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Do you remember that time in Far Cry 3 Jason Brody accidentally set fire to a truck, only to have it careen down a hill into an enemy encampment, crashing into a crudely constructed tiger cage and serendipitously unleashing the trapped beast upon his unsuspecting foes? That one instance he made a daring escape from a pursuing mob, swan-diving off a waterfall mid-explosion moments before being devoured by a hungry crocodile? Or how about that unforgettable evening when, outgunned and outnumbered, he used a Komodo Dragon to clear an enemy encampment, simply because he was all out of bullets? You don't recall any of this, of course, because these incidents are entirely unique to my save game. Every single person to have visited Far Cry 3's lush island setting teeming with infinite emergent gameplay possibilities comes away with their own collection of tales with which to regale their friends, like worn personal snapshots tucked safely inside their sharkskin wallet. Without exception, the best narratives to come out of the Rook Islands were the ones that players created on their own. The 'real' canon story that Far Cry 3 revolved around - the one about Jason Brody and his privileged dudebro buddies becoming embroiled in a native insurgency - was perhaps the most widely criticised aspect of an otherwise universally acclaimed title. It's unsurprising, then, that Ubisoft's answer to this in its sequel, Far Cry 4, is to ensure that the tale of its protagonist Ajay Ghale, returning to his native homeland Kyrat in order to scatter his mother's ashes, takes something of a backseat so that each individual player's actions, and the resultant anecdotes, can come to the fore. Far Cry 4 is your story, not Ajay's.
"We set everything up to give players as much freedom as possible," says the game's creative director Alex Hutchinson. "Obviously Ajay Ghale has a backstory, but he's there more as a character to propel you into the world. We're more interested in what you do, how you feel; he's more of a silent protagonist than a talking head."
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