Hell Broke Loose - The Making of Far Cry 2 | Clint Hocking (Creative Director)

Today I’m talking with Clint Hocking, Creative Director of Far Cry 2 and Watch Dogs: Legion.

Clint has had a long and varied career in the video game industry, working on the original Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell series, as well as roles at Valve Corporation, Ubisoft, LucasArts, and Amazon Game Studios.

This is one of the most dense and thought-provoking conversations I’ve had the privilege of conducting. The way Clint thinks about video games — and how we, as players, engage with them — genuinely shifted my perspective.

We take a deep dive into the making of Far Cry 2, exploring the systems and mechanics that make it so distinctive, from its dynamic world design to its underlying philosophy of player agency.

The conversation also gets surprisingly meta. At one point, we unpack a deceptively simple question: should a character be able to pet a cat in a game? That leads into a broader discussion about player expectation, character consistency, and how small interactions can either reinforce or undermine a game’s internal logic.

If you’re interested in game design, player psychology, or the thinking behind one of the most divisive shooters ever made, this is a conversation worth your time.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

With Far Cry two, you were given a a lot of rope to either potentially hang yourself with or entire break or not.

SPEAKER_02 0:08

We really wanted to create a game where things could fail you, investing in things that could let you down. Your own body lets you down, you've got malaria, your weapons let you down. Like there's everything is very fragile. And even these relationships that you build, they can die. And then even if they don't, they don't, in the end, they but they also betray you. The world is agnostic of your survival. You're gonna feel it pushing back against you, and sometimes unfairly.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Hi there, my name is Stephen Lake, and welcome to the Examined Game. Today we're talking with Clint Hocking, the creative director for Far Cry 2 and Watchdog Legions. Clint also had a huge part in the Splinter Cell series, the original games, and he's obviously extremely creative in his approach to how he makes video games. Far Cry 2, as he refers to it as, is the anecdote machine of the series. There is so many moving parts of that game, very divisive, very immersive, all kinds of things that I wanted to get into with him about that game in particular, as well as gaming in general in this interview. It was very dense but extremely satisfying conversation. Please stick around and subscribe. Thank you very much. Thanks so much for joining me, Clint. I was uh really pleased when I sort of got got your response to my outreach. I mean, I obviously wanted to speak to you about you know gameplay mechanics and the way that those link up with trying to make the environment a kind of like workable, like realistic space for the player whilst also being enjoyable. But I'm always kind of interested to start off just hearing a little bit of background, you know, from you about you know your kind of early days of interest in play in general, whether that have been video games or books or DD or whatever. Sure, yeah, yeah. Usually someone's got a pretty good story behind like a moment where it's like, oh, this there's something to this. I'm gonna dedicate my life to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

Yeah, for sure. Um, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I started playing uh yeah, I did start playing DD uh back in high school in grade eight. Uh even before that, I think I had the I had the orange box as a kid, basic DD and not very many people to play with, but then started playing in high school and um still play with some of the same people today. Uh not DD anymore, but but uh another game, a game I made. Um but uh it was really uh through those friends and and our hanging out together and playing tabletop games and and then video games when they started to come along and be something that you could play at home. Um I got interested in early, early games, uh well, not super early. I was playing Ultima games uh as a kid growing up, um and then into things like Doom and and uh uh you know Duke Nukem and Thief and XCOM and Civ and stuff like that. Um and I remember uh when uh the first Unreal game came out, we were playing that, and uh and then Unreal Tournament came out and there was a level editor in there. There'd been a level editor in Duke Nukem that you could kind of putter around with, uh, a level editor in Doom that you could you could try to use was very, very opaque. Um but with uh with Unreal, there was a level editor, and Unreal Tournament especially. I started playing around with a level editor trying to build my own levels for for my friends. Um and uh and even you know, we'd play at lunch at work, and I would uh I would hack into the levels that we would play uh in in Capture the Flag and Deathmatch and like add secret portals and stuff in them so that so that we could uh we could cheat on each other during uh during the lunchtime uh deat matches so I could stop getting my my butt kicked all the time. Um but uh I ended up making a level for uh for an Unreal mod um way back in the late 90s, I guess, and and that level shipped as part of a release of a mod. And uh and uh then I saw posting for a job seeing if you you know do you want to make games on real experience would be preferred, and I was like, I didn't realize you could have a job making video games, and uh sent in a resume and and you know, six weeks later I'd moved from Vancouver to Montreal and started working on the first Splinter Cell as a level designer. So uh so yeah, I mean, just it was I was doing my master's degree in creative writing, I was studying independent filmmaking, I was you know making make working on sets with friends who were making their independent films, I was doing contract work in the web industry, but like the thing I was always doing on the side was tinkering around with with Unreal and building levels, and and it was just uh this weird opportunity that came out of nowhere and it's like cool, let's do that.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

That's a perfectly succinct story just from Abe right through to me. I mean and and I I you know, because the thing I'm always interested in is it's like why, you know, why games, you know, because not not necessarily in terms of work, but because but but the attraction to it, you know, it's the same for me. Like not everyone falls in love with video games or or you know tabletop, but for some reason there's something about it that just has so many more dimensions to it than music or movies or books, which are things I I love as well. But but I I'm still always trying to understand like what is it about that particular medium that draws certain people in.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Yeah, I mean, I mean for me, um I feel this especially when I play Minecraft weirdly. I love Minecraft, I think it's a a masterpiece. I think it might be one of the greatest games ever made. Um playing a game is a is uh is uh just gives you feelings of agency. And it's kind of a in some ways it bec can be a uh uh a proxy for having a life that's that you find frustrating or difficult or challenging. When you play a video game, you get things done. Like things happen, right? Um you you press buttons and things happen immediately. And you know, I think but to be clear, I think cell phones are the same thing, right? Smartphones, people people are doom scrolling because you take an action and you get an immediate result. This is just agency, sort of a very, very tight loop of agency with a small trickle of dopamine, right? But in a video game, there's obviously there's more attention, there's more goal setting, and in what I think are good games, those goals are bigger and more more self-um self-created. You have your own goals and your own objectives that you may be trying to complete. And just being able to relax when you get up and you have to deal with a world where nothing works, where where the dude needs you to move your car because the snow plows are coming, but you're shovel busted, and like all of the, you know, trying to make dinner and you're out of olive oil and like all of the frustrations of your daily life. Like in when you play a video game, you want to do a thing and you do it. And if you fail to do it, it's because you didn't do it well enough, and you just try it again until and repeat it until you get it done. It's very rarely do you have to deal with your your shovel being broken or being out of olive oil or these these or or you know the neighbors banging on the wall or whatever, or the power going out. Like these things don't, these interruptions and frustrations that bog life down don't happen in the same way in a video game. And that creates this feeling of I'm getting stuff done, and it's a release, I think. It's uh it removes stress, and I think it makes you feel productive and I don't know. That's why I like video games.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

No, I can relate and so I can work.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

That's why I like video games. So I can work.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

I mean, it just makes me think, you know, I I remember, you know, being a kid and playing like Ducas Arts, you know, point and click and growing up with things like Monkey Island. And there was this sort of, you know, based on where I was at and how I was doing at school at the time, like I felt dumb in real life, and then I felt smart when I was playing games. Yeah. Um and that seems like a this what comes to mind of what you're saying, you know.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Um Yeah, I mean, li life is life has a huge spectrum of challenges, and many things in life are just impossible, or the deck is stacked so highly, and many things are trivial. Like the life is full of all those kinds of that whole spectrum of different ranges of challenge, things that you can do and things that you cannot, and things that you're not interested in doing. Video games are just take a very narrow band of that and they give you challenges that are that's the whole point of a game, to give you a set of challenges that are in the space that are, you know, interesting but not boring and challenging but not impossible, right? So being able to be in that space, like our we're wired at a very you know fundamental level to get you know dopamine and engagement from being in that kind of space because it means we're getting better, it means we're optimizing for things that we can do and getting better at those things. It's it's existential, right? It's uh it's a it's a pure kind of joy.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

And are there games that just sort of come to mind for you that that you think just tap in? I mean, obviously you spoke about Minecraft. Um, and I think you know, maybe that gets the harder to pull off. You've got a very sort of strict sort of narrative or story or characters going on behind it, but just ones that you've seen over the last half many years that like nail it or get as close as one could possibly hope to get to nailing that.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

I mean, the obviously I have I mean, maybe not obviously, but I have a huge um love of what we call immersive sims from the beginning with Thief and System Shock and Deus Ex and then moving forward through the years, uh the Dishonored games, Prey, the Arcane Studios stuff, uh, you know, to a lesser extent, games I worked on, you know, Splinter Cell and stuff like that, tried to try to go somewhat in those directions. Um, I feel like, you know, for me, and you know, maybe that's a a 90s, a 90s video game guy uh aesthetic or something, but this, you know, the sort of uh looking glass school of game design, Doug Church, Harvey Smith, all these guys, these are these are my heroes and my friends. Um, this idea that you can take this this ludicness that I'm talking about, Bioshock, of course, I should mention, uh, just one of the most incredible games ever, but take this um uh this ludic um banding of of challenge and and engagement that I was talking about, but also put a narrative layer on top of that so that you're engaged with the stories and the world and and the story has some dynamism dynamism in it, and it feels like the choices that you're making are mattering narratively and if affecting relationships and stuff like that. And that's a thing that I think you know, one of the rare places in games where we can see, you know, steady progress over my entire career, right? Just getting better and better at that over over uh two almost three decades now. Um uh, you know, The Last of Us and and games like that really starting to make make narrative impactful in games, making me care about the characters. Um, this is really impressive. I played I played the Indiana Jones game. Uh I'm still playing it, actually, I haven't quite finished it. But uh it's just it's just fantastic. It's uh it's kind of an immersive sim that isn't too too broad in terms of it's you know, you don't have a character that you're building like Deus Ex or something like that. You're you're indie, which is great. And and the story's really interesting, the characters are engaging, but I have a lot of freedom in the gameplay, and you know, I'm I'm also in my 50s now, so it's not quite as challenging as maybe games were when I was when I was in my 20s, so it's uh it's great. I you know I love it, it's a masterpiece.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

I love that game. I absolutely love Indiana Jones, you know. And again, you know, and I I don't know how interested you are in, you know, if you're anything like me, something that I was thinking about 20 years ago. So if you obviously, you know, the ludonarrative dissonance um writing, and I guess I'm interested in, you know, and you talked about a few games there, and actually The Last of Us comes to mind as an example, specifically the ending of that game and and you know, the the way that Joel reconciles um it's a it to me is an example of something where like the character doesn't go off, you know, uh that there's a sort of a blending of story and mechanic there, right? Because yeah, the violence that he he goes ahead and and enacts is uh it's the same as what he spent the whole game doing, right?

SPEAKER_02 11:54

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. For me, for me, I think maybe there's a sometimes a false interpretation of of ludonarrative dissonance, which is that the player that the player's freedom is still um primary. And I don't think that needs to be the case at all. In fact, I think it's not the case. Like it's kind of uh just because a care uh uh just because I could do something doesn't mean Joel could do that thing, right? Um uh and I think there's uh you know the idea of you know early Splinter Cell where you would get uh you know game over for killing people, or or even I think there's maybe some thief missions and stuff like that, where if you get detected, it's just game over and you just have to reload the game and go on. Like that's that's that notion's always been there. It's like this is how we can enforce the boundaries of the simulation and and you know, not everything degenerates into you know absurdity um just because it can. At the same time, it's great when games do that. It's great when games have super serious subject matters, and it's okay if you're you know teabagging people and doing goofy stuff and making videos and finding glitches, and like you can play you can play games and you can be serious about it, and you can play with the game seriously and and try to try to map your intention and your your role playing and try to experience a character and a and a and a space and a role and a and a domain of action that is coherent. You're kind of walking in a character's footsteps, and at the same time, you can play with a game and treat it as an object and and you know manipulate the game and push at its boundaries and its thresholds and try to find the space that it offers, uh, whether intentionally or not. And and in reality, we're actually always doing both things at the same time. No matter how strictly you're trying to role-play Joel or how or how goofy you are at trying to push at the at the edges of a simulation, you're still doing both. You're still playing the game and you're playing with the game. Our brains are able to manage that that duality at the same time, right? When you're when you're playing uh on the football pitch, you're both playing the game, trying to win it, but you're also playing with the game in the sense that you're trying to trying to get advantage, you're trying to you're aware of the rules, you're aware that the rules are arbitrary, it's it's part of it's part of what play is.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

And I guess with that in mind, you know, and and whether there's a particular example be, you know, split to cell or far cry two or whatever, or game games that you yourself have played rather than made. Like what is what is the player, you know, what are you trying to get the player to experience with that? You know, what is what is the payoff you want for them to have? I guess that they're again they're not they're not gonna get with a movie or a book or a song.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

Well, I mean, i again, it's it's feelings of meaningful agency, right? Like that's and to me that's what the value is of the value of uh immersing the you know, you you have meaningful agency when you're playing chess, right? And that's great. And it's a vi but it's a very intellectual exercise. You're not thinking about whether the the bishop has betrayed the queen, right? Like whereas if you make a movie about a bishop betraying a queen, this is you know, this is hot potentially high drama, right? Uh but when you play uh uh Far Cry, Far Cry 2 or whatever, you know, you have relationships with characters that you've built and invested in, and mechanically and ludically, but at the same time they have a certain personality and a certain kind of flavor, and and you're you know, they they come and save your life. And so the more the more you can believe in this human um wrapper that we put on this narrative uh wrapper that we put on things, the more you invest in it and the more credible it feels, and the more um um, you know, I don't I don't like to use the word realistic, but the more the the more you're convinced that these characters are people with their own agency, um, the more you can feel like um I don't want to say more human emotions, but let's call them more um um higher level or uh emotions, like more less less abstract intellectual emotions like you feel when you get when you lose it football, um, but more like the kind of emotions you feel when a relationship has been broken up or gone well, right? Like these kinds of human connections, I guess, is what I'm trying to get to. Um and I think that's a that's a really interesting place for us to be able to explore in this medium. Obviously, like n novels and film are almost exclusively about exploring these kinds of human in interpersonal dynamics, right? Games have to work a lot harder to get from uh uh chess and checkers and you know simple tabletop games to get all the way to the last of us. That's you know, it's uh thousands of years of effort for us to be able to explore those kinds of things ludically. Um and and you know, as a consequence, falling out of that, we also have things like DD, and we also have things like uh uh you know werewolf and and and and secret Hitler and and games that do allow us to play with interpersonal human dynamics at a table uh in a way that is revealing of those things and also skirts the edges of uh like it's not really my friend that's betraying me when I'm when I'm playing, you know, Secret Hitler. It's a person playing a role and I'm playing a role and we're trying to manipulate the situation and all that stuff. But you know, if you've ever played diplomacy, like those things can feel very, very, very personal when when when they disc when you know when conflict arises. Um so you know, being able to have real human um interactions, uh real human emotional connections in a video game is something we've tried to accomplish for for millennia, and now we can kind of do it, and it's great when it works. It feels really wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

And I guess I'd love to hear, you know, I don't I don't know how SicQuive I've talked about Far Cry too, but I think that's the issue when you create a game that is so uh uh resonates so deeply with people when they first got to play it. I know that was certainly the case for me. Sure. Like how how what were the challenges that you were facing there to try and get as close to what you just described with it within that game? And I I guess I'm interested to know what the parts are of that that you really feel like you know, and I uh from anyone I've spoken to, and I count myself on this, like any project I've worked on, I can always see where there's room for improvement. That's the easy part to but to focus on to focus on the bit where it's like okay, we took a punt at something and we actually we pulled it off or we got really close to it. That's that's always interesting to hear about.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

Yeah, I mean, oh man, we really wanted to create a game where um where things could fail you, right? This feeling of um investing in things that could let you down. Uh so your body, your own body lets you down, you've got malaria, your weapons let you down, like there's everything is very fragile, and even these relationships that you build, you you know, with the narrative factions, right? You're working these factions, you're playing them against each other, and of course they betray you and turn against you and again and again, and uh so you're part of that that whole dynamic and that problem as well. But also the the buddy characters that you rescue and and you know they're there to back you up and save you, so they're you you become dependent on them to some extent uh mechanically in the game. Um, but then also when you know in the end they they they can die, and then even if they don't they don't, in the end they but they also betray you. So, you know, there's this feeling uh trying to create this feeling of of how I don't know how sinister uh the world can be and how punishing it can be, and how it's not, you know, it's could the world the world is kind of uh agnostic of your survival. You're just there and it's a it's a hard place, and you're gonna have to do hard things to survive in it, and you're gonna feel you know you're gonna feel it pushing back against you, and sometimes unfairly. And I think uh I it was a really like creatively challenging place to explore because it's very, very dark. You know, I don't I'm a pretty cynical person, but even I'm not that cynical. Um so so to try to go into an even more cynical place, um yeah, it was uh it was a really interesting game to make. It's the game I'm most proud of, so I'm always happy to talk about it. Um uh it's the game that I think is uh um most successful at at what it's what it's trying to be. Um uh and and and is you know is most clear about what it's trying to be. And so so yeah, I'm pretty proud of that one.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

I think that's the great way of putting it. It's the most clear you know, about being what it's trying to be. Right. Do you you know, and so what is the thing that you hear most about from players in relation to that game?

SPEAKER_02 20:55

You know, they talk about the the most thing you're hearing um Um, I mean, a lot of people talk about how uh well it's sort of what I was saying there about how the the world is kind of unforgiving, um, how the game isn't kind of holding your hand, the game's um the you know, I think it's a hallmark of a of well, I shouldn't say a good game, but I think it's an interesting design choice to have a game that really um is kind of agnostic of the player or the systems operate in the way that they say. Now, obviously, I think you know fire propagates very, very quickly in this game, and you can get caught in your own you know your own burning inferno, right? And you know, we could have done a more realistic simulation of that, but it would have been less interesting. The fact that it's like that makes the world more dangerous. The fact that you know the the way explosions and fire propagation and just chaos propagation in general happens makes the world significantly more dangerous than than any real world could be. But I think like that's possible. And then you kind of have to surf in that chaos. And there's a certain kind of cynicism and and and um nihilism that comes from um getting into that pattern again and again and again. Um and I think that's sort of the what we're trying to suck you into. You know, we know our inspirations were were like heart of darkness and stuff like this, or would, you know, in retrospect, maybe some problematic inspirations. But still the point is, I think, like trying to put you in this very dark space that sucks you into this kind of nihilism and this kind of um um um yeah, this kind of spiral of of violence and and you know, darkness was um was what we were trying to do, and I think we succeed at it. And I think the you know, a lot of players for a lot of players that resonated. It's like I didn't know you could do this. I at that time, I think a lot of players were like, I didn't realize you could do make a video game that was this sort of sinister and this sort of um bleak.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

I was just interested what the yeah, exactly. And the sinister and bleak, but to sort of not but to be able to have players want to sort of like carry on carry on through that rather than it becoming too heavy for them to want to pass.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

I think a lot of players at the time, I think a lot of players had grown up playing games that kind of celebrated the you know, the rah-rah, gung-ho, you know, we're we're the cool good guys with the guns coming to save the world from the bad people with the guns kind of thing. I think there was a uh an increasing sophistication of the thought about you know what some of the representations in our medium were bringing, and I think it kind of maybe came at the right time with a game that kind of questioned those things and and um put those uh allowed you to to have conversations about those topics uh maybe that weren't really relevant prior to that, and I think that was a you know a good timing for us.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Is there something that that that's happening with like the the the pre-production of a game and the development of a game that's gonna sort of set up an opportunity for that sort of cultivation to happen? Because, you know, there's there's so much opportunity to do that, but there's also plenty of games that are never gonna be given that kind of shot because they they must, you know. I'm not saying that's that's right or wrong, but stay within a certain constraint, right? But it feels like with Far Cry 2, you were given a lot of rope to either potentially hang yourself with or yeah, yeah, yeah, entire break or not.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

For sure, so for sure, um, you know, um when a game let's say a game franchise gets put on a certain train track, right? Where you're got sequels every you know, some number of years or whatever, um, the opportunity to just um really refactor core stuff about the game is is it's maybe not there. Um uh and in our case, you know, we'd you know, Ubisoft had acquired the Far Cry brand and there was engine stuff, and for whatever collision of reasons, you know, my team ended up in this context where we had this engine, but we had the time to transform it from the you know the the Far Cry engine, the cry engine of old, which was kind of had very large levels that were very open to a real open world engine where you would be able to you know uh dynamically stitch those levels together into a into a true open world. And that was kind of a first for a first-person shooter, and we had the opportunity to build that technology and to think about the consequences of that technology and and also other things in parallel fire propagation, how we would how we would use um you know a much more dynamic environment and how we would struck like structure even very low-level stuff like memory and and streaming and stuff like that to be able to support those things. And if those decisions, decisions about memory allocation and streaming and procedural generation aren't aren't made once once your engine is your engine and you have to make the next game in two years, you can't change those decisions. Like they're just baked into the way you have to make the game. Uh, so we were able to make some of those decisions for our for our own purposes, and obviously that unlocked an enormous uh opportunity for us. I don't think we were even uh I don't think even I was fully aware of it at the time, but of course, had we been required to just use the engine as it was, uh the game would be different. The game would be different.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

And I guess I'm interested then, you know, because obviously the we'd say with Far Cry the series has gone on to sort of do quite different things, but I'm uh are there places in which you sort of I mean I want to come onto this separately, but like animals play a play a big part in in the series, right? Yeah but where you've seen um the franchise sort of iterate in any ways around what you you pulled off in Far Cry 2, or or in in in other games, or where you may have spoken to developers that have played Far Cry 2 and it was sort of a a big influence what they wanted to go on to try and achieve.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

I mean I think I think Far Cry 2, there's there's something that we call at Ubisoft the anecdote factory, right? And I think you sort of see the be the birth of that maybe in Far Cry 2, this idea. I remember the I remember during development, I think it was at our you know our first playable, we had a one square kilometer open world, and and maybe or maybe it was after that, maybe it was more towards alpha, when we had a lot of the world together and we're sort of refining and iterating. And we had different places you would go and different missions that were in different stages of development. And I remember we had a a a milestone, I think, and or maybe it was just a meeting, and the chief creative officer was there, and we're playing the game and talking about the game, and he's running around and blowing stuff up and you know, having fun. And at one point he put down the controller and he looked at me and he said, Uh, as though he'd sort of just figured it out, and it was fantastic. He said, You know, when I when I play your game, I come to, you know, this ridge and I look down on this enemy encampment, and I make a little movie in my head of what's gonna happen uh what I'm gonna do. And then I go down into the camp and I get into a gun battle with the enemies, and the movie that I get is completely different from the movie that I had in my head before I ran down into that valley, and it's better. And he said, That's the that's the most important part of this game, and and you should make the entire game that. And I and I you just said it so perfectly. I was like, that's yeah, that's your that's exactly what I experienced as well, right? That's a and that's what we're trying to do is have this game that almost comes to life in this sort of chaotic nihilism, right? This this chaotic nihilism that you evoke, it appears in the world like a genie that you have to like wrestle with, right? Um, and and I think it's a wonderful, wonderful thing. And that came to be called that Ubisoft, I think the anecdote factory, or it's sort of the the nascent part of it that then I think in Far Cry three and Far Cry Four and Far Cry Five expanded in all kinds of dimensions, including you know, flaming rhinoceroses and like flying vehicles and helicopters and like all the crazy stuff that got layered in on top of it. Um but I think the the the kernel of it, the birth of it was was definitely in in Far Cry 2.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

I think it's such a testament to that kind of emergent gameplay, and I think about because it's exactly that. It's like you I mean there are games where to to give someone that kind of cinematic vibe, you can only see it through like a quick time event, right? Which is like heavily controlled, and then it makes you think of like The Last of Us Two, which is happening in a much tighter space, but when all hell breaks loose, I'm I'm engaging with that world, but I feel like I'm watching a pre-rendered uh scene because it's so uh I mean it was that game was almost too evocative for me, you know. Sure, sure. Yeah, um and just another question came to mind. So you're talking about you know, you're working within an open world, and it's like a sort of stunning world as well, right? And I guess I was interested, was there any thought going into the this idea of the world, you know, when you're not in the chaos, when you're not in the fight, players being able to use it as a quiet space and take in and live and breathe in that that you know very wild, you know, absolutely nature environment.

SPEAKER_02 30:50

Absolutely for sure. Um it was super important that the world felt beautiful. Part of the part of the cynicism of the game is just the is the the violence that you're perpetrating, not just against the enemies, but against just the world and and nature and all of that stuff. Part of it was a lot, a big part of it is this contrast, this calmness and this sense of beauty, this sense that you walk around a corner and you see a valley and everything's you know, the sun and the on the grass and the trees shifting in the wind and some zebras walking around or whatever, like this feeling of like, ah man, this this is so beautiful. And you know, we had all these tools to make this stuff, and and it was just constantly beautiful, constantly. And we even just playing the game ourselves as we're building it, walking around a corner or walking over a rise or hopping out of a jeep and you know, climbing up on some rocks, and suddenly like, oh man, this is this is gorgeous. Like how wow. Uh now, now let's go. And then 10 minutes later, you're walking out of there and it's a smoldering crater of full of carnage, and it's like, wow, like that's pretty that's pretty bleak, man. Like uh it was it was definitely important.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

It was definitely important. I mean again, I and I feel like you you know pulled it off because it it's so interesting, like those much older games, you know, like I can't even think of an example, but I mean even any any game, like say Sonic, you know, there's a certain space once I've cleared of enemies, you know, I was so I had such a a strong yearning to kind of like feel like I was inhabiting a peaceful space. Um, because a game like that, once you bring about the peace, the game's over, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

I would sit in and I would I would sort of live in that, you know, with the the palm trees and things and little immersive things that you could go behind the box and I don't know, role play that as a table or something. I think we're I mean we sort of desire that so strongly as players.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

Yeah, I think one of the things that it's fun, you know, probably probably most people played the game on PC, but uh I was very focused on console development a lot. And I think one of the big differences between the PC version of the game and the console version of the game is that in the in the console version of the game, you actually have to go to those um those safe houses that you unlock to save the game. Like you cannot just save the game, you can't just see the valley, go into the valley, destroy everything, and then quick save, right? There's no quick save. And and maybe the maybe there was an option in PC where you could turn it on or off. I can't remember exactly. But I do think what you're talking about, um yeah, you you clear a level than whatever Donkey Kong, Sonic, Mario, whatever, you're on to the next one. There's not much point in wandering around in it. Um, but I also think you get that feeling is just from a quick save. Like once I've once I've cleaned this place out, I press quick save. Now it's almost like there's no reason to care about this. But when you clear the enemy compound and it's things are quieting down, and you're like, okay, now I have to get to a safe house, or I have to do all of that again. And it might not go as well next time, right? So there's this feeling of then you walk around the corner and it's somewhere calm and tranquil, and there's this feeling of this actually matters. This calmness and tranquility matters. It's not just a post-level completed state, it's uh it's part of the continuous world, and I kind of appreciate that it's quiet and empty and beautiful as I try to sneak my way back to some safe house or whatever to save the game. So you care you care about the state of the world as opposed to you know putting your bookmark in the page with your quick save, and now it doesn't matter anymore because it's it's rendered safe.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

I think that I don't know if you you know play Hollow Knight or Silksong, if that's your kind of game.

SPEAKER_02 34:42

I I play those vicariously by watching my son uh play them. Uh he's he's he's great at it, and those games just kick my ass way too bad.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

And the same with my stepson, like literally. But it but what comes to mind is like the benches in in both those games, you know, and I'm sure I mean it's it might be even more perilous when you're watching someone play it, but you know, you know that that he's you know he's just collected up whatever I forget what it is, you know, the the pearls or coins or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And you sort of now got to get back to that that safe space, right? And yeah, when you get there, the the I mean I think they should have called that game bench hunt because because that's basically what you're you're doing, right?

SPEAKER_02 35:23

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, I think I think there's this, you know, um I I forget who wrote it, but someone wrote this essay. I think it's called The Rights of the Reader or the Reader's Rights. Like, of course, readers, readers of a book, right? Are are they allowed to just not finish your book. They're they're allowed to skip the pages, they're allowed to read the end first, they're allowed to put their bookmark everywhere they are. Of course they are, and we all get this, and that's fine. Um, maybe there's societal structures of like, oh, you shouldn't read the last page first, you're destroying whatever, but that's all that's all pointless, right? Um, but I do question, and it's part partly it's this playing the game and playing with the game dichotomy. I have always questioned this idea of the quick save and the and the save anywhere um notion. And yes, there is this idea of readers' rights or players' rights, like it's my fucking game. I paid a bunch of money for this game, and like like I don't necessarily want to replay this section if I fuck it up. Uh I just want to be able to move on. Um, but at the same time, you you do risk losing as a designer, anyways, you lose a very powerful tool for being able to shape and experience and and I don't want to say um deliver a message, but like you know, um have the player experience the thing you're trying to get them to experience, the thing you made the game for in the first place, right? And if they can just kind of save crawl through it, um they they can miss that part. And you know, again, it's the it's their game, and I I understand the arguments for allowing save anywhere, but I also have always struggled with with uh with that idea because I think it it can really it can undermine the it can undermine the thing you're trying to accomplish.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

I guess I wonder, and again, maybe because the example is something like Silksong or you know, Hollow Knight. Well Silksong maybe because that's even harder, right? Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:20

Like what do you think they're you know, what is what is the the the feeling that they're trying to get players to feel with the the that strong desire to sort of find find that bench and the Well yeah, I mean it's I mean yeah, I mean it's it's it's this feeling of exploring this world, unlocking this world, um uh feeling this sense of increasing uh mastery, this increasing sense of um uh how do how do I call that? This increasing sense of control of the space, right? Um these are really great and powerful feelings. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

I think there's something, you know, because any game like like silk song, you know, we usually say the bench is a safe point. So if the if the the the character and the story is gonna be abandoned by me, it's gonna happen there at that point. You know, so so for me, Hornet is still sat on a bench, yeah listening to the singing of the the merch and not progressing with you know getting rid of the oppressive powers that dominate the land as they're just chilling on the bench.

SPEAKER_02 38:27

Yeah. I mean I also think just from a design perspective, it's it it allows um control over the over the flow between those spaces, right? Um if you always know that the player's starting from a bench, right? Um you you don't need to worry about what happens if they've kind of gone halfway through a thing and then they're picking picking up a uh chunk of uh le exploration or or level design kind of halfway through uh um you know with half their health or like you know, like you you always you're always controlling for the chunk as opposed to some arbitrary arbitrary length of that chunk, which is helpful, I think. Helps you give helps you make a tighter design for sure.

SPEAKER_00 39:10

And I guess, you know, and it brings up all kinds of things like the typewriter room and Resident Evil, or you know, just you know, and say with Far Crow 2, it's not necessarily like safe, a safe space, right? But but those environments, those moments that are gonna sort of like cut players a break and just let them breathe in the environment before they inevitably go off to sort of continue with the stress and peril and whatever else that they're facing.

SPEAKER_02 39:39

I think also, you know, uh in in open worlds uh you know, maybe um in an open world like like like like uh Hollow Knight or whatever or Far Cry 2 where uh there's this feeling of building a building a network of of safe of safety in a sense, right? Like it may may or may maybe more or less it's certainly not just because you have two safe houses in Far Cry two doesn't mean it's safe to go back and forth between them necessarily, but like uh just this feeling that you've you've constructed something, you've built something that you can then fall back to for resources or for to save your game or whatever. I think this is a a helpful thing if the world is is overwhelmingly hostile. Right. I think one of the one of the criticisms of Far Cry 2, because you know we landed, I think, I think we shipped the same week as Fallout 3, right? Like it was a week of games that started with FA, where the the F shelf in Fable came out the same Fable 2 or whatever came out the same week. So it was like the F section of the of the video store was was filled, spilling over into the G's. Um but uh um we came out at the same time as as as um uh Fallout, you know, and you know uh Oblivion had come out a couple years before or whatever, so there was there was pretty strong conception about what an open world meant. Uh and open worlds are not always hostile, right? Uh there's characters in them, and you can talk to people and they give you quests, and you know, there's you know all kinds of stuff going on in these open worlds, but the the open world in Far Cry 2 is just purely hostile. It's purely hostile. And I think that um that surprised a lot of people. They thought it was gonna be, you know, a first-person shooter version of uh of an Elder Scrolls game or something like that. Um, and it's just not like there's nobody waiting somewhere to give you a quest. There's nobody uh there's no shops that you're uh unlocking as you find new settlements. It's just you leave a couple of very strictly defined safer, and they're not even entirely safe, safer areas, and everything in the world is trying to kill you all the time. Uh, and I think that surprised a lot of people. Um, but again, it's part of the part of the tone and the feeling we were going for. And and at the same time, like our argument was it's a first-person shoot. Like everyone tries to kill you in doom, like that's that was our benchmark, right? Like, uh, but yeah, I think some people didn't anticipate that.

SPEAKER_00 42:06

Oh, that's so interesting. I wasn't aware of that. Yeah, you know, that that misconception. I think I love that phrase network of safety though. And it's sort of I mean, I don't want to get too meta about it, but I think you know, in real life, I like to think about you watching your son. You say it was your son, right? Yeah, yeah, playing video games. And it's like my, you know, my safe space when I was a kid was playing, you know, Snares around 64 and knowing my mum was there, you know, and yeah, yeah. She didn't need to be watching, I just need to put, you know, she was like, and that was like, and then within the game, I don't know, so that you have a safe space for yourself that's away from the bullies from school and all the crap that you're gonna have to contend with the next day. You went for a virtual world, and then there's the peril within that, and then there's another safe space, yeah. Within that virtual world, it's it's safe spaces all the way down, really. But and I think and I think it comes back to that question I I asked you at the very beginning. It's like, well, why video games? And it's like there was something so um is the therapeutic's not the word, that's that's totally the wrong word, but there was something so I don't know, safe and and comforting about them. I don't like the word escapism because I feel like that wasn't representing what I was doing. I wasn't trying to get away from anything, but I just felt calm and uh controlled and and easygoing when I was when I was playing these games, and you know, there is so much, you know, it it is a and I'm not talking about like walls or whatever, but just interpersonally, it can be a hostile world, especially when you're a kid. Yeah, right. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, I think any any opportunity to sort of like um get away from that and feel like you've got some presence and agency is so so crucial for someone.

SPEAKER_02 43:47

Yeah, that's what I was pushing at at the beginning of the conversation. This idea that games give you this feeling of agency, like the world can feel so frustrating and so disempowering, um, maybe hostile, more certainly more for some than for others. brothers but at the end of the day like for me it yeah playing a game allows you to feel and it sounds really sounds really utilitarian it sounds like I'm a workaholic I I probably am but like it like it's a a place where you can get things done and you can feel productive and that that feels almost sick to say it that way but like it feels good to not have the the frustrations of the world um just blocking you all the time and it's that's that's you kind of feel a peacefulness as you as you accomplish things in a video game exactly that um so it's a sort of a hard pivot but you know I want to talk it's this it's not we'd get there naturally but you know let's just like because I guess let's go to the questions now but but um you know that tone control interview you did and you spoke about the the animals in Far Cry and I heard this this years ago um and it always stuck with me and I kind of just want to get you at least to start if you could sort of reiterate against like all right so what was the what was the issue you were butting up against with the animals in that game and what was the problem you were trying to solve well um there wasn't an issue at first we what we knew we're gonna make a we're gonna make this sort of African themed world and so you know you have to have zebra and you have to have gazelle like you just they they just have to be there um water buffalo and all that stuff so okay cool and we decided pretty early you know we're not gonna be able to have you know lions and predators that can hunt these animals and build this you know um like ecosystem of of animals you know predators and prey and all of that stuff we would have loved to but there's just not a wasn't feasible um but um uh and then there was some pushback um about from the company about you know whether we should whether killing animals was problematic and we didn't think so like you know it's it was uh it's part of it's part of the simulation but there was some pushback and some pressure to say oh you know you should killing animals is gonna cause problems for us so you shouldn't be able to kill animals and we said you know this is this is ridiculous for all kinds of reasons and we tried a few things like oh I can we just make the animals like intangible and then of course I'm driving my truck and there's a bunch of zebras in the road and I just drive right through them and it just looks ridiculous and ruins the sense of immersion in the whole or or there's some stampeding water buffalo through a field because of a fire I started and they're just running through and you know running through my character it just was terrible and just to be clear when you say intangible you mean as in as as in no collision. Like yeah they just you just pass right through you. And then there was you know versions where we said okay well they're just in indestructible like they just don't they they're indestructible. So again the same and these are just iterations like it's not like we spent months on this we're just like well okay we'll just make them not collide. Okay well we'll make them indestructible and remove their hit points or whatever. And so and then you would be driving your truck down the road and there'd be a zebra and not even standing in the middle of the road just standing on the edge of the road and your the corner of your truck would clip his nose and your truck would just go bang and like flip over the zebra standing there. Like it like he's made of stone right and and you're like what the fuck happened it's like oh I guess I clipped the zebra and it stopped my truck dead and like uh and so okay we can't do that. And then and then it was like okay well here's some of the problems I'd you know you'd take a you'd take a flamethrower and light the grass on fire and it would blow across the field and there'd be all these zebras standing there eating and the fire would just go past them and through them and they'd just be sitting there pretending to eat the grass that's not even any there any longer. We would you know drop mortars in the mortar launcher and shell fields of of beasts and they would huge explosions, trees would be blasted into into sticks and the grass would be flattened and everything would be on fire and the animals were completely unharmed. It just made it just so ridiculous and there was no solution to it and really in the end we just said look like like I think when we first in the beginning like shooting animals there would be blood splatters and they'd make sounds as they died and fell over and I don't think they had death animations they just ragdolled but like um we decided uh you know if if if if killing animals is gonna lead to our players that that was a concern I think lead to our players sort of taking a perverse joy and wandering around the world shooting animals um you know maybe we should maybe we'll just neuter some of the feedback. And that was sort of the approach we took like I don't think there's any blood splatters now when you when you shoot animals in Far Cry 2 they don't make any any noises. I think they all have one hit point so literally like any any damage at all and they just ragdoll. And then the ragdolls also don't like you know you can't like you know run over the ragdolls and have them bounce around and look all goofy. And you know I mean obviously by Far Cry three they just went full on you know kill animals and skin them to make um you know big bigger wallets for your for your character like whatever um uh you know the the tides of uh the tides of game development uh are constantly shifting but I guess like if if we wanted to get in get away from any concern that we were uh we were gonna have a bunch of perverse um idiocy online as being representative of of what the game was I think we we neutered that by just neutering all of the feedback and and just making it not interesting to fuck around with animals. And I think you know I think it's fine. I think it I think it's uh the the point of the game isn't to go and and hunt animals. The point of the game wasn't to do goofy stuff with ragdolls uh playing this playing playing with the game is fine um but I I kind of agree I don't really would wouldn't really have wanted the legacy of Far Cry 2 to be a bunch of like look at look at the weird janky zebra bouncing on the hood of hood hood of my vehicles as we drive down the road um simulator um so you know it is what it is was was there ever a plan to have them be like interactable bit beyond that like that you could I think we did some yeah we did some designs you know as as we were struggling with this with this concern that was raised from you know editorial and playtest and the team and whatever trying to find solutions to it there were designs for being able to pet them or like being able to feed them stuff like this uh this was just a bunch of work like does this actually solve our problems like I don't know um you know there was a bit of exploration that was done um but we just ended up with the simplest the simplest solution that served our needs I think you know and exactly like you said then that that series and a lot of other games then went on to the next phase which was yeah like making wallets out of animals and then I think it's been iterated on even th further where like if you don't have a pet mechanic in your game yeah um at this point people will sort of notice it um and feel like there's something lacking. Yeah. Yeah for sure I mean uh definitely with the the you know far cry came out in 2008 like it's the same year as like Facebook or something right like it's uh now the internet is full of like you know cute animal everything right anything that's got cute animals big eyes like uh petting and and you know cats that you can that carry around and walk on your shoulder or you know having a having a dog as a sidekick uh uh have it you know you make a game where you play as a cat and you can walk up to people and you know press Y and they'll pet you and like you know it's like it just the the internet just goes infinitely deep on on any kind of memeable cute animal stuff. So yeah it's uh it's a definitely a different world than it was in 2008 right.

SPEAKER_00 52:01

And do you think I guess it sort of points a bit to a slightly larger you know idea around you know how in games you know you often have a very limited sort of verb set right it's like you you often shoot and you jump you know and again that like like uh you know say like if you're watching a James Bond movie and he just went and did all this heroic stuff and then he saw a cat and then the only thing he thought to do was like shoot it you'd think the guy was like a psychopath but for some reason in like in video games like we can do all of this behavior it's the same there's a sort of the same disconnect I think that I remember feeling it with um uh Grand Theft Auto Liberty C you know Nico's attitude and then he'd go and like run down a bunch of people um but I guess you know I think the pet mechanic is a really nice example of trying to like increase the verb set in a game yeah where a player still has the option to act like a psycho and like shoot someone's cat but I think more often than not and it it also makes you think about say like games like Fallout where you have a moral choice and no matter how much you want to play as the bad guy people tend to veer towards the contrasting to do. And I th I'd like to think that more people pet the cat now than than shoot them if they can.

SPEAKER_02 53:20

Yeah I mean I think so I think again it goes back to this question of like of of of player rights and is player agency the most important thing right like um um it the I guess the the way to ask this question is is like is is Joel a cat person or a dog person? Like would you make would you make a a Joel that can so it's a purely hypothetical question. Let's say we think that Joel's a dog person whatever like maybe Joel can only pet dogs. Maybe he can't pet cats right like and I think that would be an interesting design choice. He likes dogs doesn't really like cats you can walk up to a cat you know maybe Ellie can pet a cat or something maybe she's a cat person. I think this would be an interesting design choice. Joel doesn't pet cat you can't pet cats when you're playing Joel because Joel doesn't like cats. Like that's just who he is right um uh so you know when certainly when I'm playing a game and especially in a you know uh Fallout uh in a in an Elder scrolls game where I'm making my character maybe I'm a priest maybe I'm a demon hunter maybe I'm a barbarian maybe I'm a scholar or whatever like I should probably I should probably have freedom to decide whether I'm the kind of person who pets cats or dogs or not right like that should maybe be my decision but and in a game where I'm playing a character who's you know authored in a really specific way and has really sp you know a really specific persona I'm not playing me I'm playing some kind of hybrid of of me in that character. And yeah I don't know that it's interesting to allow um the character to to pet or shoot cats uh necessarily um so yeah I mean I think these are these are interesting questions about what what are we simulating when we're making a game especially a game that has an avatar who has a persona who's well defined who who in the end may be forced by the story to do things that maybe you the player wouldn't want to do like killing people and or saving a person or or whatever right um it seems absurd to then say yeah but he should be able to pet cats like what if he doesn't like cats like I never thought I love that idea about you know the yeah limiting or and it it's not the exact same thing but it does make me think about the end of Red Dead Redemption 2 when you take on John Marsden and you lose the entire function of the ability to swim because in Red Dead 1 he couldn't swim and so that's you're sort of locked off from that because you know the satisfaction of that.

SPEAKER_00 55:49

He doesn't have that skill yeah it surpasses whatever frustration you might have from the fact oh I can't swim anymore. I know it's sort of a little up time again hard pivot but I did and this is also a big jump in time as well but I did want to talk a little bit about what you're sort of doing now in terms of you know this this migration to sort of tabletop and it sort of it feels a little bit like it's a I mean maybe it's not full circle. It's something you've been doing playing your sort of whole life but yeah you know um what's what's the sort of gravitation towards that and what is the sort of satisfaction that you're finding from from leaning into that particular medium.

SPEAKER_02 56:21

Well I mean um so yeah I started making my tabletop RPG that's called Mythmaster RPG I started playing it I made it for my son when he was like three I wanted to play a tabletop game with my son um because I thought it would be good for his imagination and good for math and good for spelling and good for creative thought and improvisation all these things um and we started when he was three the rule there was four pages of rules um and then you know as he got older it got to be eight pages ten pages there was a a creature I started making creatures and keeping them and I started you know then there was a book of NPCs and then I started making a world and it just grew and grew and grew and grew over the years um playing with him and some of his friends um you know at different stages sometimes we'd it would lie fallow for a while at one point I had four books uh that printed you know I'd go to the the Kinkos or the office you know shop and I'd print you know 11 by 17 page book format and staple bind them and I had four books there was a couple hundred pages of stuff. Then the pandemic came along and uh and so with you know video conferencing like this and you know online tools uh online whiteboards and stuff I got back in touch with my friends who I used to game with and said hey you guys want to game since we're basically all stuck in our houses now and we all started playing together and then the games were in PDFs which was really not the best way to like you know access rules when you're playing online. So I taught myself JavaScript and I moved everything to HTML and like you know made huge and then playing with a bunch of people that I've been playing with for decades who were very let's say expert players they really pushed out the boundaries and helped me balance the game and tune the game and it just got a lot better. So it you know it just has been growing naturally and and you know the reason I like to keep working on it I taught myself to code in order to like put it all into JavaScript and stuff. It's just it goes back to what I was saying in the very beginning to kind of put a bow on your on your interview here like being fantastically convenient if you could do that. Being able to make stuff being able to really you know I work as a creative director I have a huge team of hundreds of people I'm very different distant now from actually checking stuff into the build uh but being able to like um sit down and make things again and code and like you know make changes to my game systems and my rules and then play test them with my friends on the weekend and then they give me feedback oh this spell it's it's OP it needs to cost more it needs to have the radius reduced or whatever it's like I can just go and fix it and push it and and update it on the site. And so getting back into this immediacy of doing stuff and feeling agency in the creative process uh you know uh I like playing games but I also have always loved making them for exactly the same reason because the it's this very iterative process where you do things and you see the results of your consequences uh of your decisions with the players and then you you fix them and you keep refining until you have something that's great. You get better and better at it as you go. And that you know being able to make my own game for myself has been has has and for my son and for my friends and for his friends he's now a you know a a dungeon master uh with his group of friends um it's been just enormously rewarding it's my it's the peaceful it's the you know I wish my my my mom's in the in the picture up on the corner back there uh and so she's kind of in the living room not maybe not necessarily paying attention to me working on it but you know it's uh it's it's my safe space