Highlights
- Innovate or stagnate? Players wonder how Far Cry 7 will revamp the series formula.
- Future Far Cry games might feature branching narratives, deeper skill trees, and real-time environmental changes to shake up gameplay.
- Dialogue options could enhance player engagement with characters. Revisiting survival mechanics from Far Cry 2 could reinvigorate the series.
As far as AAA first-person shooters are concerned, the Far Cry series is among the oldest still in active development. First released in March 2004 (making the series officially two decades old now), and since then has had six main releases and seven spin-offs of varying scale. Many of these titles are beloved by a wide range of gamers, while others have received a fair amount of criticism for one reason or another.
Every Far Cry Game, Ranked
Ubisoft's Far Cry franchise contains some of the best games the company has ever developed. Here is every game in the series, ranked.
A common one as of late is the series' lack of innovation and overreliance on a tired formula. While earlier games in the series like Far Cry 2 have been noted for their fresh ideas and mechanics, Far Cry 6 has been accused of failing to break the mold in any meaningful way, leading many to speculate as to what Ubisoft may do for the upcoming Far Cry 7 to keep the franchise from stagnating any further. With many a rumor abounding as to what this means for the series, here are a few potential ways that the series might play with its formula in future titles.
1 More Choices And Branching Paths
Putting Narrative Control In The Player's Hands
Far Cry games have always been linear narrative games where the player follows a set path, save for one or two choices at the very start or very end of the game. A great example of this is Far Cry 4's alternate ending in which the player just waits ten minutes at the beginning until they are cleared of all wrongdoing.
6 Far Cry Heroes With Potential To Return As Villains
The Far Cry franchise is filled with a huge variety of heroes that are still canonically alive but could return as villains down the line.
The next game could take this idea and expand upon it greatly, adding all sorts of narrative-shifting choices to various points during the story, each having a branching effect rather than simply changing something about the ending (although that would also be nice). At the very least, this would give players more of an incentive for repeat playthroughs.
2 Deeper Skill Trees
Player-Directed Strengths And Weaknesses
Skills have been toyed with in the Far Cry series but never to an extreme extent. Generally, the player gets a perk that gives them a new perk. There hasn't ever really been "skill specializing" of any kind, where the player chooses a specific role to play.
Imagine being able to prioritize stealth skills at the cost of health and armor, or specialize in heavy weapons skills but sacrifice speed. Moving away from the player being a jack of all trades in favor of solid role-building mechanics that enforce clear strengths and limitations could really serve to spice up the gameplay of the Far Cry series.
3 Seasons And Environmental Changes
Real-time Seasonal Changes That Affect The Game World
One of the rumors floating around for Far Cry 7 is that it will implement a time limit to complete the main story for the player. This is something other games have done in the past, such as System Shock, for example. It is not known how long this time limit will be (or if it's a sure thing). However, an interesting companion mechanic to this could be seasonal changes that affect the map if there's a long enough in-game time limit (i.e. 30 real hours translating to three in-game months).
6 Great Settings For Far Cry 7
Far Cry is known for its dangerous, yet beautiful locations, but there are several locations that fans hope to see as inspiration for the next games.
Rivers could freeze in the winter, revealing new paths and locations, for example. This serves as an indication to the player of the passage of time in a very tangible way, and may even impact both their ability to complete the story in the allotted time and how they choose to do it.
4 Dialogue Options
Would Greatly Enhance The Ability To Engage With Characters
Cyberpunk 2077 showed that a fully voiced character is not necessarily a hindrance to the idea of having dialogue choices in an open-world FPS. This matters because Far Cry has actually experimented with the silent protagonist concept, but it was met with a rather negative reception, and rightfully so.
5 Far Cry Characters Who Demonstrated The True Definition Of Insanity
These characters from the Far Cry franchise are some of the most unstable personalities the series has seen to date.
Far Cry games usually feature a whole host of colorful characters and not being able to appropriately respond to them can often leave the player feeling robbed of the ability to truly engage with or challenge them. Adding dialogue options alongside a voiced character prevents this problem from occurring entirely and can also play nicely with the idea of expanded narrative choice.
5 Weapon Condition & Other Survival Mechanics
Taking A Look At The Series' Past To Reinvigorate Its Future
Far Cry 2 is one of the most beloved games in the series to this day, and one of the reasons for this is its commitment to survival-style game design. Players can not only get sick with diseases, their weapons degrade over time to the point that they will explode in their hands, but not before their stats fall off a cliff.
These are examples of great mechanics that newer games in the series have completely forgotten about in favor of a more arcade-like experience. Far Cry 7 should bring these mechanics back and expand upon them for modern gaming audiences to create a fresh experience.
Far Cry: 10 Most Iconic Lines
Ubisoft's Far Cry series is packed with memorable lines, mainly thanks to the villains. Here are the franchise's most iconic quotes.
