As he wraps up work on his fifth Far Cry game, Dan Hay says one of the most important lessons he's learned is not to let previous games interfere with the creative process.
"A lot of the times when you're working on a brand […] you'll have a lot of people who will tell you 'this is what Far Cry is so this is the box you can build it in.' The moment you think like that, the moment you're doing a disservice to what it could be."
- Far Cry 5 game director Dan Hay shares the number one lesson he's learned while working on Far Cry.
Rather than set Far Cry 5 in a far-off country, Ubisoft's latest game in the longrunning series takes place in a fictional county in Montana. The decision to set the game a little closer to home builds on one of the major lessons Far Cry 5 game director Dan Hay says he has learned during his time with the series.
Speaking to the Telegraph, Hay explains that it can be easy to cave in and keep your game development ideas contained within a 'brand box', limited by the kinds of games that may have preceded your current project.
However Hay, who got his start with the series on Far Cry 3, says that it's important to keep brands flexible because otherwise developers risk limiting themselves and doing a disservice to the worlds they've created.
"I think, if I had to take away one thing, it's that a brand that has the ability to be flexible, and has the ability to say yes to ideas that people might say other games wouldn't support is powerful, I think there's real stuff there," explains Hay. "I think that this brand has an opportunity to have new creative ideas and go in directions that are surprising and amazing, and do stuff that we haven't thought of yet, and that excites me."
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