Far Cry 2's daring open world design is still paying off 10 years later

There are games like Doom that forever change their genres. Then there are games that don’t necessarily come to mind on a day-to-day basis, but which constantly re-enter the conversation when developers get together and talk. Far Cry 2 is a real developer's game: an imperfect gem to be sure, but one that changed the industry by changing how people thought about games.

Most of the time, you re honestly of little consequence.

Far Cry 2's central genius is that it’s an open world that doesn’t exist to glorify you, the player. At best, you’re a villain. Most of the time, you’re honestly of little consequence. The intro sets the scene with you as the world’s least prepared mercenary, visiting Africa on the hunt for a wanted weapons dealer called The Jackal. It goes poorly. Before you can even begin the hunt, you catch malaria, end up bed-ridden, and have the Jackal himself pop round to go through your things, point out that you’ve failed miserably and won’t be paid, before wandering off with a “So long.” Few games have been quite so happy to lower the stakes to something that non-existent.

Of course, you don’t just go home. Instead the mission quickly descends into the kind of nihilism that wouldn’t be matched until the underrated Spec Ops: The Line. You kill because that’s what you do, working for two factions who were criticised at the time for being basically the same collection of psychopathic arseholes before people realised that yes, that was the point. There are no good guys in Far Cry 2, and no glorious crusade to save the war-torn country from some handy moustache-twirling dictator. There is only war, malaria, death and greed.

As would become a series staple, Far Cry 2 had next to nothing to do with the game that came before it save for being a shooter, and certainly none of the mutants and other silly elements that slowly took over its storyline. The developers, led by Clint Hocking, explained that the goal was to capture the spirit of the series, though it often felt (maybe cynically) like the money-men just weren't paying attention until it was too late.

Far Cry was a level-based game that just happened to have really big, open-feeling levels. Far Cry 2 was a playground. True, it wasn’t completely open, in that the story was still tied together with missions and specific objectives, and no matter how much you drove around killing things, nothing would change until the plot dictated it did. But once you were actually on assignment, it was anything goes. Snipe enemies from a distance, steal a car and go smashing into a base, run in guns blazing, set things on fire…

What made Far Cry 2 different from the average open world game was how it managed to embrace the potential of this freedom without either descending into anarchy or coming across as ridiculous. You’re certainly no godlike presence. Along with needing regular malaria treatments to prevent vomiting your guts up at the worst possible time, every system and plot point is there to reinforce the darker elements of the setting—whether it’s tracking down blood diamonds or conducting brutal assassinations that can only lead to more trouble.

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Another legacy of Far Cry 2: one of the all-time great game trailers, thanks to perfect pairing with Massive Attack's Angel.

More directly, even standard elements like taking a bullet go a little further than most.