kept saying to them, ‘Just announce it, because someone will figure it out. Just say it’s the same place 40,000 years ago. And then it’s cool.’ They didn’t say anything, and then everyone was like, ‘Cheap developers!’, as always.”

However, the practice might just be a viable part of solutions aimed at reducing development times, and can be justified fairly well if a game manages to find creative ways to frame the existence of elements that players find familiar. He pointed to the Yakuza franchise as an example.

“The genius of Yakuza was always for me that you’re revisiting the same place…It’s taking a limitation, almost like the fog in Silent Hill, and making it core to the experience, so you like it, in a weird way.”

Hutchinson also pointed to studios like FromSoftware and Ubisoft, highlighting how asset reuse has always been a part of game development. On the subject of AI’s use in development, he argued that it could be a great tool to generate prototypes and concepts for what a game could be that would then be handed off to developers and engineers as a starting point to work with.

“If we imagine what we would actually have to do to make an Assassin’s Creed, we have to somehow write the prompts to generate two and a half hours of story cinematics, with 22 kilometres of open world.’ Even if it did stuff, it would take years of prompts. Anything of any real complexity, imagining how to describe in words what you wanted would be so hard. At a certain point, you’d be like, ‘We should just get some people to do this.'”

For our part, we don’t mind seeing familiar bits of the game we’ve loved in the sequels as long as the Developers manage to blend enough fresh elements with familiar ones.

“It’s a shame. I think a bunch of things happened,” he said. “The style of development we pioneered was being able to manage big teams by letting them be individual groups with ownership of their own thing, to allow us to make bigger games faster. But then I think with the recent boom, there’s been a weird five year boom in private equity and investment from people which we hadn’t seen before ever. So a lot of senior people left Ubisoft and started studios or splintered off. So there was this talent drain that went out.”

The departure of talented employees, along with the generally massive size of Ubisoft’s development teams all contributed to Ubisoft’s current state, according to Hutchinson. He noted that, with a team of 800 people, it becomes difficult to manage everyone. The pandemic-era work-from-home culture also played a role, he said, leading to junior developers not being able to learn and not asking questions.

“If you have a team of 800 people, it’s really hard to manage, even if they’re in the same building,” he said. “If they’re not coming to work, how do you police them? How do you make sure what’s going on is going on? And then juniors don’t learn because they like working from home, and they don’t like asking questions. So I think they lost that momentum as well.”

As for the lack of new IP, Hutchinson noted that, while Ubisoft still released several sequels, it also made new games that would explore fresh ideas. This, however, has been toned down quite a bit, leading to cancellations.

“They always had a history of sequelizing the franchises, but also having a couple of new things coming along. They became very allergic to the new things, and so they killed a bunch of our ideas, like when I was working on Pioneer. They had nothing new to come through.”

Hutchinson is describing a planned sci-fi game, Pioneer, that was meant to focus on exploration rather than featuring too much combat. The game was even teased in 2016’s Watch Dogs 2. Unfortunately, it never saw the light of day. While Hutchinson was taken off the project back in 2016, its eventual cancellation would come in 2019.

Hutchinson had also spoken about the long development time for Skull and Bones, despite the core sailing and naval combat mechanics being designed for 2012’s Assassin’s Creed 3. He said that it was “bizarre to see essentially the same stuff re-shipping 14 years after we made it.” Ultimately, he believes the title took too long to develop due to the fact that the team working on it—Ubisoft Singapore—simply lacked the experience needed to make a multiplayer version of Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag.

Ubisoft has announced that it has pushed an update for Far Cry 4 that enables the game to run at 60 FPS on PS5, PS5 Pro, and Xbox Series X/S. There’s no word on whether the update brings any further changes or improvements.

Far Cry 4 is available on PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360, and PC, and playable on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S via backward compatibility. It is also set to launch for Game Pass on Xbox, PC, and cloud imminently. The game is also being sold at a discounted price on PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, and Ubisoft Store until May 7, May 5, and May 20 respectively.

As for what’s next for the franchise, leaks have claimed that Far Cry 7 and multiplayer spinoff Project Maverick are both targeting a 2026 release. Read more on that through here.

April 16th sees the arrival of Neon White (Standard) and SpongeBob SquarePants: The Patrick Star Game (all tiers), followed by Crime Scene Cleaner and Tempopo on April 17th for Ultimate and PC Game Pass. On April 24th, Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will be playable on PC Game Pass and Ultimate as a day-one release.

April 29th sees Stoic’s Towerborne, or at least the Game Preview, going live on April 29th, months after launching into Steam Early Access. The month concludes with Far Cry 4 for all three tiers. Starting May 1st, Anno 1800 will be available for Ultimate, Standard and PC Game Pass alongside Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2022). On May 6th, all three tiers can play the Lovecraftian-esque fishing title Dredge.

Of course, several titles will be leaving the service on April 30th. Check out the list below:

• Have a Nice Death (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Kona 2: Brume (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Sniper Elite 5 (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• The Last Case of Benedict Fox (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Thirsty Suitors (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• The Rewinder (Cloud, Console, and PC)

For PS4, there’s Far Cry 4, LEGO The Hobbit, and LEGO The Incredibles. Titles available for both platforms include Monster Energy Supercross – The Official Videogame 6, Monster Hunter Rise and Police Simulator: Patrol Officers. PlayStation VR2 owners can also play Kayak: VR Mirage for free.

As for the Classics Catalog, Ghosthunter from the PS2 era is being added, alongside Daxter (a spin-off from the Jak and Daxter series) and LEGO Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy from the PlayStation Portable era. All three titles will be playable on PS4 and PS5. Stay tuned for titles that will leave the Game Catalog in the coming weeks, and check out the latest monthly titles available for all tiers here.

Riding high on the waves of Far Cry 3’s success, the developer released Far Cry 4 in November of 2014 to some great critical and commercial reception. Far Cry 4 was inarguably the last game in the franchise to have somewhat of a unanimously positive reception, which is why it makes for an interesting prospect to take a look back at the game and see how it holds up almost a decade after its initial release.

Set against the backdrop of the fictional country of Kyrat, Far Cry 4 starts out simply with the protagonist Ajay Ghale arriving in this war-torn country to spread the ashes of his long-dead mother, but things rarely go according to plan in this dictatorship. You are greeted by the big baddie Pagan Min who welcomes you to his homeland and asks you to patiently wait for him while he tends to some commotion outside. However, there is a twist. If you do choose to wait for quite a bit of time – you are allowed to spread the ashes and walk away in peace.

But if you do not (which is what most if not all people do), you are quickly thrust into an action-packed tale about overthrowing Pagan Min’s iron fist rule and restoring Kyrat’s former glory. It’s a simple story in terms of the plot itself, but Far Cry 4 makes sure to keep things interesting with well-written companion characters that you meet throughout the story and of course, the villain Pagan Man. The original Far Cry trilogy has established its reputation for housing some of the best and most complex villains in all of gaming, and Pagan Man is a great embodiment of those characteristics with his recognizable character design and complex personality. Thanks to these characteristics, he is able to have a commanding presence in every scene he is in – and that’s a big reason why Far Cry 4’s story continues to remain an engaging affair even after all these years.

Far Cry 4 improves over what came before in several ways – but those improvements are iterative as opposed to radical. You will still be shooting your way through waves upon waves of thugs and exploring the Himalayas in a first-person perspective. The shift from the tropical setting that was Rook Islands makes for a really fresh-feeling world, and the many mountains scattered throughout the map also add a sense of verticality which was missing from prior entries. There’s a vast array of different animals to find, villages to explore, and jungles separating the settlements – and while the world design may not feel all that impressive by modern standards, it definitely holds up from a visual perspective with great use of popping colour and big mounds of white snow capping off mountain peaks in the distance.

As for the moment-to-moment gameplay, Far Cry 4 is all about using your wits and coming up with creative strategies to take down your opponents. You could try to use the environments of your surroundings and be a ghost in the darkness, or you could be a trigger-happy madman ready to completely annihilate anything and everything in your path – or a mixture of the two. The stealth options are rather primitive with takedowns and distractions being your only options to cull the herd before all hell eventually breaks loose, but the systemic game design elements make for some really interesting strategies.

For instance, you could exploit a caged animal like a leopard and unleash that beast upon a group of enemies which can give you just the window of opportunity you need to slip by or move into a more advantageous position. Far Cry 4’s combat encounters are designed in a way to encourage the player to try different strategies, and experimenting with the many approaches to any outpost is something that remains an enjoyable affair to this date.

Far Cry 4 is an open-world game, so it’s important to have a world that’s not only compelling to look at but also compelling enough to explore. Much like the case with its predecessors, Far Cry 4’s map is chock full of things to do – right from Bell Towers that reveal new points of interest on your map to Outpost Liberations and animal hunting among others. It’s not as organic as we are used to in a modern open world game, but it definitely has a distinct charm to it.

This ties in neatly with the element of player progression, where you can earn skills by collecting XP points that you gain from completing missions and side activities peppered throughout the open world. The skill tree isn’t anything particularly special, but you do get a good sense of growing stronger as you start to accrue more and more skills under your belt. By the end, you will be taking down groups of enemies with chain takedowns, charging into battle whilst on top of a giant elephant, and eating up quite a number of hits without batting an eye.

Far Cry 4 might not have been a revolutionary open world when it was released, but it was a really fun time if you just wanted to absorb yourself in a well-realized world that’s brimming with things to do and people to meet. And we’re happy to report that it largely remains a fun affair to this date as well. The story is simplistic but remains a captivating affair thanks to well-written characters, and while the open world is cut from the same cloth as other games – there’s a distinct sense of fun that you can derive from exploring the beautiful map and ticking down each and every checkbox on your journal.

While your opinion may obviously differ, Far Cry 4 might just have been the last “good” Far Cry game, one that understood what the genre is all about and one that doubled down on the mechanics that work. If Far Cry 4 was released in 2024, it probably wouldn’t have made any headlines. But looking at the game in isolation, Far Cry 4 is a fun open world game and if you missed it back in the day or jumped into the genre later, it might be a great idea to hop back into the mountains of Kyrat and experience the tale of Ajay Ghale and Pagan Min.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Parliament Of Serbia in Belgrade – Half-Life 2

City 17’s European-inspired architecture and aesthetics are fairly easy to recognize, though the Overwatch Nexus is perhaps the closest to being based on an actual building. As the main building for the Overwatch forces, the Nexus was formerly a political building before the Combine invaded. It turns out that it’s actually inspired by the Parliament of Serbia in Belgrade. The similarities between the two buildings, from their general structure to the opening archway are noteworthy, though the signature dome isn’t as defined on the Nexus. Though it’s not outright confirmed in-game, browsing through the texture files reveals the word “parliament” which further hints at the inspiration.

During their recent quarterly financial briefing, Ubisoft confirmed that they have released eleven games in total this console generation that have managed to sell over 10 million units, which is a tremendous level of commercial success no matter how you cut it.

One of those games is obviously Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which has seen sharp increases over the last year in terms of sell-through, player retention, and daily player engagement, up from Assassin’s Creed Origins – which is another game that has sold over 10 million copies – by 90 per cent, 170 per cent, and 90 per cent respectively. Assassin’s Creed Unity is the third and final game in the series this gen to sell over 10 million units.

The Division 1 and 2 are also 10 million+ sellers, and according to Ubisoft, the latter has seen a “very strong recovery” in Q4 of the fiscal year, most likely thanks to The Warlords of New York. Net bookings from the game over the last 13 months have been comparable to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

The other 10 million+ sellers Ubisoft have released this console generation are Far Cry 4, Far Cry 5, Rainbow Six Siege, Watch Dogs, Watch Dogs 2, and Ghost Recon Wildlands.

Ubisoft have several major AAA releases lined up for the coming months. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla releases this Holiday season, while Watch Dogs Legion, Rainbow Six Quarantine, and Gods and Monsters are still scheduled to come out before April 2021. Reports have also suggested that Far Cry 6 will also be releasing in that timeframe.

Ubisoft will be hosting a digital E3-style event in July, Ubisoft Forward, where they will be sharing new updates and reveals for their upcoming lineup.

QTEs

Quick time events can be a great tool when executed properly. The Greek-era God of War games, for instance, used them to great effect to punctuate high octane action sequences in a great blend of cinematic and gameplay. The problem is, games that do that are very rare. QTEs more often than not feel unnecessary and arbitrary, and for every God of War, we have a dozen games that fall on the other end of the spectrum.

Red Dead Redemption – Undead Nightmare

One day, honest working man John Marston wakes up and realize his wife and son are zombies. Not only that but the entire world has given in to the undead. There are survivors though and Marston must work with them to fight off the zombies. Keep in mind that the original plot is about atonement and redemption in the Wild West.