Over the course of his career, game director Clint Hocking has launched just four titles: Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Far Cry 2, and Watch Dogs: Legion. Over the decades, many would claim that Hocking’s best game is Chaos Theory, often labelled as the perfect stealth experience, but Hocking believes his best game is one of his more misunderstood releases: Far Cry 2.
Speaking to FRVR in a recent interview, which will be released on our podcast series in the coming weeks, Hocking explained that he doesn’t believe Chaos Theory is his best game. “I’m just happy to have made a really, really amazing game that’s probably the best—I don’t think it’s my best game—but I definitely feel that it’s the best Splinter Cell that I could make. And I don’t think I could ever do better. So, I’m super proud of it.”
“Do I wish the Metacritic was a little bit higher? Sure. I wish we’d gotten a bit more polish in there.”
Far Cry 2 creative director Clint Hocking
When asked what they believe is their best release, Hocking simply responded: “I think Far Cry 2 is my best game”. Released in 2008 to fairly strong reviews, the bold open-world sequel continued Hocking’s push for systemic game design and, despite it’s more realism-focused slant, served as the foundation for the series to this very day.
“I think it’s the most interesting game [I’ve made] in terms of its themes, in terms of what player freedom in the game means, and the way the player is able to express themselves and how the game shapes those impressions,” Hocking told us. “I also think it’s significantly more innovative than either of the Cell games.”
Hocking explained that, while “Stalker beat us to the punch” in crafting a huge playspace for players to engage with, Far Cry 2 was “the first or second real open-world first-person shooter”. While Crysis boasted some massive levels with a lot of freedom in approach, Far Cry 2 was fully open in a way only really reserved for GTA and its knock-offs.
“I just feel there’s a lot of really cool and interesting things in that game that I’m super proud of,” the game director continued. “Do I wish the Metacritic was a little bit higher? Sure. I wish we’d gotten a bit more polish in there. I wish a few of the things that we kind of fumbled a little bit I wish we managed to get more polish into. But, overall, it’s the game that I’m most proud of. It’s the game I still like to play.”
Far Cry 2 is one of the boldest video game sequels ever made. While it still feels connected to its linear predecessor, the more simulation-based openness of it all makes it feel far more innovative than iterative. For Hocking, that was intentional. After Ubisoft’s Instincts and Predator entries in the series, the director explains that they “needed to kind of go in a pretty different direction”.
Hocking describes Far Cry as being “an anecdote factory, this idea of interconnected systems that would lead to chaotic outcomes”. They explained that Far Cry 2 is where Ubisoft “mastered it”, not just allowing players to go anywhere, but allowing the world to react with fire propagation, destruction, and more.
“It really created this magical, magical experience,” the director said. “And then that became the hallmark of the Far Cry brand going forward. And they added to it, you know, rhinoceroses and tigers and all kinds of [creatures] and wing suits, and all kinds of [things]”.
Since Hocking laid the foundation for Far Cry’s future in 2008, Ubisoft has released a lot of games in the series. Far Cry 7 is currently in development at the gaming giant with a new multiplayer focus to keep players engaged for longer. While we hope that the next game in the series will push for some more innovation, the formula set by Hocking’s team has proven popular time and time again, and sometime iterating is the right path forward.
