Earlier this week, Ubisoft announced that Far Cry Primal will ship on February 23, 2016 for PS4 and Xbox One, with a PC release in March next year. This time, the game is set 10,000 years ago, and features changing weather and primitive animal life.
The Far Cry series is no stranger to exotic locations. The first installment of the game was set somewhere in Micronesia. The three main sequels were set in Africa, the Pacific and the Himalayan region, respectively.
In an interview with Gamespot, Primal creative director Jean-Christophe Guyot explains why the setting fits the game ethos. “Far Cry usually puts you at the edge of the known world, in a beautiful, lawless, and savage frontier. The Stone Age is, in a way, the very first frontier for humankind; it’s the time when humans put a stick in the ground and claimed land for their own, the time when we started climbing the food chain. That came with conflict, against other humans of course, but also against nature itself."
The story of Primal is about Takkar, a tribal hunter and the last surviving member of his hunting group. Much like the previous Far Cry games, this single-player experience is all about survival. ESRB rating for Primal is still pending though. Regardless, be prepared that this one will definitely be for mature gamers only.
The franchise is well-known for crafting mature stories with drug use as a fringe theme in the games. In fact, Far Cry 4 had a drug called Oculus Spliff, named as such as a gentle nudge to Virtual Reality pioneer Oculus Rift.
From what little has been seen of the gameplay, IGN's Mitch Dyer relates his observation based on the reveal trailer. The video starts out with a small tribe of four hunters engaging and disposing of a herd of wooly mammoths, afterwhich they were attacked by a sabertooth tiger. There were character upgrades with new features like the dead animals attracting predators with its scent. The key art, according to Dyer, also suggests a sabertooth tiger companion for Takkar.
Primal is projected to be another amazing spin-off to the already exciting Far Cry franchise. However, there are still dissenting voices out there right now. Forbes reporter Paul Tassi shares his pessimistic view, "I just don’t think setting the game in the Ice Age is going to be enough to set it apart from the usual fare of the series, as we’ll be stalking around the forest with a bow, hunting and skinning the same damn animals as before."
Tassi further argues that the biggest difference in Primal that could well be its downfall--"No guns."
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