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Just Cause 3: Avalanche lays down its open-world manifesto

When your game is based around a one-man army capable of destroying entire military fortifications with a bit of string and some creative wingsuit manoeuvring, it must be pretty hard to know when you’ve jumped the shark.

Or, in avalanche’s case, nailed the shark to a gas silo and then riddled that silo with bullets until the whole thing explodes in a cacophony of red-hot violence. But the kitchen sink won’t be thrown at rico’s next outing, for the Swedish outfit is smarter than that… “a lot of things were on the cards,” says the game’s director roland Lesterlin. “The core goal is ‘what’s going to make the best Just cause 3?’”


“I mean there’s pressure from the press and from players,” he admits. “People say they want something… well our design team does a very good job asking the right question up front. When pressure comes down that says that ‘we need a really dense world with millions of collectibles everywhere!’ we ask ‘why?’”

For The Wing

Too many of the me-too open-worlds since assassin’s creed II (with the rare rockstar-flavoured exception) have filled themselves out with superfluous busy work. Lesterlin is keen to ensure that Jc3 doesn’t meander down the same path. “When you back off and start asking the right questions ‘why are people packing the world full of stuff?’ or ‘is the world not that much fun to move around in?’ well there’s a problem we should solve. Let’s make it fun to move around the world.”

We can testify after hands-on time with the new wingsuit: it really is fun. “When games give you that, having to stop constantly and look for stuff doesn’t necessarily become the most important thing.”

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