Welcome to Dev Game Club, where this week we begin a new series on UbiSoft's 2008 series-establishing classic, Far Cry 2. We set it in its time, and talk a bit about shifting engine wars and attendant publisher/developer drama, before briefly getting into the tutorial. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played: The Tutorial

Issues covered: the UbiSoft open world formula, picking your UbiSoft ur-game, engine wars, branched engine work, getting into or out of the engine game, the open world first person shooter, a brief overview of Clint Hocking's career, games of 2008, grindhouse games, commitment to the first-person aesthetic, picking your character, setting their games in fictional countries, embracing African conflict, expositional value, setting up the chaotic situation, the diagetics of the game, mercenaries coming in, malarial effects, showing the systems, fire propagation, wishing they'd lean into the politics, disclaiming the team diversity to avoid political, having your cake and eating it too, tending to avoid modern realistic settings as players, the sales of the historical era, video game tourism, presenting variables, the diagetic map, the implicit simulated world and how the games get away from that, the onboarding, performance and enemy count and music, gatekeeping around what's a game, games where the interactivity shines through or justifies the choice to make it a game, putting clues together, simple choices that personalize, accretion effects, moments of calm, taking your decisions forward, being forced to the golden path.

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: SimCity, Xbox 360, UbiSoft, Prince of Persia, Assassin's Creed (series), Ghost Recon (series), Watch Dogs (series), Rainbow 6 (series), Rayman, Beyond Good & Evil, Michel Ancel, CryTek, CryEngine, Dungeons & Dragons, Crysis, Dunia Engine, Hunt: Showdown, Lumberyard, id Software, Epic Games, Unreal Championship, Quake 4, Source Engine, Clint Hocking, Patrick Redding, Splinter Cell (series), Gotham Knights, Fallout 3, Tomb Raider: Underworld, Eric Lindstrom, Harley Baldwin White-Wiedow, Republic Commando, Left 4 Dead, GTA IV, MGS 4, Devil May Cry 4, Condemned 2: Bloodshot, Alien: Isolation, Rock Band 2, Fable II, Gears of War 2, Little Big Planet, Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Braid, World of Goo, Nintendo Wii, Mario Kart Wii, Super Smash Bros: Brawl, Spore, Army of Two, Kane and Lynch, Wet, BGS/Zenimax, Prince of Persia (2008), Half-Life, The Stanley Parable, Call of Duty (series), Megaman 3, Oliver Uv, mysterydip, Castlevania IV, Final Fantasy VI, Will Wright, Ashton Hermann, The Red Strings Club, Deconstructeam, The Witcher III, Gone Home, Firewatch, The Walking Dead, Uncharted 2, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Mass Effect, June, Dark Souls, Kirk Hamilton, Aaron Evers, Mark Garcia.

Next time: More Far Cry 2

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