Far Cry 4 switches its action from the tropics to the Himalayas, but most of the basic building blocks are still in place.
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Kyrat is a beautiful country. Its landscape is filled with wild and colourful foliage and lush green acres stretch out for as far as the eye can see. The sun spreads its fingers over the rolling valleys and up in the mountains, mist skims off its snow-capped peaks. Wildlife frolics in the long grass, majestic ruins pockmark the landscape and sun-bleached beaches beam off every shore.
In fact, Kyrat would be the perfect place to take a holiday… if it weren’t run by a bleach-blonde psychopath named Pagan Min who happens to be engaged in a long-running civil war with a resistance group called The Golden Path. Then there’s the fact that The Golden Path is splitting down the middle between those who value human life and those who believe lives need to be sacrificed in order to bring down Pagan Min. Oh, and there’s a large portion of the local fauna that are eager to eat any tourist who wanders into their vicinity.
It’s a good thing that anyone heading into Kyrat will be armed to the teeth. 
In Far Cry 4, you take on the role of one Ajay Ghale, a native of Kyrat who’s come home to scatter his mother’s ashes. Once there he quickly becomes embroiled in Kyrat’s conflict and lands firmly on the side of The Golden Path, the insurgent group ranged against Pagan Min’s dictatorship. In our hands-on preview we didn’t get a chance to see Far Cry 4’s unhinged, Joker-suit-wearing demagogue, but we did get to meet Amita and Sabal, The Golden Path’s leaders, and it was here that the game threw its first curveball at us.
The Golden Path’s missions splinter the narrative. Through their conversations with the movement’s heads, you soon learn that Amita and Sabal have very different ideas about the notion of liberation. 
Amita is quite willing to sacrifice citizens and operative in The Golden Path in order to gain intel on Min’s operations. She’s also of the opinion that The Golden Path should take over Min’s drug-running business, since it’s the one of the only resources Kyrat has. Sabal, for his part, thinks that collateral damage is too high a price to pay for Kyrat’s freedom and he wants no part in Min’s drug distribution business.
The developers say that the story will deviate depending on which NPC you side with. If this is the case, Far Cry 4’s replay is pretty much doubled, which is intimidating given the size and scope of the game. You could literally lose weeks in there. We didn’t have time to dig too deeply into the narrative – after all, five hours at the controls of a Far Cry game is barely enough time to scratch the surface – but we did have the chance to get stuck into a ton of side-quests and activities, which sucked hours off our life.
Far Cry 4 offers a couple of new spins on its blockbuster predecessor’s template, but Far Cry 3 fans will find a lot about Ubisoft’s new open world FPS quite familiar. You unlock locations, collectibles and quests by clambering up and hacking radar towers. You can collect plants that you can mix into drug cocktails, conferring brief boosts – such as increased speed or the ability to hold your breath for longer underwater. You’re encouraged to shoot and kill pretty much every single animal in their environment and skin them. This enables you to craft bandoliers, wallets, syringe pouches and the like, which increases the amount of equipment you can carry.
You also open up fast-travel locations and weapons caches by taking over enemy outposts. There’s an open ended approach to doing this, as there was in Far Cry 3; you can stealthily creep through a camp, dispatching foes silently and this will earn you more XP, or you can simply haul out the hardware and go loud. Once you’ve taken over an outpost it becomes a base of operations, filled with treasure chests, weapons lockers and vehicles for you to use. 
Talent trees are back, but in Far Cry 4 they take the form of ‘Paths’ rather than the nifty tattoos of Far Cry 3. Skills are split between ‘The Path Of The Tiger’ and ‘The Path Of The Elephant’. The former is a list of offensive attributes – which include reloading while sprinting or more accuracy from hip-firing – and the latter are mainly defensive – adding an extra life bar and more healing power from health boosts, for example.
So far, so Far Cry 3. But aside from its multi-tiered story, Far Cry 4 has a couple of new features to bring to the table. First up is the Microlight Chopper. Once you discover this versatile flying contraption it’ll pretty much become your go-to mode of transport through Kyrat. It allows you to travel between destination points as the crow flies and, if you don’t mind briefly losing it, it enables you to easily unlock radar towers. Land a Microlight on the roof of a tower, drop down a level and you’re able to unlock a tower without having to work out how to climb up it from ground level. 
You can also ride elephants and in spite of the fact that they move slower than your average vehicle, these pachyderms are worth saddling up on. They can move off-road at a clip and they’re also useful for squashing any enemies in your vicinity – be they human, animal or vehicle. Any NPC that even tries to give you grief can be tossed into the nearest tree by their elephant steed – provided, of course, you’ve unlocked the requisite talent tree node to ride one.
Early Verdict
The basis of Far Cry 4 still remains a explorative run-and-gun affair, much as it has been in previous entries in this series. The nuts and bolts of Far Cry haven’t been changed all that much for its fourth installment; there’s very definitely an ‘if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it’ atmosphere to the proceedings. It’s almost as though Ubisoft are content to stick to a lucrative business model than run the risk of losing audience numbers by genuinely trying any innovation.
If that’s the case, who are we to criticize? The fanbase wants what the fanbase wants and judging by the preorders, Far Cry 4 ticks an awful lot of boxes. This game isn’t re-inventing the wheel for the franchise, but it may offer enough variation to keep the punters glued. And hey, you can ride and elephant! What’s not to like?
Available on: Available on PS4 (previewed), Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3 and PC
Far Cry 4 release date: November 21
