As a Senior Level Designer on Far Cry 5, I was brought on take full ownership of 2 mainline narrative story missions in Toronto’s Whitetail Mountains open world region during the early months of our post-alpha phase.

I took over Get Free from Senior Level Designer Tim Davies and Casualties of War from Senior Level Designer Peter Gelencser, both of whom provided excellent mission pitches, early layouts, and gameplay scripting, making it easy for me to take the layouts and missions to beta and, finally, to gold master.

I worked with Senior Level Artists Iain Gordon and Frank Trzcinski on Get Free and Casaulties of War, respectively, to sculpt terrain, shape layouts, and to collaborate on cover and setdressing passes. Senior Visual Effects Artist John Lee and Senior Lighting Artist Taeha Park also helped immensely in finalizing the intense escape section of Casualties of War, in which we worked together to showcase the catastrophic loss of pressure and flooding of the McKinley Dam Bunker as Players moved through it.

GET FREE

In Get Free, players must infiltrate the Grandview Hotel to rescue an allied militia member named Briggs. Players are free to approach the Hotel from any side they choose, whether approaching from the road, from a lake, or the remaining sides. Each approach has its own cover layouts, unique points of interest, and friction by way of enemy patrols. The Hotel itself is a 3-storey building with wraparound baclonies and many entry points through windows and doorways. The interior is made up of approximately 70% playable spaces in the form of a grand foyer, a kitchen, a laundry room (locked up with some goodies if Players can find a way inside), a lounge, and many hotel rooms. It also features building-height squared spiral staircases flanking either side of the foyer.

One Players rescue Briggs in the “conversion room“ (he’s located on the top floor, inside a hotel room) where he’s being brainwashed with special music that activates a “psychological trigger” when the villain commands it, Players switch the music to begin “deprogramming” Briggs. The music accidentally is played over loud speakers throughout the Hotel, attracting the attention of everyone in the area — the villain finds out and sends a small army of ground troops, vehicles with mounted turrets, and even helicopters to kill Briggs and the Player.

Players must hold the Grandview Hotel, while Briggs is being deprogrammed, as enemies lay seige from the south, north, and south side again, in successively more challenging waves of enemies. Players are free to defend however they like; be it setting traps throughout the interior or using the mounted Heavy Machine Gun or Mortar Launcher placements on the exterior. The waves of enemies use almost every enemy archetype (I decided to avoid melee-focused archetypes since their combat behaviours bypassed cover and prioritised rushing in and killed Briggs far too quickly) and combat-focused vehicle in the game.

CASUALTIES OF WAR

In Casualties of War, Players have just killed the region’s villain (Jacob Seed) and must infiltrate the McKinley Dam Bunker, where the villain’s remaining forces have holed up with another allied prisoner of the region’s war, Deputy Pratt. (Pratt is also a victim of the villain’s brainwashing and mental torture.)

Players arrive at the Bunker’s entry, which is just off a main road and built into the side (and underneath) a mountain connected to the McKinley Dam. The Bunker interior is locked up to this point but after fighting (or sneaking past) guards outside, Players use Jacob’s key and descend deep underground to find and rescue Pratt. To reach Pratt, players will move through a linear series of connected rooms: a Barracks room, a Mess Hall kitchen, a Storage Room, a Control Room, an Armoury, and a Laboratory. Once they reach him, Pratt has a psychotic break from the torture inflicted by Jacob and shoots and destroys turbines that are vital to regulating the pressure and passage of water at the McKinley Dam, causing the Bunker to begin to flood. Players must escape with Pratt (he follows, participates in combat, and supports a “Downed But Not Out” state Players can revive him from) through a new linear series of Pump Rooms that connect back to the original Barracks area and also back to the surface at the Bunker’s exterior.

The Bunker’s interior was made using modular kits (with a few exceptions they are all one-storey rooms) and is comprised of 3 “layers.” Frank and I used a unique 2-tone colour scheme for each floor’s walls and readable signage above doorways (as well as signs with arrows at major junctions) to help Players find and navigate to key rooms mentioned in on-screen objectives; a must for a more linear mission that takes place underground. Even though the kit was somewhat cramped, Frank and I worked to provide cover opportunities that allowed Players to slip past enemies patrolling inside the Bunker if they wanted to sneak past everyone on their way to Pratt. Because the Bunker’s interior was more linear, and we knew Players would experience major rooms in the same order as they played, it presented us with lots of opportunities to dedicate extra effort to environmental storytelling: one example of which is a lectern with chairs gathered in a semi-circle where Players might imagine Jacob delivering sermons to soldiers under his command.