Far Cry 6 gameplay was today shown off by Ubisoft, and ahead of time, we had the chance to talk with World Director Benjamin Hall about all the new things coming to the popular franchise.
The interview can be listened to as part of our Friendly Fire Show podcast, or read using the transcript below.
Steve Wright, Stevivor: The first thing I want to talk about is stupid, but I can't stop thinking about it. I know I heard the Wilhelm scream in that presentation yesterday and as well as the Macarena, of course. Was that just for the presentation or is that going to be in the game? If you push someone off a cliff, are you going to get the Wilhelm scream?
Benjamin Hall, World Director: Great question. For that one, I'd probably have to speak to Nav[id Khavari, Narrative Director] to double check. For the Macarena, I know that [it’s] going to play when you when you shoot the CDs from the CD launcher.
Stevivor: I seems like yesterday, but it also seems like 17 years ago that I first talked with Navid about Far Cry 6. That was in July 2020, so I need to do a COVID check-in. Navid seemed pretty happy and confident at the time that your team was able to, you pivot and get things done. Is that still true now?
Hall: I mean, COVID impacted us like it has impacted pretty much the whole planet in that we you know we wanted to make sure that our team [could] stay safe during this pandemic. So we just have made a big big switch very, very quickly to get people to be able to work from home [and] get technology that was already being piloted and tested within the industry anyway.
It certainly did have an impact in certain areas of the game. [From] the logistics of things to making sure it could be done safely and everyone could stay safe during it. There's other parts of it that have definitely… in some ways improved, in terms of this digital communication, similar to what we're doing right now [on a video call interview].
Being able to have these kinds of conversations with with the entire team at the same time… had some positivity. But, yeah, the team [is] continuing to work hard, stay safe, and hopefully we can get through this soon.
Stevivor: I guess I'm counting all my questions as ‘world’ questions, but I don't know if it's true or not. I curious, first, as to what you see falling under your jurisdiction as World Director.
Hall: As World Director, I've been looking after the team building Yara. We've been working on building the landscape, the elements of the world, but also the activities, the missions and the things that you're going to be doing in Yara, working in close collaboration with [the other key directors].
Stevivor: Watching the preview presentation, it just kind of struck me how there's not a white person -- a white saviour -- jumping into the world and fixing things like in Far Cry 3. It’s not even like in 4 where it’s a native, but now American-influenced character who's going to jump in and fix his old homeland. How purposeful was that? Dani is a Yaran and not an external influence coming into to save the land and these people.
Hall: It was important for Dani to be a Yaran for multiple reasons, but but one of the main ones that really stood out to us was that... we wanted to build this gorilla revolution.
We wanted to have Dani click -- have a spark, have something that was worth fighting for. When you get to experience and meet Dani for the first time in the game, [you learn] they don't want to be a guerilla. They don't want to be in Yara anymore. They actually want [to] get out [and] go and start a new life somewhere else. They've seen the country kind of ground to a halt, and they’ve become disillusioned with the whole state of affairs in the country.
