Shack: The original Far Cry had a pretty dedicated mod community. How do you plan to support the mod community with the Far Cry 2?

Clint Hocking: Obviously we're going to have multiplayer, but we're not really talking too much about multiplayer. But we're also going to have a map editor. One of the really great things about the Far Cry console games is that they had a really usable map editor. It wasn't super powerful in the way the Crytek engine was or the way our Dunia engine is. It wasn't full featured like that. But it was really usable and it allowed people to create very good maps very quickly.

So we're going to have a map editor that's sort of a version two, upgrading all of the functionality in that and integrating a lot of fan requests. And then we'll have a much more robust community support platform to sort the wheat from the chaff. One of the things that was problematic in the Far Cry console games was [players saying] "I made a test map with a ladder and a box. Does it work?" And then you load it up, and you call it Skull Map, and 1500 people download it for 15 minutes--and it's an empty map with a ladder and a box. So we'll prevent that.

Shack: Are there plans at the moment to bring the game to consoles or just PC?

Clint Hocking: That's a business decision for Ubisoft. My team and the guys I'm working with have a mandate to make a PC title. So that's up to Ubisoft if they want to go down that path.

Shack: What do you think of Crytek's Crysis?

Clint Hocking: I can't wait to play it. It looks really cool. They made really different decisions from us. I think it's really hard to compare the games, but the reality is, if not an open world, they have a non-linear world in the way that the original Far Cry did.

We learned a ton from the original Far Cry and it would be stupid to say we can't learn a lot from Crysis as well. We have an advantage in the sense that they ship in November and we'll have all played it by Christmas and we'll be able to come back and evaluate it and see if there's anything more we can do.

Shack: Did you look at the directions they were going and purposefully try to do things differently?

Clint Hocking: I think a lot of our stuff was really determined before they were even announced, honestly. When we first started to put together our European press tour, we sat down and said, "Okay, what are the core messages we want to get out?" And we came up with a list of seven core values.

We were looking at them, and we went, "Holy fuck." And we went back and dug out the old documentations from our first three days of brainstorming, and one of the first things we did was come up with huge lists of analysis of the core values of Far Cry.

We picked out the ones we thought were the most important, and we rated them in order of importance. Six of the seven core values we had decided to communicate among that press were six of the top eight from that list from day three. Those were really what we decided on day one what we wanted to do.

It took us a couple of months to come up with Africa. That was the hardest part for us. How do you make a game that's exotic and you've never been there before? The tropical island is so perfect.

And the reality is, once you've been there in all these other games and all this other media, it's lost that characteristic. It's not exotic anymore. It might be cool, it might be fun, it might be awesome, it might be beautiful, but it's not exotic.

You feel like you know your way around. You're comfortable there now, which is not what we want. We want you to be a little bit uncomfortable and nervous and afraid. When we came up with Africa, that was when we knew we were really transforming everything, and that's when pieces just fell into place like Tetris.

Shack: I noticed on the Far Cry 2 developers blog it lists your favorite game as System Shock 2. Have you played BioShock yet?

Clint Hocking: [Laughs] No, because I went to Leipzig the day before BioShock hit the shelves, and I purposefully didn't download the demo because I knew I would play the demo and then have to wait like three weeks before I'd get a chance to play it.

I would play System Shock 2 again just like that, in a heartbeat. It's such a great game. And I'm really really really excited to play BioShock. I was hesitant when I saw it at E3 a year and a half ago because I wasn't sure they would be able to make what's a really esoteric art direction and really esoteric themes accessible, but I'm sure the game is just selling like crazy, and the really high reviews can't possibly hurt. Good for them. I can't wait to play it.

Shack: Could you draw any comparisons between BioShock and Far Cry 2 as far as making moral choices that have an effect on the gameplay?

Clint Hocking: Oh yeah, absolutely. Our game is jam-packed with that, for sure. Just by simple merit of the fact that a lot of the characters' lives in the game are literally and materially in your hands, and your life is in their hands. You build relationships with them actively.

I think in terms of how you build relationships with characters and how that all works--I'm just playing it now for the first time--I think Fallout 2 is a better example. Because these characters are characters that might be in your game, they might not be in your game, they might join your group, they might not join your group, they might live, they might die--it's up to you. It's not like that in System Shock.

Shack: Is there an expected release window for the game?

Clint Hocking: First quarter of 2008.

Shack: Thanks for the interview.

Clint Hocking: My pleasure.