Far Cry New Dawn Gets RPG Update, Goes Beyond Hope County
By
Jon Ryan Since its reveal
at The Game Awards 2018, we’ve already learned a fair bit about the post-nuclear-fallout superbloomed world of Far Cry New Dawn, including
an exclusive look as part of December’s IGN First. Recently, though, we got to sit down and roam around on our own for a few hours, and it’s clear that while this is still very much a Far Cry game, it’s trying to live up to its resurgent title.
All of the staples from Far Cry 5 are still here - taking down outposts, a co-op friendly campaign, recruiting allies (one of whom is an adorable dog, Timber, that can ride in your motorcycle’s sidecar, making this a strong contender for my GotY already), but Ubisoft is also trying to keep its apparent 2018 resolution to change up their formulas - or at least mix and match them in new ways.
The biggest update to Far Cry New Dawn is that, mechanically, it feels more like an RPG than a first-person action game. Enemies boast health bars and difficulty ratings, and all of your attacks now feature hit point counters to show you just how much damage you're dealing. Its systems aren’t as complex or convoluted as most RPGs - even other Ubi games like The Division or AC Odyssey - rather, weapons and enemies gain power in tiers instead of incrementally via levels or component upgrades.
“At first I didn’t want to have the numbers and the gauge onscreen,” says New Dawn’s Creative Director, Jean-Sebastien Decant. “But there’s a game designer who snuck it in during the development, and we tried it one day and I loved it.” These UI options can be disabled if you want to play as pure an FPS experience as possible, but you’ll definitely feel the sponginess of higher-level enemies if you opt to engage them with lower-level gear. “[We asked ourselves] ‘How could we make these encounters in the world, these missions that you have to prepare for, a little more dangerous?’ Decant says. “Something that you can’t just run into screaming,” he laughs, miming something out of First Blood, pt II. “You’d better be prepared, and on the lookout for more resources and on the lookout for partners.”
It’s a less-than-subtle way of making the world seem more deadly, but also coercing us as players to invest in it. Do you want to take down this elite-level outpost? Well, you’re not going to be able do it with that rusty old ACR - you’ll have to get yourself a boatload of Ethanol (the ubiquitous fuel source of New Dawn) and upgrade your stronghold with a variety of amenities that make exploring and surviving this colorful wasteland possible. A healing garden provides better herbs to make medkits more effective, the Cartographer will be able to chart better maps to secrets and treasures around the area, and your workbench will allow you to craft better, more powerful weapons to use against the most dangerous Highwaymen, or any number of monstrous beast you run into out in the mutating wilderness, like irradiated buffalo or mangy albino bears.
You can procure Ethanol in any number of ways: completing missions, taking down outposts - which you can now choose to Scavenge for extra supplies, at the cost of allowing stronger enemies to re-take the abandoned outpost - or you can search for hidden stashes around the map. My favorite source of this precious resource, though, is probably the new Expeditions, which take you outside of Hope County to locations like an abandoned theme park in the Louisiana bayou or the red cliffs of Glen Canyon in Arizona. These short smash-n-grab missions (or “infiltrate, burgle, and escape” depending on how you play) are not only fun diversions from the main gameplay loop, but also provide an interesting look at how The Collapse has affected the rest of the country as well.
Back in Hope County, we didn't get to learn much more about the over-arching story than we already do: you were the head of security for Thomas Rush, a militia leader trying to organize a reconstruction effort who's train was attacked by The Highwaymen, a vicious band of marauders led by Mickey and Lou (aka The Twins), and find yourself trapped in Hope County and needing to organize a resistance against The Twins' gang of bandits. We
did learn, however, that there'll be more than a few returning faces from Far Cry 5 - Kim Rye (wife of FC5's hotshot pilot, Nick) along with her now-teenage daughter Carmina are leading the resistance effort inside the fortified settlement Prosperity, while other allies from the previous game like Pastor Jerome, Grace Armstrong and, of course, Hurk, can all be found around the world. According to New Dawn's Narrative Designer Olivia Alexander, "It's about generations, and how those generations respond to change... You are party to this evolution in the community - these three different ways in which people view the end of the world and the beginning of a new one, and how these philosophies come together and clash."
It seems that The Father, Joseph Seed, is also up to his old tricks, and has formed a fervently loyal following of survivalists who treat the Collapse as the dawn of a new stone age. "His family has all been killed, the world has been destroyed, but within that there’s a seed of purity," says Greg Bryk, voice actor behind FC5's charismatic cult leader. "What would happen if we could start again with all the broken pieces, what grace can we find in that? And for the Father, it’s to create a new Eden, in the image of the fantasy of [biblical] perfection - they renounce technology, but the human aspect of life is the calling that they have, to create this little paradise in this bloom of new life." Thankfully, it seems that his goals align with the citizens of prosperity, and he and his flock will be allies in your fight to save the remains of Hope County - at least for now.
2019 is going to be a big year for post-apocalyptic adventures, and while there are plenty to keep track of, Far Cry New Dawn has done a good job catching my eye early on. I’m not sure how the addition of RPG elements will translate into the full game, but its colorful take on the end of the world is one that I’m looking forward to exploring more of - especially when there's a dog in my sidecar.