Shack: Is part of the challenge just the fact that you're designing for an open, natural environment, rather than a more shut-off, corridor-based shooter?

Hardy LeBel: Yeah, no question about it. No question. To make something that looks plausible, and still reads and has good flow..

As an example, you can take--again, apologies to the Halo guys for this--you can take a science fiction setting and put glowing arrows on the floor, and nobody is going to complain about that. You can not take a fishing village in Africa and.. put glowing arrows on the floor. [laughs] You just can't do that, right?

So what we found is that we have to rely on a bunch of other techniques to enable players to find their way through the space, to navigate it, to understand the space, understand it spatially, and be able to navigate through it horizontally and vertically, yeah, it was an incredible series of challenges. And the natural setting with lots of complex geometry, plus weather, plus lights, it took a lot. It look a lot for us to get that.

Shack: Were you always designing the game with the map editor in mind?

Hardy LeBel: Oh sure. Absolutely. It's been such a major focus technologically, and from the long-term goals of the product, that we've always been thinking, "Wait 'til they get their hands on this." It's going to be cool to see what they can do.

Shack: It seems like all of a sudden, a huge number of high-quality games are focusing on user created content. Spore, LittleBigPlanet, you guys.

Hardy LeBel: Well there's no question that, you know, if you can find a way to harness the creativity and the passion of your audience, and have them make some kind of contribution to the product, it's a win-win across the board. Because it's satisfying creatively to author this kind of content, and not only that, you also get some good levels out of it.

And so it's no question that Spore, LittleBigPlanet, and our level editor are coming from that same kind of philosophy of finding ways to include the community with that passion and that creativity.

Shack: Any plans for downloadable content?

Hardy LeBel: Oh yes. Although I doubt I'm authorized to make any kind of announcements about that, but watch for premium content.

Shack: Will there be DLC specifically for multiplayer, though?

Ubisoft Representative: We're not making any kind of announcements about that today.

Hardy LeBel: [laughs] Like I said.. watch for premium content.

Shack: [laughs] Okay. And how about modding on the PC? Is that going to be an option for people?

Hardy LeBel: Well I think right now what we're interested in is seeing what the community produces with the tools as they go out the door. With an engine that is as flexible and powerful as this, we fully expect that--you know, who knows what's going to happen down the line. We'll see.

Shack: As I was playing earlier, I managed to upgrade my weapons to the point that I was just blowing people away with a zoomable grenade launcher. It was fun, but I'm wondering about balancing. I assume there are checks in place to keep that from getting out of hand?

Hardy LeBel: Yes. Yes, there are terror weapons available to every class. And the goal of the [leveling] scheme is to really give everyone access to their own version of the terror weapons, and let them have fun with them, and use them and exploit them. But yes, there are incredibly powerful weapons across the board, and part of the reason for that is that they're super fun.

Shack: But throughout a session, will there be any incentive to go back to the introductory weapons?

Hardy LeBel: Oh, that's another question. We deliberately designed the data structures in the game so that there are advantages and disadvantages to every weapon in that kit. On first blush you may not necessarily perceive what the value is, but multiplayer design--and again I'm sorry, the design lights go on and I'm like "design, design!"--so multiplayer design from my perspective is so much about trying to shape player behavior, more than dictate player behavior.

So one of the things that I enjoy is to build more complexity into the data structure overall. There are absolutely significant advantages to the lower level weapons in the matrix overall. And I think it's just kind of up to players to see what those advantages are, and explore them, and make their own decisions.

Yeah, the [multiple grenade launcher] is super fun to use, but its reliability as compared to some of the other lower-level weapons is remarkably low. So maybe you don't mind if your weapon jams two or three times as often as everything else. But if you over time find that it does, and you get ganked because of it, as you're enjoying your terror spree launching grenades, maybe that shapes your behavior. Maybe it doesn't, maybe you'll just switch to your secondary weapon. But that kind of complexity is deliberately designed into the matrix.

Shack: Are you planning any kind of clan system on top of matchmaking?

Hardy LeBel: Um, I don't know, off the top of my head. I'm not sure what's in there right now. I know we had plans for clan stuff, but inbetween gold master [some things have changed]. I've got my fingers crossed.

Shack: Thanks Hardy.

Far Cry 2 is set for an October 21 release on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.