Forget everything you know about Far Cry — the awesome guns, the drive-by shootings, the radio towers, and even the wing suit — because Ubisoft’s open-world shooter is going back to its roots, or rather, humanity’s roots, for its latest installment. Even better: it arrives sooner than you’d think.
Set in the Stone Age, Far Cry Primal places you in the role of a hunter named Takkar: a “sole survivor of an ambush” that has him struggling to survive with the unforgiving wilderness and, naturally, hostile humans.
Like past games in the series, Far Cry Primal puts considerable focus on stealth, but the exact form this takes appears to have changed considerably. The official reveal trailer shows a tribe of hunters carefully approaching a mammoth, spears drawn, before quickly ambushing the beast with a barrage of stabs and arrows. The “hit the fan” essence of Far Cry looks like it’s still alive and well, however, as a sabretooth tiger quickly turns the hunt into a vicious all-out melee.
Far Cry Primal will also utilize the crafting system from Far Cry 3 and 4, and it may be even more important in a world devoid of firearms. Animal bones are now a crafting resource, used for making weapons as well as other, unspecified “tools,” and you’ll have to make use of man’s most precious tool — fire — “when assaulting beasts or infiltrating enemy outposts.” Most likely, this means you can’t just shoot an arrow at a red barrel this time. However, art director Mickael Labat stresses that there will still be plenty of variety in weapon types, and that man already “knew how to use stone in 150 different ways” by the time of the Stone Age.
After the release of Far Cry 4, questions were raised about potential franchise fatigue, considering that the sequel was extremely similar, both in gameplay and narrative structure, to its predecessor. While details are understandably scarce, it looks like Primal will ease those worries considerably.
The kicker? It’s only a few months away. Far Cry Primal hits Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on February 23, with a PC release the following month.
