Ubisoft Montreal creative director Jason Vandenberghe Far Cry 3 dominates and where are first-person shooter after a decade of Call of Duty title

Where are going first-person shooter? They are becoming more interactive Michael Bay films are glorified, or can we expect to improve deeper experience than graphics, AI can be deepened and designers more self-confidence by creating functional open world environments?

Last week, we have a preview of Ubisoft 's promising continued running, Far Cry 3, Jason Brody, a man of mystery, which is found on a deserted island full of modern-day pirates follows. As with other titles in the series it 's an open-world shooter, providing players with multiple routes through the lush tropical surroundings.

But what does this mean design approach to the game content, and as shooters become more realistic, as will change gameplay? To find out, we spoke with the Creative Director of the series, Jason Vandenberghe, of some interesting ideas on how to adapt games in the coming years, has ...

Thus, in Far Cry 3, the hero washes up on an island and finds a bunch of thugs with AK-47s. Who are these people and why they are killing people and throwing them into the sea?
Ha! We 're not too much to talk about the narrative moment. But this time, you 're playing a man named Jason Brody - we wanted to create a modern hero, someone who' s in this age of technology grew up, who 's the world we' re in just now - a native of the 21st Century - and you 'll learn more about how you go. You see, that he 's has a camera with him, and that implies certain things. But when he chooses the AK-47, it 's not the first time he' s dealt with a gun, and not the first time he 's lives. You 're going to get more details about who he is getting.

So you 're with the island as it' s often employed in the literature, as a place of self-discovery?
If I come on and work with a brand that I really want to understand how it works. What 's the emotion that we' re you going? And for me, Far Cry is all about a fantasy I call Man Alone. It 's Robinson Crusoe, it' s Castaway, it 's any environment where I' m cut off from civilization, and I must rely on myself to survive. If I 'm facing the darkness - whether' \ s Monster, villains or loneliness - I 've, that has to be overcome by learning more about who I am. This is a strong human myth and it 's one of the reasons the original Far Cry so hard hit. I want to make sure that 's what we' re in Far Cry delivers third

The rather crazy pirate leader you come across, Vaas is interesting. You don 't tend to make real individuals in shooters these days - it' s all fast respawning archetypes ...
You 've nailed it. I think game designers have got a bad habit of beginning and ending with archetypes in their writing - it 'sa mistake. When we started Far Cry 3, we thought, fuck archetypes, we want to talk about realistic people. So we sat and pondered all these different characters, we didn 't think the context, we have just said that we' \ ll talk about how we 'll later she. We built two or three sentences that we really fell into it, then we have occupied actors. And then, what we didn 't do is to say' here 's your character, make your line as the ". We told the actor 'we throw you, because we really liked your performance, we think you' re really talented - now what would you \ do in this situation? " We asked them to dump their darkness on the floor.

Actors love.
Yeah! We said, show us your inner madness - then you get that You get Vaas. This happens only if you trust your players - if you have a development team that 's willing to take a risk, can the actors do, let the mo-cap manager on-site decisions that will affect the game are to design ... I think the results speak for themselves.

That sounds like a pretty standard approach to many directors in the film industry. Is it really does not happen in movies?
The reason why we 't see that very often in games, because we' don \ ve to much with actors such as a crank, that we in turn used to produce the drama. That 's okay if you' re looking for is just melodrama, if you 're not looking for a true performance - but we still need more. We want this feeling ... This character is an archetype of reach. He 's bad, but he' s people - that is 's what we' re looking for and it 's very difficult to achieve. It requires a creative discipline, you must make sure that you re 'opinions do not feed as an actor.

And on the subject of believable characters, developers often make the mistake of thinking that good AI is all about technology, about what they crouch behind cover at the right time. But there 's more to make it safe?
Yeah, it 's bullshit. What we want in our AI is believable human fighter - we want to believe that they 're people with guns who are trying to kill me are. At the end of the E3 demo, if the player takes off in the helicopter, there 'sa man walks in from a corner, and when this right - and it' s system so doesn 't always play the right way - "oh shit" but this guy is \ currently have, he 'll be surprised completely. We have a lot of stuff where people make mistakes. AI opponents that human error is to make a lot more interesting to play against. We 've invested a lot in this kind of thinking. And if these differences in our behavior we can change for different types of people. And then, suddenly, instead of AI classes, rather than archetypes, it 's more like well here are the guys who aren' t trained very well, these guys are trained quite well and those are the guys that are really deadly - and the player can see So you can see it in the way they move.

Far Cry 2, you need to take some responsibility for the local population, you have to be heroic. If this is the case in Far Cry 3?
That 's actually an essential part of the Man-alone concept. I think the reason the Robinson Crusoe fantasy works is that Crusoe is a nice guy - if he is a crazy homicidal maniac, he wanted only to hide the bodies, well, that \ it was decided, is interesting, but not the 's a heroic fantasy. With our guy, he 's will have the opportunity to be heroic and' s what you 're doing it - you have to decide, I am that hero? And what are the consequences of these actions? But we 're not even going to say, do you want to be evil? That 's not where we' re going to the Far Cry third

What do you think about this idea of single-player and multi-player experiences merging into one? It seams to be becoming a favourite theme, especially after the cult success of Demon's Souls and the whole "Autolog" concept.
It 's fascinating. You can see a point in the future, where everything blurs together \ and we re no longer 'the choice between the two at the front end menu. If you 're in the future and to see that you' re not alone - there are a lot of teams working on das. It 'sa nice thing, it' s cool. In a way reminiscent I 'm the days when we no longer have to install games on a PC worry - the levels of technical limitation. I want to just play the damn game! This split is this dichotomy, as the system remains over from this period. I think it 'll even be solved in the future. That says nothing about Far Cry 3 yet!

Do you have ideas with the Assassin 's Creed-team?
Yes, in fact, the creative director of Far Cry 3 is the game director of Assassin 's Creed: Brotherhood and the lead designer of AC2, he' blessed to be working Sat fantastic talent, I 'm him. He 's bring in many of the tricks of the trade, but he' s not trying to 'Assassin Ify' Far Cry! We have also Jeffrey Yohalem, the writers of Brotherhood, which is fantastic. That 's one of the great things about working in Montreal - have access to all these world-class talent.

And you also have a strong philosophy of game design at Ubisoft ...
Yes, that Ubisoft is a world leader in terms of understanding the science and art of game design - and how to merge these two together. The tools that we have ... I 've been working at EA and Activision, and the understanding of what good games is 10 times greater than here. It 's still very difficult to build - great understanding doesn' t necessarily a guarantee for you 're going to make it right, but it certainly helps.

It seems as though the system at Ubisoft isn 't over teams dictating how they should be making games, \ it' s about the team when asked about the title, they 're asking to create, and about the achieve what they want ...
That 's absolutely correct. I retire to the fact that this is a French company. The French have to create a complete devotion to the artistic process and the need to provide a safe space to work in. You respect for designers and how designers - to help it 'sa willingness to create tools, rather than saying what you This should be done. I think it makes it unique, like a business. And you 'll find that culture in Ubisoft. It would be cool to be a few years down the line, able to write a book about it. It 'sa clean environment. Unique in the industry.

Are there any games do you admire now?
It 's hard to pick. One of the great things about the games industry is that we continue to learn and absorb from one another, we 're with this ongoing conversation, it' s really healthy. What 'the conversation that \ we set s with LA Noire, at Modern Warfare, the way we can credibly say people in games now - - this is what we think' specifically for Far Cry, "again with some performance capture is re definitely over the uncanny valley we crossed 've it!

Well, some games, maybe ...
A few are still stumbling around. We 've got at least a rope! If we still get a rope across, we can build a bridge, then we can all get on the other side.

This is the most elaborate metaphor I 've in an interview for some time to listen.
Ha! So we 're standing on the other side say, okay, do what we do now? Now that we recognize a human performance using a real actor, we can now put a believable human face in the game, what we do with it? How do we integrate that with games? We all remember the disaster to try to create interactive movies - we don 't want to repeat those mistakes, we want to ensure that gameplay is king. When we say interactive narrative, we need to focus on interactive. That 's the bleeding edge. Even with Far Cry, about our world and open our streaming technology, and again we have \ ask 'constantly, you know how to make a world where the player can go anywhere? That 's an intense conversation, and it' s done for a longer period.

Another thing that 's amazing to me how this industry involved with a linear shooter. Man, they 're really dedicated to her - it' s very strange to me.

It's a safe recipe, I suppose, people look at Black Ops and think ooh, 20m units, I'll have a piece of that.
I guess it seems safe to people, but if you look at the number of failed straight shooters seem doesn 't very safe for me. I think it 's sure to be another ship and sending a Modern Warfare Battlefield is a good idea, but how many others you will play? Sure, it 'sa big market, but this is a type of game, and I don' t find that very game-like - they don 't feel like games to me. The reason why I 'm so excited to be working on Far Cry, it' \ sa game, it's really a game. It's not pretending to be something else, it's not trying to take you on an action movie adventure - we're creating a game that has a compelling narrative inside of it. It feels like we're doing the thing that other media can't do instead of trying to interpret the success of movies in an interactive way.

It seems that is a real fear to let go exploring in the industry and ultimately develop the players lost in an environment ...
The sales are small, aren 't they? Oh wait ... Apart from Grand Theft Auto and Dead Red Redemption ... and, oh wait a minute, actually there 'sa giganticTo do market to players! I think we 're fool. I 'll put it like this - it' s more scary to try to game developers, a game in which players take to introduce the experience. Because what if they fail? What if they don 't like it? Even if we give them that responsibility, they could fuck it up, and that means they might not like your game.

While the corridor-based first-person shooters don 't give the players all responsibility?
Exactly. If I make a storyboard of a game, and I have a storyboard in front of a focus test, and they say, "dude, that sounds great!" Then I 'm pretty confident I' ve got something good. But if you 't storyboard it, you just have to trust - trust and doesn' t go very well together with millions of dollars in investments.

I 'm hoping, however, that this is something that can be solved in the next few years. I 'm hoping that the corridor-shooter just a trend, and that to win an open world is ...
My honest opinion and I 'm not a prophet, that the corridor shooter represents a specific period of time - we were fascinated with him for a decade, because we are on technology that have focused on pure rendering speed. Now we 're at the point where it' s is better in the future, but so much better. We 're almost to the point where they start games will look like this world. Soon we will be \ re not 'be able to say "hey this game looks better than the last one" and have people buy it. Now we \ re using ', to explore the gameplay feel. We are always going to have those linear experiences - people enjoy a rollercoaster, it's fun. But what we're also seeing now is the re-emergence of the other half of the market - which I like to call video games.

So in this, isn 't treat it to a growing importance for the human characters differently? At a time of performance capture and, increasingly, "realistic" AI, developers must begin to give us a sense of moral guilt in the game world? Should every person we shoot with this world?
It 's already. As we begin to put a credible human characters in a game, the instant human reaction is, now I feel weird to shoot him: I didn 't when he was a caricature, but now that he' sa real guy, I have an emotion, if I put a gun to your head ...

Last year, there was an interesting conversation among the academics on Gamasutra, about the difference between player morality and player ethics in gaming. It was pointed out that if you're measuring player responses, if you're providing consequences for the choices that they make, if you're saying to them "hey do you want to be good or evil?" - players will never in that situation, play their true value. They will play the morality that they want the world to believe they have.

So we must learn how to do ethical decisions for the players and that we did not measure its impact - it must be only between you and the game. It 's incredibly difficult to do - it' s risky, it 's mature, and it requires a level of emotional sophistication. It 's something that we hope, not third in Far Cry \ We see 'll. But what we 're talking about here is the next decade. The next decade of development will be about what are the consequences of controlling real people in these situations? The typical brash approach to the characterization and humanity won 't work, as it doesn' t in the film because they 're real people. We can still go ahead and create games, don 't work that way, but they' ll have a different appearance have ...

Even at the moment, with games that offer a degree of moral choice to do, the players often think "okay, this is the right choice?" This will I be rewarded?
Exactly - they '\ re-gaming it. If you give a consequence, they 're always the game will Game . The only times in games I've made an actual moral decision were in situations where there were no consequences to my action. If I'm on a mission and there are civilians around, and if I can shoot those civilians and I'm not being measured, you know what? I never do. I never shoot them. That's who I am. I'm not saying that's good or bad, I'm saying I'm referencing my own inner ethics in the game - it's teaching me who I am as a person. That's fucking cool. We have potential here ...

. Far Cry 3 is due in the spring of 2012 on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360