So we started scaling back how much he said because we wanted the player to have ownership over the story.” It hangs together tonally, too. But the thing is it’s kinda hard to tell the player the story about him when the player may not be reacting how reacts. “We did a test run of the character talking more and being more vocal. For Soulban, his motives make more sense. Unlike Far Cry 3’s chatty Jason Brody, conscious efforts have been made to, well, shut him up a bit. You play Ajay Ghale, a man caught up in a bloody civil war when attempting to scatter his mother’s ashes in her home country. Dreamlike sections set in Shangri-La even replace the magic mushroom flights of fancy introduced in the last game. You climb radio towers - now wooden Buddhist-style monuments - and claim outposts for natives, except they can be retaken by ‘revenge parties’. Rapel points replace Far Cry 3’s climbable vines, for instance, while still treasure hides in nooks and crannies waiting to be looted and sold.

Still, Kyrat functions just like the Rook Islands. It’s a place of new sights and sounds: an eagle carrying a bleating goat in its talons a man running screaming from a rhino a tenacious honey badger who won’t take 'Argghhh go away!' for an answer. You can almost sense the higher altitude, the thinner air. The region they call Kyrat, located deep in the Himalayas, feels more remote than Far Cry 3’s jeweled tropics. I buzz over a picturesque lake with flowery lily pads, a quaint stone hut village decorated with multicoloured flags, and an ancient shrine set in a mountain. It’s a place of new sights and sounds: an eagle carrying a bleating goat in its talons a man running screaming from a rhino.

Far cry 4 elephant hot keys pc