FAR REACHING

Twenty years ago, FAR CRY changed the landscape of PC gaming forever.

- Rick Lane

In 2004, the first-person shooter reached the zenith of its popularity. PC gamers worldwide were buzzing with anticipation for two massive games. In the left corner was Doom 3, id Software’s first entry in the series for a decade that looked set to deliver a revolution in graphics technology. In the right was Half-Life 2, the preposterously inventive sequel to what was generally considered the best shooter ever made. Already titans of the genre, both sequels promised cutting-edge visuals, new advances in FPS storytelling, innovations in physics and interactivity, and of course, mind-melting action.

But there was another shooter released that year, bearing no such pedigree, that you could argue was ultimately more influential than either of these games. Set across a lush archipelago of tropical islands, Far Cry blew a gaping hole in the FPS’ corridor constraints, showing the world the sandbox potential in hitherto the most linear of genres. It spawned not one, but two of the most successful first-person shooter series of all time, and helped pave the way for the modern open world game as we know it. It may even have changed how games were made, ushering in an era of faster, more dynamic game development.

All that, and it was created by a team barely out of school with zero professional experience. “Our team had absolutely no clue how to make games,” says Cevat Yerli, founder of Crytek and Far Cry’s director. “And [I was] asking them to compete against the very best in the world.”

CRY BABIES

Far Cry’s story begins, fittingly, in the Maldives. In 1996, Yerli was visiting the island on holiday. “I was lying on the beach and it was boring. There was nothing else to do,” he says. An avid gamer and hobbyist programmer whose favorite game at the time was the