"I can't even be showing you this. You're totally out of the demo area. But the world is there."

Is it ever. Lead artist Alex Amancio is taking us off the beaten path near the end of my look at Far Cry 2. I see thatched roof huts, brightly colored graffiti sprayed across the walls. Sun-soaked stones line the clear river behind me, a jagged cliff to my front. Far below is a yellow grassland that stretches on for miles. A few convincing water buffalo stand grazing off in the distance, a shot right out of No Country.

Variety is the key to understanding what Far Cry 2 is about. It's a full menu of a game, a long list of cool features, interesting twists, and surprising detail.

That detail seems to permeate every facet of the game's design. Every area is richly textured and wholly different from the last. Every enemy has a totally unique appearance. Every weapon degrades and ages over time.

It is fitting that a shooter based on presenting the player with options has spawned two very different sequels. With an open world of 50 square kilometers, a branching mission-based plot powered by a GTA-like cellphone, and an engine built for cross-platform performance, Ubisoft's Far Cry sequel is a wholly different take on the concept than we saw with Crytek's Crysis.

And while I definitely enjoyed Crysis for what it was, Far Cry 2 is shaping up to have far more gameplay potential. Registered users can use the HD Stream.

My time with the PC version started in the middle of a jungle, but by the end, I had seen river canyons, swamps, savannas, dusty camps and tribal villages. Technically speaking, Far Cry 2's modeling is perhaps a little less staggering than Crysis'. Artistically speaking, it's like comparing one painting to ten paintings.

"We basically built the engine from the ground up to be able to create this open world," said Amancio, speaking at a rapid clip, clearly excited about his game. "It's a 50 square kilometer open world game. It's streaming, so no loading. Everything is dynamic. The plants that you're seeing, the animations, they're not animated--this is really procedural. If there was to be a storm, and the wind would kick up, you'd have branches breaking off--the trees would react."

Like Crysis, you can shoot the branches off of trees. Like Crysis, you can choose to attack enemy camps using a stealth or straightforward approach. Like Crysis, you can drive vehicles, and pick up enemy weapons, and shoot people.

But that's where the similarities end. Unlike Crysis, this game is about anything but linear progression, island environments, and aliens.

Amancio tells me that the team at Ubisoft decided early on to go for a more realistic, grounded world than that found in the original game. "As soon as the mutants came out [in Far Cry], it sort of lost its interest," he said. "Because it was really stealth, Rambo type game, then all of a sudden you had to empty four clips into this pink thing that's charging you."

To that end, Far Cry 2 is set in Africa, deep inside a country that has been ripped apart by civil war. Your long-term goal is to find and kill the Jackal, an elusive arms dealer that has holed up in the area.

"It's this collapsed country with these two factions that are fighting eachother," explains Amancio. "[The Jackal] is allowing this conflict to continue. So you have to find this guy to kill him. But to get to him you have to sort of befriend both factions, play them against each other and gain information as you get closer and closer to this guy."

On the way to locating the Jackal, the player will be tasked with completing a number of optional missions, each slowly progressing the story no matter the branch that is chosen.

"The story is non-linear," said Amancio. "And it's not like those types of games where they say, 'Oh, we have a non-linear story,' and it's like, 'A or B--which way do you want to go, left or right?' Our game is sort of a pattern of different events, and everything reshapes itself depending on what you do."

The first thing I did in the demo was receive a phone call from Frank, an Irish ally holed up inside a nearby safehouse. Your character carries a cellphone on him, and missions can be accepted or amended via the device. Parallels to Grand Theft Auto are impossible to ignore.

After reaching the safehouse, I let Frank give me his spiel with a press of the "E" key. There are no dialogue trees in Far Cry 2--when Frank offers a job, I could either hit "E" again, or simply walk away.

These safehouses act as their name describes, allowing you a moment to take a breather. It is here that you can use the stopwatch to accelerate time, turning it to night or day depending on your current preference. Darkness provides for greater stealth, but you'll have a better view of the enemy during the day.

Other allies that you have rescued during the course of the game will hang out inside, offering you missions or help. You can choose to play as any of the nine allies, even Frank himself, and the remaining group will simply populate the game--like Warren, a tough-guy who sat in the corner.

Elaborated Amancio: "I could go [into the safehouse] and shoot my buddy in the head, and what did he have to say to me? I'll never know. But the game will evolve, it will sort of adapt to that.. If you play it twice, you can have a totally different experience."

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