FAR CRY: NEW DAWN Narrative Designer Reveals New Details On Its Setting And Early Concepts

Far Cry: New Dawn is set 17 years after the closing scenes of one of the Far Cry 5 endings – a global nuclear catastrophe. Between 2018 and 2035, Hope County has changed in many unexpected ways, as the post-apocalyptic world is in fact teeming with life and vibrant colors, following in RAGE 2's footsteps that is also leaving the established in popular culture vision of the end times behind.

In an interview with Far Cry: New Dawn Scriptwriter and Narrative Designer Olivia Alexander, Geek's Tony Polanco asked her about the game's setting, its visuals, and the main characters' motivations. "We’ve wanted to do a post-apocalyptic setting for quite a long time and the ending of Far Cry 5 facilitated that in an organic way," Alexander said. "We were actually in early concepts for Far Cry: New Dawn while we were wrapping up Far Cry 5. It’s something we were really excited to do."

Some fans of Far Cry 5 have been wondering why the upcoming narrative sequel is set only 17 years after the catastrophe, as similar post-apocalyptic video games such as Fallout 3 and RAGE took place 200 and 106 years after the end times, respectively. "We wanted to have it in a place where it was very clearly about a new world and not necessarily the death of the old one," the writer said. "You could still see the old world and see the traumatic experience the collapse was; the events that were sort of left behind in the 17 years we were apart. This is the sweet spot between the sun and the rain returning to earth, and human beings having enough food, shelter and energy to feel like human beings again rather than just animals struggling to survive."

During the pre-production phase, Ubisoft has taken a closer look at the "Super Bloom" phenomenon. "Super bloom" isn't an official term, but it's useful to describe the rare floral pageant of yellows, pinks, purples and reds that blanket the desert moonscape after a perfect combination of seasonal rain and temperatures. "Super bloom is a real world phenomenon we incorporated because one of the side effects of such a nuclear event is desertification. The water cycle changes, geography changes. We took the phenomenon of super bloom that happens in deserts in real life and put it in the temporary desert that was Hope County. We have this visual representation of life bursting out of the ashes of death. That was definitely the direction we wanted to go."

Far Cry: New Dawn has gone gold, which means that development is complete and the shooter is ready for manufacturing ahead of its 15th February debut. Quite interestingly, New Dawn was announced a month ago, so this FC5 spin-off will be one of the fastest releases in Ubisoft's publishing history.

Dive into a transformed vibrant post-apocalyptic Hope County, Montana, 17 years after a global nuclear catastrophe. Join fellow survivors and lead the fight against the dangerous new threat the Highwaymen, and their ruthless leaders The Twins, as they seek to take over the last remaining resources.