Far Cry 6 developer interview: \u2018Revolution is violent, but not humorless\u2019 UbisoftFar Cry 6 is finally here and transports players to the island nation of Yara to topple a dictatorship. We sat down with Ubisoft narrative director and lead writer Navid Khavari to talk weapons, third-person, and politics. Far Cry 6 is out now following a series of delays, and it marks a return to a more exotic setting following our excursion to Hope County, Montana in the series\u2019 fifth installment. Before setting foot on Yara ourselves, we had the chance to speak to Navid Khavari, the game\u2019s narrative director and lead writer, about the game\u2019s influences \u2013 both in terms of its characters and setting, but also in a political context. Giancarlo Esposito \u201calways quite high\u201d on casting list Where to start, then? How about with the actor that adorns the game\u2019s cover art. Perhaps more so than any other franchise, Far Cry\u2019s protagonists feel secondary to the series\u2019 gallery of rogues. With the iconic Giancarlo Esposito providing voice and performance capture for new big bad Anton Castillo, I asked Khavari if the character was always meant for the Breaking Bad and Mandalorian star. Read more: Ranking the Far Cry villains – \u201cWe went through an extensive casting process, though Giancarlo was always quite high on the list, and it wasn\u2019t long before I began writing the character with his voice in my head,\u201d Khavari tells me. \u201cI am very thankful he was up for doing it because that would have led to a lot of rewrites!\u201d \u201cWhat is fantastic is he didn\u2019t want to repeat what he had done before. He wanted to do something new. This led to Anton emerging as a character who could be charming and almost theatrical one minute but could then turn on a dime and be silent, still, and terrifying the next. The way Giancarlo plays Anton\u2019s love for his son, it allows you to find empathy with our antagonist.\u201d Real-world issues played out in a virtual revolution Castillo rules Yara with an iron fist, and players are tasked with battling his forces through guerilla tactics. With Far Cry 6 launching with such a politically charged backdrop as we approach the tail-end of 2021, Khavari notes the parallels to Fulgencio Batista\u2019s toppled government. \u201cOf course, the story is fictional, but in the case of Anton for example we were inspired by the actions of real political figures in history such as Fulgencio Batista, the dictator whom Castro took power from in the 1950s. Or in a more current context, the protests that we were seeing happening around the world, from Venezuela to the Arab Spring,\u201d he reveals. \u201cIn a story about revolution, it was inevitable it would speak to politics and how the characters in the game would approach or reflect on them. Whether it\u2019s the conditions that lead to a rise of fascism or imperialism, including how countries outside of Yara perceive Yara\u2019s politics, and how Yara perceives them.\u201d Given Far Cry\u2019s propensity for offering its own ridiculous scenarios and gameplay opportunities, I asked Khavari if that made it tough to give pay proper respect to the plight of Yara (and its real-world inspirations). \u201cThat\u2019s part of the Far Cry DNA \u2013 trying to strike a balance between what could be seen as mature themes, with levity, fun, and crazier elements. It\u2019s challenging but it comes with the territory and wasn\u2019t something to shy away from. The approach was really to make everything feel consistent with the world of Yara.\u201d \u201cFar Cry games are already an almost hyper-real context to work in, and so our goal was to try and wrap as much as we could with story and character.\u201d \u201cNow, revolution is heart-breaking, painful, and violent, but it\u2019s not humorless. We found this time and again in our research and talking to experts. One story that always stuck with me was about a group of guerrillas who were hiding in the jungle having a party and playing music. Then they heard the distant sound of bombers, so they turned off the music and hid. When the bombers passed, the guitars came back out and the party started up again.\u201d Khavari also revealed that the game\u2019s tone will extend to its DLC offerings, including the upcoming Danny Trejo collaboration, but couldn\u2019t offer any further detail. The technology of the revolution Speaking of Yara, the comparisons to Cuba are plentiful, while also winding back the clock somewhat due to an in-universe blockade that means technology is a little dated. As it happens, Khavari and the team saw this as an opportunity to work with the concept of Resolver \u2013 meaning \u201cmake to do with what you have\u201d. \u201cI think that ties to the ingenuity we saw in Cuba, which was one of our first sources of inspiration. The concept of Resolver, which means \u201cto make do with what you have\u201d or \u201cto solve\u201d, as a result of the blockade has led to ingenious methods to work with very little to get through difficult conditions.\u201d \u201cWhether it\u2019s extending the life of classic cars, or strapping dishwasher motors to bicycles to create a motorbike. We translated this idea to the game and how it could apply to a modern revolution in Yara, especially by grounding it in character.\u201d \u201cParticularly the character of Juan Cortez, the mastermind behind resolver weapons and gadgets, who describes guerrilla resolver as the ability to be \u201cinflicting chaos with everything you\u2019ve got\u201d. Whether it\u2019s fire extinguishers filled with fuel to create a low-level jet pack or silencers made from water bottles.\u201d Beside myself Whichever weapon or tool you\u2019re using, Far Cry as a franchise has always put an onus on first-person animation. Whether it\u2019s setting a broken bone through a painstaking healing animation or digging out a bullet, the series has always stuck to first-person. While that\u2019s still true of much of Far Cry 6, its camp areas and cutscenes will now switch to third-person \u2013 something that Khavari says, ironically, is to help players feel more connected to Dani\u2019s journey. \u201cIn a gameplay sense, being able to see your loadout and gear. But also in a narrative sense, being able to see your character interact and speak to other Yarans, which has the effect of making you feel more connected to them.\u201d \u201cWhether it\u2019s in cut-scenes when you enter guerrilla camps or the moment you use your Supremo backpack \u2013 it\u2019s a powerful feeling to see your character doing those things. It also gave us opportunities to have scenes without Dani, like those between Anton and Diego that let us see their perspective and how they react to what you\u2019re doing. The change happened early and really felt surprisingly natural.\u201d Speaking of Dani Rojas, our player character has more personality than arguably every Far Cry protagonist before them and is fully voiced with both male and female actors. Khavari notes that representation was important for the team this time around. \u201cWe wanted to give players a choice of how they see themselves in Dani\u2019s story. Right from the start, you\u2019ll be able to choose between playing Dani Rojas as a female or male, but the experience is universal to all players.\u201d Far Cry 6 is out now, so be sure to check out our full review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Far Cry 6 developer interview: \u2018Revolution is violent, but not humorless\u2019 UbisoftFar Cry 6 is finally here and transports players to the island nation of Yara to topple a dictatorship. We sat down with Ubisoft narrative director and lead writer Navid Khavari to talk weapons, third-person, and politics. Far Cry 6 is out now following […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}