And thus we begin one of the most well known and loved missions in Hitman: Blood Money.

This video talks a lot about one of the problems in Blood Money, and that’s how quickly guards are willing to open fire on you.

The guard’s in this game are almost binary. With very few exceptions, they are either fine with you or open fire without any sort of middle ground. You won’t notice it in most situations, since the player openly strangling a character in full view of another should cause alarms.

Entering and exiting a bar at Mardi Gras… isn’t one of those situations. You can argue (and I will fight you on it), that it could maybe be considered suspicious for someone to enter a bar. Even if that were true, that doesn’t warrant being shot on sight.

Even worse, one guard open firing will attract the attention of other guards. And as soon as you know it, you’re either dead, or causing the next St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.

This would be solved if there were more states that guards could enter, like Suspicious (but not hostile), which could be cooled off over time.

It’s part of the jank that comes with the game. I love Blood Money, but there’s no denying that it has flaws.

You’ve been invited to a very special day. It’s the day where Suzie’s dad dies during her own birthday party…

This is without a doubt my personal favorite mission in the game. Though the actual house is small, there’s so much going on within that house that you’d be surprised. There are donut-loving FBI Agents, seductive housewives, used panties, pool boys, waiters, and even a party clown. And any or all of them could come into play during the mission.

But the area of play isn’t limited to the house itself. You can also pilfer supplies from neighboring houses, like sedative and a BB gun, to make use of during your real approach.

Players with for knack of sneaking can even sneak in through the basement or the garage without even getting a disguise at all. It’s tricky, but certainly doable.

All sorts of playstyles can find something that caters to them in such a small field of operations. This is where Hitman is at its strongest. The way I demonstrated is only one method of getting Silent Assassin (and admittedly one of the easier ones).

Creativity, exploration, and experimentation is encouraged more than anything else. Shame about the guard who sniffs the panties… 2006 humor doesn’t really translate well into the modern day, but we’ll comment on that in some of the later episodes.

In this episode, we redeem our failures from the previous run:

You can kinda see the genesis of the Contracts Mode that I/O Interactive introduced in Hitman: Absolution (and Hitman 2016 later) here. Even though we have a clear, primary target to take out, we also have two other targets that provide bonuses.

And all three of these targets have their own separate set of opportunities, schedules, and blind spots that can be taken advantage of. In essence, you have three separate contracts in one level, along with the mission to save Agent Smith.

So it’s easy to see how the concept of “focusing on someone other than the mandatory hit” could come about from that. Back when Absolution was first released, I/O Interactive talked about how they took inspiration from players doing something much like all over. We’ll see similar kinds of characters in later missions, but this level is where that starts.

As for the level itself, it other one of those smaller, but very dense locations that I like most in Hitman. They tend to make for some the better levels in the game.

In this episode of Hitman: Blood Money, we save one dude in order to murder three.

…or we would if I didn’t screw it up.

I’m really glad that I messed up the way I did though, because this is a lot of what Hitman ends up being. You try one method, make some mistakes, and learn from them. Then, armed with what you learned the last time, you try something new. This process keeps going until you can make stunning assassinations flawlessly. Going back to that video I mentioned in the last episode, this is a good demonstration of that.

Next time, I manage to do this right…

In this episode, we enter the opera house to enjoy the show… and murder some people!

In order to elaborate a point I made in the episode, this game operates on a “realistic surrealism”. What I meant by that is that the things that Agent 47 can do are completely absurd in the context of real life. There’s no way that his disguises should work, and many of the props in the game (like the over-sized laundry bins and trash cans) are deliberately created out of proportion to facilitate gameplay.

That said, there is a internal consistency with our actions. Even though the disguise mechanic is crazy, we can believe that Agent 47 is skilled enough to pass himself off as someone who belongs there. It’s an abstraction, but it’s a plausible enough abstraction and it creates enough fun opportunities that no one will notice or mind. A lot of game suspends or alters what one would expect of reality to facilitate the feeling of being a master assassin, and that’s largely why the game works.

As to the point about the game making you think like an assassin through repetition, I said I got that from an article. However, it was actually a video. Weirdly enough, Sam linked to me a few days after I recorded this episode. I had already seen it, but he did save me the trouble of having to find it again.

Another new series for you guys, and this time it’s just me, going solo. I’ll be running through and talking a bit about Hitman: Blood Money.

To start off, I should acknowledge the absolutely terrible quality of my audio during this recording. Unfortunately, by the time I started editing these videos, I made already completed three assassinations.

I also admit that I found it extremely hard to keep the dialog going. I’m used to playing off other people after all the many projects I’ve been involved with. Without that buffer, I suffered a bout of stage-fright and just kinda went blank. It’s something I hope to practice and iron out the more I do these solo LPs.

I have written about my experiences playing From Software’s “Soulsborne” games a couple of times on this blog. For that reason, I can distinctly recall my time in these games, which colored my expectations going into Dark Souls 3. To my surprise, and somewhat to my disappointment, the game didn’t feel the way I expected it to. Though it certainly is a shining example of what could be described as a Souls game, Dark Souls 3 felt different than its predecessors. 
As I explored the desolate lands of Boletaria and Lordran, there was a palpable sense of loneliness to the proceedings. It was as if I was cold and alone against a world out to kill me, with its bands of diverse and terrifying opponents setting their differences aside in a concerted effort to block my path and take my life. Despite in many ways going against those same odds, I never had that feeling of isolation and hostility in Dark Souls 3. Rather than a world against me, it felt as if every area was merely a stage for I and my fellow players.
Much of that simply stems from the fact that there are many more players in Dark Souls 3 than there were in previous Souls games I had played. My first runs of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls were both in the summer of 2015. By then, the games were 6 and 4 years old respectively. There were certainly stragglers like myself who were still engaged with them, but by and large most had already moved on to greener pastures. And even if people were playing these games, my efforts to work with them were minimal. In Demon’s Souls, I spent almost the entire game in Soul form, preventing me from summoning phantoms to aid me. Likewise, I can count the number of bosses I defeated with other players on a single hand. My experiences in both games are mostly mine and mine alone. When push came to shove, I could only rely on myself to get out of a hairy situation.
I can’t say the same thing when I look back on the total sum of my Dark Souls 3 experiences. Strangely, I was excited to, for once, be a part of the community as the game comes out, exploring it together with everyone. In a way, this ended up being counter to what I most enjoyed in its older siblings. Talking with my Twitter friends, being guided to secrets by random strangers, aiding other people and being aided in turn, these were all wonderful experiences in their own right. However, it meant that my journey was less a result of my own effort and accomplishments, and more the gestalt of all of those who joined me on my path. Random strangers who I will never know, and who will never know me, were all working together to achieve a common goal. Even when I was invaded/invading, it felt like a respectable contest between peers and less an attempt of one person to sabotage another. I could use many adjectives to describe my adventure, but “lonely” is not one of them.
The NPCs also seemed a lot more welcoming in Dark Souls 3 than they have been in the past. My runs of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls are marked by a sense that there weren’t many people in the world that would even think to assist me. Outside of the Nexus, I remember that non-hostile NPCs were scarce. It was at least 10 hours before I brought my first new NPC back to the Nexus with me. Until then, the ones I had encountered had either perished unceremoniously (sorry Ostrava), or actively screwed me over (which is why, to this day, I murder Patches every chance I get). Just finding a truly friendly face was a rare treat. The same can be said of Dark Souls. While there are certainly a few kind folks who inhabit the Firelink Shrine, most of them are battered and broken when you find them. And by the time I finished my journey, the most friendly of the lot, like Siegmeyer and Solarie, had met with terrible fates.
By contrast, in my first 10 hours of Dark Souls 3, I encountered a Robin Hood-esque thief, a young woman who knows miracles and her protector, an old pyromancer, a Darkmoon blade from the Sunless Realms, and Siegmeyer’s more capable descendant. All of these people had offered their aid to me in some form, either as a vendor or a companion. Where friendly faces were rare before, they were quite common place now. I did not have to look far to find someone with a vested interest in my success. Far from the isolation I once felt, Dark Souls 3 provided an almost constant comfort by offering me my choice of assistants and allies.
Even though the abundance of other players and NPCs are large contributors to why I have lost that adventurous, yet isolating spirit of the previous games, there is another reason. At this point, I have played so many Souls games, and particularly so many Dark Souls games, that the mechanics and world are largely ingrained into my mind. When I was a new player braving the perils of Boletaria, and later Lordran, I often fell for the tricks and traps laid about. I would die to ambushes than I should have seen coming in hindsight. I spent many deaths learning each enemies attack patterns and figuring out the weaknesses therein. I crashed through broken boards and into traps that would be noted and avoided in the future. The designs of From Software were alien to me. Learning them was half of the battle, and half the fun.
Unfortunately, there’s only so far the Soulsian “fair” ambushes can go before they reach the territory of just spawning in mooks in lieu of hiding them in creative ways. That’s not necessarily From Software’s fault, because it is infinitely easier for players to figure out their tendencies than it is for them to think of new ways to surprise those same players. But it does mean that I have gotten much better at predicting when an ambush is likely to happen than I used to be.
I don’t remember ever being truly caught off guard while exploring the shattered remains of Lothric and the lands surrounding it. At the same time, I have a distinct memory of an archway in Irithyll of the Boreal Valley. I had not seen nor heard any enemies in the room on the other side, but I suspected that something was “off”. Looking down and to my left, I saw a ledge that I could easily reach by dropping down. Going into the hallway through the opening on this ledge, I climbed a ladder that lead me to the other side of the room beyond the archway, bypassing a group of enemies waiting to ambush me. By just following a slight “off” feeling, I had anticipated and subverted a snare that I would have easily fallen for before. At the time, I felt smart for having trusted my instincts. In hindsight, all I really did was just fall back on knowledge I had gained from 4 previous games’ worth of experience. Not only wasn’t I surprised by the enemies’ tricks, I couldn’t be, because I had already fallen for them before.

Instead of making me believe I was a single man out against a world which wants nothing more than me to fail, Dark Souls 3 felt like reuniting with an old friend I hadn’t seen in awhile. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that quiet nostalgia. But the dreadful anxiety I experienced the first time, as I explored the worlds of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, is a large part of why I fell in love with the franchise. As disappointing as it is, I’m not sure that one could ever adequately capture that atmosphere that drew me in when I first started Soulsborne. Though I want so badly to feel that isolation, that growing sense of isolation and excitement. I just don’t believe it’s possible given how large an influence Soulsborne has become. It’s hard to feel alone and afraid when in the comfort of your home, surrounded by the old and familiar. These games have become as much a home to me as the house I live in, and that’s exactly what I don’t want them to be.

It is said that food is a universal language, and why wouldn’t it be? After all, every living creature needs to eat to stave off death, if nothing else. But more than that, sharing a meal with other people is often a great way to socialize and form connections. Within the scope of my real life relationships, most of were forged, in part, while eating together. From the high school cafeteria to a night out at a restaurant, most people can readily recall eating out with friends and family. So then why is it that an activity as normal as dining with other people so rarely depicted in video games?
While I was in the middle of my playthrough of Bravely Second, I noticed that there were a plethora of scenes where the party got together and not only ate as a group, but talked about the various delicacies of the towns they visited. At first, I thought it was weird that such a small detail stood out to me. The more I pondered it, the more I realized that such scenes stood out because aside from the previous game and the Persona franchise there aren’t many other games where protagonists just eat together. That’s a shame, because there is so much potential in those little interactions for both character and world-building.
It is true that a lot of games utilize food in some way. Food is often used as a restorative item, like in Bioshock: Infinite, Fallout 3, and most survival games. However, food is frequently just something that the protagonist consumes for the enjoyment. In games like these, food is purely utilitarian. Players eat only to increase numbers. While there is certainly simulationist value in that, the more social aspects of dining aren’t depicted in games as much.
And those social elements of dining can be valuable tools in the designer’s tool belt. Just like in real life, having characters eat together can serve as a catalyst for conversation. In Bravely Second, many dungeons will offer a point where players can set up camp and rest. Though the game incentivizes them by fully healing party HP/MP, they also show completely optional scenes where party members chat with each other — often over a meal.
These scenes involve the cast opening up to each other about things going on in their lives and what kind of things they’ve seen on their journey. One scene in a dungeon crawling with ghosts and zombies has lead character Yew (Yes, “you”) Geneolgia lamenting his fear of ghosts. This fear is so great that his shoulders and back have become sore after all the tensing and crunching caused by wandering the halls of the under. With the ice on the topic broken, the others open up to share some of their fears and how (or if) they’ve learned ways to deal with them.
Persona 4 also has examples of this type uses dining as a venue for character interaction. Over the course of the game, the Investigation Team is often shown eating together, making idle small talk. Sometimes they talk about the latest developments in the homicide case, but often the subject will be things like upcoming exams, school trips, and other such mundane events. Seeing how each person in the group reacts to something like an upcoming exam can be a great window into their life. Watching Yosuke cringe at the prospect while Yukiko takes it in full stride tells me more than someone else calling them an idiot and a genius respectively. It isn’t necessary to have this conversation over a group meal, but having the party eat together makes it much easier to naturally have these moments.
Even if the party doesn’t directly talk about themselves, often the kinds of foods they prefer can reveal a lot about them. In fiction, each culinary palate has a number of stereotypes classically associated with it. Writers can and will use these as shortcuts to tell their audiences more about the cast without having to waste time with exposition. Even if you don’t think about them, you’re probably at least aware of their presence. If I mentioned that Edea, one of the party members in Bravely Second, puts ketchup on many of the foods she eats, and prefers to eat extremely sweet or extraordinarily spicy foods, then you probably have an image of someone with an intense personality. Like the foods she eats, she tends toward the extreme in the her actions and reactions. Even if the game didn’t show much of Edea outside of the scenes where the party dines together, this information could be gleaned just from her tastes.
Similarly, Persona 4 makes use of this narrative technique, but not quite in the same way. Generally, the better you are at cooking in Persona 4, the more self-reliant you are. People like the protagonist and Nanako, whose parents are rarely around, are able to cook so well that the others are left in awe at their culinary skill. Yet characters like Yukiko and Chie, who aren’t so self-reliant, are the worst cooks in the group, and their fellows will often go to great lengths to avoid consuming their “Mystery Food X”. Party members like Rise and Naoto, who tend to be fairly lonely even if interact with others regularly, tow a middle line in cooking skill. Rise can generally cook, but tends to overly spice and Naoto only knows enough to be able to follow instructions on the back of pre-packaged foods. Regardless, their skill at preparing great tasting food and their friends’ reactions to it reveal much about their home lives.

It feels strange pointing out the way writers can use the act of eating to tell us more about the teams they create, but examples are so few and far in between that I am compelled to do so. It’s easy to for a writer to just have a character tell their audience about themselves and the world around them. At the same time, it is one of the least engaging ways to present such information. I present this use of group dining as only one possible alternative to keep exposition to a minimum while still allowing for character and world-building. There are countless other ways to achieve the same end. I advocate exploring and making use of them as well.


(Note: This article assumes that you either know, or can look up, the basic rules to Yu-Gi-Oh!.)
Most of you out there know me for my opinions on video games. However, like most people, I have more than a single interest. Lately, I have been absolutely obsessed with the study of Collectible Card Game design. I’ve been playing a lot of them, and reading a ton about them. From the common pitfalls to the tricks used to improve the playing experience, and even how attract sales.
As a child, my experience with different collectible card games wasn’t what one might expect. Even though it was (and is) one the top cards games of all time, I had never given Magic: The Gathering a fair shot. Yet as an fan of Saturday morning cartoons, I was a huge Yu-Gi-Oh! fan growing up. Naturally, that meant that I was also an avid player of the card game based on the anime. Even today, I see a certain charm to the game. That said, as I learn more about other card games like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone, the more I start to identify problems in my old fling. I tell you all of this so that you realize that what I’m about to say comes from a place of love: Yu-Gi-Oh! is a bad card game.
One of the biggest problems in Yu-Gi-Oh! is the unrelenting Power Creep that goes as more and more cards are introduced. Power Creep, for the unaware, is the process in which old cards are no longer played. Not because they are banned in tournaments, but because new cards are so much better than players who use the old cards are in an obvious disadvantage. To an extent, this is common among Collectible Card Games. What separates Yu-Gi-Oh! from the rest is just its prevalence. Among the people who have played for the long time, a common complaint is that the game, as it stands today, is significantly faster than it used to be. Back when it was first released, summoning even one monster with 2500 ATK or more was almost seen as a reward for successfully controlling the field long enough.
In comparison, with the newer cards, it is quite common to see multiple 2500+ ATK monsters on grace the field with the first couple of turns. Summoning a bunch in one turn is such a regular occurrence that Raigeki, a card that was on the original ban list since it started in 2004 and remained there for over a decade, is now legal once more. Way back when the ban list was first introduced, and effect that destroyed all of an opponent’s monsters put them at such a disadvantage that it was deemed too powerful for tournament play. At the time, there was even a running joke that Raigeki would likely never be unbanned. Now, tough monsters are so easy to summon that such an effect barely matters all that much. Yu-Gi-Oh! has become a textbook example of Power Creep for exactly this reason.
For a while, these changes couldn’t really be classified as Power Creep, even if they were stronger than old mechanics. Synchro monsters were a good example of this. Because it’s a lot easier to place Tuners and non-Tuners on the field than it is to get an exact combination of monsters and Polymerization in play, Synchro monsters were objectively easier and faster to summon than Fusion monsters. However, it is worth noting that Fusion monsters were incredibly rare to see in play. Aside from a few deck types, like Cyber Dragons, that relied on it, Fusion would rarely come up in either casual or competitive simple due to the abundance of other options. Synchro wasn’t so much an example of Power Creep as much as it was a stronger version to an otherwise ineffective and unused mechanic.
The problems really started with the advent of XYZ monsters. Even with Synchros, it was hard to take advantage of their increased utility without formulating a deck around them. This drawback was completely lost on the XYZ monsters. To summon an XYZ monster, one would overlay multiple other monsters whose LV is equal to that monsters rank. The monsters used in the summoning would be attached to the XYZ monster as material, which can be normally detached in order to use their effects.
In competitive play, players do themselves a disservice if their Extra Deck contains any less than the 15 card maximum. Even if their deck would otherwise not take need to use XYZ in order to do well, the only gain a further advantage by having that option there. Unlike Synchros, the only requirement for an XYZ summoning is to have multiple of the same level in a deck. It is actually harder to think of decks that don’t meet that condition that it is to think of ones that do. Since the vast majoring of XYZ monsters are also of Rank 4, and most monsters in the game are LV 4, this is doubly true. Because making use of this mechanic was such a no-brainer and required very little changes to most decks, players would need a very strong reason not to use them. This is a significant part of what people talk about when they use the phrase “Power Creep”.
And part of why this Power Creep unchecked is because Yu-Gi-Oh! lacks the concept of a standard format. In most competitive CCGs, as new sets are added to the game, old sets are both phased out and removed from tournament play. This means that at any given time, in the competitive scene, there are only a very specific number of sets in play.
While this is mostly done so that new players are free the baggage of thousands upon thousands of older cards, there is a dual purpose at work here. By working under the assumption that old sets will eventually be phased out, designers can work with a certain degree of freedom. They are able to take risks and implement new mechanics under the assumption that if they become unpopular, or worse, too powerful, they can just stop making cards the support that mechanic and slowly let it die as new sets are released. Magic: The Gathering has done this with a number of mechanics over the years, by simply not making or reprinting cards that use certain systems.
Yu-Gi-Oh! does not have this freedom, because sets are never rotated out. With the exception of individual cards that have been banned or limited, every card that has ever been released is still officially legal in competitive play. And despite having no mechanism to phase out poor mechanics, Konami continually experiments with new ones. It is inevitable that some of them will end up being objectively faster, or more effective, than their predecessors. With these better sets out in the wild, it’s impossible to keep new cards balanced with respect to that which came before.
Collectible cards game are still businesses at their core. If no one wants to use the cards from the newest sets, then sales are going to drop. The simplest solution, that requires the least amount of effort, would then be to just make the newer sets even better than the old sets. In the case of Yu-Gi-Oh!, the absence of a standard format makes this even more obvious of a solution since cards don’t ever get phased out. When the next set gets released, if it’s cards aren’t even better than the last ones, we’ll suffer the same problem again. Through it’s very systems, Yu-Gi-Oh! has almost forced itself into a situation of sustained Power Creep. It’s worked for them over the past few years, but there’s only so much room to go. Konami is playing a dangerous game, and it had an immense negative impact on the Yu-Gi-Oh! meta-game, as it stands today.

Again, as someone who has played the game since I was in middle school, I will always have a certain fondness for Yu-Gi-Oh!. But despite, or maybe even because, of that fondness, I have massive problems with the current state of the game. Even worse, I don’t know if there is even a good solution. If anything, Yu-Gi-Oh! serves as a cautionary tale for why CCGs need to be careful in game design and the introduction of new cards/mechanics. In hindsight, the Power Creep seen in its current state was not only obvious, but inevitable.

I have long bemoaned the “standard Ubisoft open-world game” that we’ve seen in most of the Assassin’s Creed games, Watch_Dogs, and even The Crew. Far Cry is no exception to this pervasiveness, with Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 4 acting as prime examples. Too often, the vast number of petty tasks and collectibles fight for attention against whatever story these games are desperately trying to tell. On top of that, the sheer length and frequency of these beasts, left me with genre exhaustion. That’s when I heard about Far Cry: Primal.
To me, the idea of Far Cry (which has traditionally been about first-person, mildly-stealthy shooters) quite literally going back to the Stone Age was very intriguing. I thought that it would make for a great Blood Dragon-esque $15 stand-alone. Then I learned that it was going to be a $60 game, and suddenly got very nervous. The idea of another full-fledged Ubisoft open-world game so soon was just not appealing to me. Since I remain part of the problem, I went ahead and — despite my misgivings — bought it anyway. As I played, my fears of another tired, drab, paint-by-numbers Far Cry experience were allayed. While there’s no doubt that Far Cry: Primal is a tried and true Far Cry game, it demonstrates that there is merit to Ubisoft’s signature open-world that has been overlooked until now.
The story of Far Cry: Primal almost hearkens back to the days where the plot to a video game was merely an excuse to go through the levels. The player character is a warrior from a tribe from 10,000 BCE. His clan is at war with the other two tribes in the region, a Northern cannibal clan that utilizes poison, and a group in the South that specializes in the use of fire. As the leader, the player character needs to strengthen his tribe and himself so that he can take out the leaders of the other two clans and claim the land of Oros, and its resources, for his people. In terms of the main story, that’s it. Once the beginning tutorial sections are complete, the world opens up. At that point, by completing only a few mandatory missions, the player could, if they choose, almost immediately take out the other leaders and complete the main story. That said, doing so is extremely difficult, and most players won’t be able to beat them with the equipment and skills they start out with. They must first grow stronger, and get to the point where they can comfortably defeat these chieftains. By participating in the open-world, players can acquire the experience, resources, and friends necessary to completing their ultimate objective.
Naturally, as a Far Cry game, the moment the world opens up, the map and UI reveal a ton of optional quests and objectives. By completing them, players earn experience and skill points. By spending skill points, they acquire new perks and skills and grow that much more capable. Though aside from the first few skill trees, most are locked from the start.
Among the many quests and events in the world are fellow tribesman who have been separated from the main group. Each of these tribesman specialize in a specific area, like hunting and craftsmanship. Once the player finds them and solves whatever problem they have, these specialists will relocate to the player’s village. At that point, they will train the player in their talents, unlocking their skill tree in the upgrade menu.
More than skills, they also teach the player how to craft tools and weapons. Of course, knowing how to build them is one thing, but having the materials to do so is another. Building these items requires the player to scavenge and hunt for items like wood, stone, clay, and animal hides.
Those who have play previous Far Cry games are probably not surprised by this. Ubisoft has been using variants on these same mechanics for several years now. What separates Far Cry: Primal from the rest of their catalog is not the mechanics themselves. Rather, it is how they interact with each other and come together.
In other Ubisoft games, every element of the game is fighting for an ounce of attention. The story, the side quests, and the collectibles are all wholly distinct entities. None of them come together and they all demand that the player takes time away from the other elements to devote to them. As much as I praised it, Assassin’s Creed: Unityhad that problem in spades. There were so many objectives on the map that it was often hard to spot the architecture underneath the symbols.
This isn’t the case in Far Cry: Primal. Rather than compete with the other elements, the story frames them. By presenting these two bosses as the ultimate end-game opponents, Primal immediately encourages players to acquire the skills to defeat them. Since these skills and are locked behind the specialists and reconstruction of the village, the first instinct will be to gather resources and recruit these experts. It is by allowing the story to exist largely in the background for most of the game, as this looming challenge to undertake, that the open world and the tasks within it are actually given their chance to shine.
More importantly, every element comes back together with the others at some point. By recruiting each expert, players unlock skills to purchase and items to craft. Unlocking new skill trees gives an incentive to travel the world and earn experience, and crafting gives a similar incentive to gather materials. The items and skills acquired then enable the player to tackle tougher challenger, until they are finally able to take down both rival tribes and end the game. Instead of fighting for the player’s attention, each element of the game reinforces the desire and need for the player to engage with the other elements. This sense of design cohesion makes Far Cry: Primal a much stronger game than the previous two entries in the franchise.
The importance of all these elements coming together only occurred to me about 10 hours into my playthrough. At this point, I had finally worked up the courage to journey North and defeat the cannibal leader. That’s when I realized that this boss fight was the first genuine piece of main story content I had encountered since the beginning of the game.
If this was some other Ubisoft game, like Watch_Dogs, I would have been livid. Even though the side content exists for players to experience it, spending that much time without making forward progress would feel like a waste to me. That’s why in most of these open world games, I usually skip most of the side content, choosing to mainline the campaign. If I do optional objectives, it’s almost always in service of making my trek through the very next story beat easier, usually by revealing part of the map.
But I wasn’t angry. In fact, I looked back on those 8 or so hours of wandering Oros fondly. Everything I did felt like it had some purpose in preparing me for this, one of my 2 ultimate foes. And not only did I enjoy my time doing all of these tasks, but I was more engaged with them then I ever was in previous Ubisoft games. Before, I was actively avoiding the Shangri La hallucinations and stoner missions in Far Cry 4, or those accursed Eagle Feathers in Assassin’s Creed 2. Here, I was looking, actually looking, for animals to hunt, people to recruit, and things to do. This might not sounds like a big deal, but it’s more than I’ve gotten out most of the needless, pointless crap that litters so much square mileage of Far Cry: Primal’s ancestors.

I don’t expect, or even necessarily desire, for Ubisoft to do what they did in Far Cry: Primal very often. Having an overarching story that frames the gameplay more than it stands out on its own works well in the context of primitive man fighting over resources in the Stone Age, but not so much other eras with more complicated themes and people. Having said that, Far Cry: Primal feels much more like a coherent whole than many other Ubisoft games. My final playtime was roughly 19.5 hours according to my save file, but that time was more fruitful and interesting than many of the 40-50 hours experiences I have had in the likes of Assassin’s Creed, Watch_Dogs, and other Far Crys. Ironically, this caveman game is the most developed Ubisoft open world I’ve seen in a long time.
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