It’s hardly a shock seeing as it’s been heavily rumoured for at least the last year, but Ubisoft have announced that Far Cry 4 is in development and will be released on November 18th this year for PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC. Taking place in the nation of Kyrat, deep in the Himalayan mountains, players will take arms against a despotic self-appointed king. Little else has been revealed about the game except that it will be produced by Ubisoft Montreal in conjunction with Ubisoft Toronto, Red Storm Entertainment, Ubisoft Shanghai and Ubisoft Kiev, and that the game will have the pre-order DLC Hurk’s Redemption, featuring Hurk from 2012’s Far Cry 3.
So far, all that has been provided of the game is the above details and image, but the mention of Hurk is a strong indicator that the game will be a direct sequel to Far Cry 3, which had fun mechanics let down by rather dumb writing and a hugely unlikable protagonist. Hopefully Ubisoft Montreal can keep its script on the right side of ridiculous this time, as that game’s open-world mayhem and an interesting change of environment make for a fascinating combination.
Interestingly, it also appears that Ubisoft want to keep that last-gen gravy train running just a little further, whereas other holiday releases such as Warner Bros/Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Knight is opting to take full advantage of the new consoles. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this, but one has to wonder how many concessions might have to be made to the older machines considering how the 360 and PS3 versions of FC3 visibly struggled with that game’s engine. It’s hard to see Ubisoft wanting to hold this new game back from taking advantage of the latest graphics tech – this is a franchise with a reputation to uphold, after all – so it remains to be seen how far they can plausibly stretch the outgoing machines.
Also, Ubi, a word in your ear? Yeti hunting. You know you want it too.