Far Cry Primal will be launching spears and extinct species of tiger into our eyeballs soon enough, with an announcement only coming towards the tail end of last year and a release date of March 1st for us PC folk. However, the lack of co-op has proved a sticking point for some, as it’s one of the most beloved features of Far Cry 4 and adds the loving gunfire of a friend to what can be slightly boring story missions. Ubisoft community manager Jason Paradise took to the Steam Forums to explain why.
How is Far Cry Primal looking up against the other upcoming PC games?
It turns out that Far Cry Primal’s co-op was decided against quite early in the process:
“We are focusing entirely on creating the best possible Far Cry experience for our fans. Bringing the Stone Age to life and providing players with a strong gameplay experience based off of the Far Cry legacy meant we had to reinvent our core gameplay loop. This was definitely not a small undertaking. Our focus was on delivering this fantasy which required clear priorities for the team. Therefore, in the early stages of the project, we made the difficult choice of focusing our efforts on the single player experience.”
It clearly isn’t something they wanted to take out, but Primal differentiates itself significantly from Far Cry 4, much more so than that did from 3 or Blood Dragon. However, it seems more like a time issue, where the dedication to a near-yearly release schedule for Far Cry has meant the cutting of a great feature. As you’ll see in replies to the thread, it’s one that many players were keen on too. In fact, purely anecdotely, most of the no-caveats praise I’ve heard for previous games in the series has involved playing them with mates.
On the other hand, I’d rather these big franchises with 18 month release schedules varied their output than did the same thing every year for the want of back-of-the-box features. Primal’s the most interested I’ve been in a game with “Cry” in the title since I realised how bad Crysis was. That’s because it’s different (and also I get to tell a sabre-tooth to sabre-tooth the hell out of people), and co-op was never my bag anyway. No friends, you see? Where do you folks stand on this?
Thanks, VG247.