Making something is not a process where all the good elements of everything that came before are added up to eventually make something perfect. It's a process of picking and choosing the most important components, altering others, and removing others that are seen as unnecessary, based on the subjective decisions of many different people. I never once heard FC2 being talked about in such high regard up until about a week ago, conveniently when so many videos came out on youtube talking about what a lost masterpiece of technical brilliance it apparently was, and certainly never heard anyone bring up the fact that you could shoot the limbs off trees; people did, however, complain about the malaria, checkpoints, and instant weapon degradation, all of which were removed or improved upon in the sequels. I was usually on the defending side in these conversations because I liked FC2 despite its problems, and even I never thought about or once brought up the possibility of shooting the limbs off trees. It's a feature that is impressive when viewed in isolation, as a technical showcase, but one that is almost instantly forgotten about in view of the game as a whole; so why, then, would Ubisoft feel the need to re-implement such a feature, one that would only be more difficult to implement now due to increased graphical fidelity and asset variety? It's very likely they did try to implement it but found that it was an unneeded resource hog, that it went unnoticed by most game testers, or a combination of both in addition to considerations about how much time and money it would take to implement the feature. Same goes for changes made to the FC2 fire effects (which, by the way, were specifically designed for use in an area composed almost entirely of Savanna dry brush, known for being highly flammable, as opposed to the lush greenery of Montanan that does not burn in the same way; so why then implement the same exact fire effects, which many people liked but many other people found incredibly aggravating due to it interrupting firefights when a single spark set off an inferno, in an area that would not see it nearly as much).
Anything in FC2 that's good should be a given in 3; not missing in 5. Especially since it's on the same engine.
Maybe I'm a fool to die on the FC2 (or rather, on the "what FC2 coulda been") hill but time will tell. Mr. Hocking, I salute you and your ambition. Even your decision to make animals 1-touch-dead "in order for players to focus on the story rather than hunting" or whatever that was, which was questionable at best even without the power of hindsight.
And? The point isn't that it's a shit game, the point is to show the cool shit Far Cry 2 did back in 2008 that for whatever reason isn't there in a new Far Cry in 2018...despite running on the exact same engine. (Not following these games I didn't know they were still running on the same engine) Who gives a shit if they're making money doing those videos, good for whoever runs that channel making some money pointing that shit out.
Normal people: "Far Cry 2 engine is more technically advanced than Far Cry 5 engine."
I don't think copy-pasted assets, annoying respawning enemies and the choice of color palette have anything to do with technical engine capabilities, those things have to do with shitty design decisions
Two things here. First: either the games are running on the exact same engine, which would mean the basic tech behind any of these features has in no way regressed but that those features were edited as design decisions, or the games are not running on the same exact engine and the engine has been modified over the years to focus on more critical elements as well as make various graphical and system improvements, modifactions that were not in FC2. It is, of course, a combination of both; the engine has, in fact, been altered over the course of the decade since FC2 was released, and there are many design decisions involved in making a game on this scale. The FC5 engine is able to handle far larger areas, has global illumination, dynamic water effects, improved AI, improved animal behavior and flora variety, improved animations, etc.
Second, as I stated before, no, "anything in FC2 that's good should be a given in 3; not missing 5" is not a sound statement based on any sense of reality but purely on ideology. It's a notion that arises from cynicism and having a detached, hindsight informed view entirely divorced from the creative process. Making a game at this level, or any level, is a complex endeavor that involves having to make constant compromises and alterations. There are creative decisions, technical decisions, and various mixtures of the two. In the history of the entire universe I don't think there has ever been a case where a creative work was followed up by a subsequent creative work that only featured the good parts of the previous work and was thus a universally agreed upon total improvement over the previous. Look at games like Thief 2, Fallout 2, Doom 2, games that are generally considered great but are all still routinely criticized by many as being inferior to their predecessors--why did the designers of these games not just take all the good things, improve them, cut out everything that was bad from the previous games and thus end up with a perfect sequel? Because humans and creativity are involved in making them. You say this design process is reflective of an assembly line mentality, but it would be more assembly line like to make decisions based purely around retaining everything from the previous game (this is ignoring the basic fact that some elements of a previous entry are considered good by others and bad by others). The only time one gets such universally agreed upon incremental improvements is with actual assembly line products--the pop top soda can is a technical total improvement over the church key soda can, although even then I can guarantee there are people who prefer the previous version for various subjective reasons.
The funny thing is that people are so focused on the tree branches thing being absent in FC5, but I would wager a guess that absolutely no one would give a shit if FC5
did have breakable tree branches--it would end up getting a short side-by-side shot in some graphics comparison video on youtube and that would be it.
It's also fucking hilarious to see codexers leaping to defend some game based entirely around aesthetic, visual concerns, when usually one gets called a graphics whore on this forum for daring to say that visuals matter in a primarily visual medium, or time consuming "realistic" features. I guess being an immersionfag is prestigious now. I personally think it's a great improvement that I don't have to sit through a repetitive 4 second animation every time I gather materials from a dead animal.