GameSpot's The Lobby -- Far Cry Primal: Does the gameplay feel fresh?

[MUSIC] Mike Maharty. Hey. You have played the new Far Cry game. Yes. I'm excited because Far Cry is a fun video game series and I'm excited to hear about the latest Far Cry game. I haven't played a Far Cry game. None of us have since October of 2014. Well, a new one, I guess. With that pagan man and all that stuff and. Helicopters and great fun. All are in great fun. Yeah you ride elephants and ride elephants. Yeah. Why you need anything more? Just cut it off there, feature list, ride elephants. You can go home. Ride elephant simulator, done. New Farqua game, they announced this late last year. I want to know first of all Kind of like the question I remember asking which is how much of Ubisoft is it? Is it very very familiar or is it actually breaking into some new ground? It does. It's very familiar definitely. It's the Far Cry structure. You don't have to climb radio towers. You don't know. It's. So they. My second question. Don't [INAUDIBLE] Yeah they erased that Kind of a tedious part of the games, for three and four especially. It's the Far Cry structure, but of course it's back in the Stone Age, 12,000 years ago. It's 10,000 BC. They really- Did I just say that right? 10,000, yeah 10,000 BC. I mean, I'm not gonna fact check you. I'm guessing yeah. There's this thing at the very beginning, it like counts back from 2015. Great. It's the Far Cry structure, but they're doing enough And enough interesting things Owls Hours I played Like owls attacking people, Jesus. So in Farcry 4 you could command that tiger when you go to the Shangri-La, like dreamy sequences Yeah They've taken that and made a whole progression tree. People have seen the beast master abilities, and you can tame new animals. And they're pretty much your co-op companions, you can find a bear, you can ride them, which We did, we just weren't allowed to show. So that was like tertiary stuff in Farcry before. How much of this game involves actually having to do like. How much of the game involves you just working with animals? Very much working with and against. So it's almost like fighting other humans unless you're near a camp of the other tribes. It's almost entirely you versus tigers, and jaguars, and panthers, and bears and. My. There you go, I was waiting for it. Nice, nice. You know, it's very very focused on hunting and gathering. The way you upgrade your skills is kind of a new skin almost. You have this central village that you return to. Okay. Instead of these, you know, like three and four and two were just these outposts where you had armories and you could get supplies and rest and everything. Get new missions. [SOUND] [INAUDIBLE] This is all mainly focused on your village, which you're upgrading. And in order to get new skills, you have these specialists. These characters you're recruiting out in the wilderness Okay. [INAUDIBLE] Saying, hey, I have a safe cave, come back here. Hey, lone wanderer. Yeah. Do you want to come back with me? With candy and everything. I'm not gonna eat you or have sex with you. Yeah. [LAUGH] What would you lure then in with back then? Like, it wouldn't be candy. **** food, man, food. [INAUDIBLE] Meat. There's a dead bear I haven't finished yet. Look how hard it is to live back then. What type of specialists are they? If there was like demolitions, sniper. [LAUGH] Yeah, one is like communications and you can set up satellite relays. No, I'm kidding. [LAUGH] No, there's a shaman. He's the one that you Basically build up all these hugs [LAUGH] And then they unlock the new skills. He comes the beast master tree Okay So you can get new tiers of animals. You can tame a wolf at first, D Dog kind of thing Right You start off with an owl which like scouts posts, then you can get bears and jaguars But you also get new attacks, you scout with your owl, you can later on get an attack where he just like dive bombs someone and pecks their face off. Right. And- But you drop grenades as well. Yeah, you can drop like beehive owls- You mean poop? [LAUGH] No. Like poop that explodes. [LAUGH] Very Metal Gear. You can scout from far away and then Send in your animal and attack and you know, it's kinda like going stealthily with a bow. So are they kinda like your, an extension of your, cause obviously this is a game that has guns, right? So, I mean, so is this [UNKNOWN] needed to play that had a firearm? Are there any like first person combat mechanics or like are the animals an extension of you? They're very much an extension of you. You point to certain people and they'll attack them or you can tell them to go somewhere. Taming them is a big thing, but they're also kind of defense, you can heal them. But it is very different in terms of combat because you don't have a machine gun or grenade launcher to fall back on. You have bow and arrow Until they mod on PC. Yeah. Until they just make it Far Cry Primal 2026, I don't know. Good to hear. Yeah. You get a club and spears, so you can either stab with the spears, which is a direct forward attack, or throw them. Right. It's almost always a one-hit kill, but you only have two of them at first until you upgrade your capacity. So, it's a very brutal combat from what I've seen. You're really just, Smashing people's heads with a club. And then, you know, when there's a lot of moving targets the bow and arrow's kind of harder to use. And the loop that you experienced was that same kind of thing, like okay, there's gonna be like a story bit at the start, then you have your little village, and then large open world and you can kind of go off in any direction you want. Yeah. You can, they say Comparable in size to four. I don't know that I can confirm that from what I saw. It's definitely just a sense. It still shows animals on the map where you can hunt wolves, and where you can hunt jaguars. But it's also, you go back to your village and get a mission from this specialist that you've recruited. And they'll say, go do this And that progressed to the story because there are other tribes that you're fighting. There's the Udon, which are cannibals. Okay. And there's the Izeela, which are called the flame walkers. They use fire a lot. The intro scene goes into how you meet that tribe, which is pretty gross actually. The game overall is really dark. Even for three and four. It's really just Kind of brutal and grim and you know, just, this whole tribe uses fire to fight people if that gives you any indication of the brutality of these cut scenes that you're seeing. What is the structure of the village in terms of society and politics. Are there leaders that you sort of have to work with or is that just sort of like implied and didn't really touch on it. No I guess their are people walking around and you can make your own dwelling, your pretty much the leader of the [UNKNOWN] your the leader of the, your rebuilding the one, yeah, your rebuilding the [UNKNOWN] tribe, which used to be the one peaceful and They were a very- Not any more. In terms of science, if such a thing existed back then, but they were trying to just collect knowledge and they weren't too war like. But you're just rebuilding that and then there's not very much of a political thing, it's these specialists are in huts. If you upgrade the specialist and unlike more skills, you upgrade these huts by hunting certain animal skins. It sounds kind of like in Far Cry 4. Yeah. Like going into a room So, I point out [UNKNOWN], man why don't people just call themselves Dave. On Twitch, says that since the game is close to release, only about a couple of months, more, does the game feel rushed at all? So, does it feel like a sort of a conversion mod for Far Cry 4? Or does it feel like it's doing it's own thing? Because it's doing a lot of different stuff so it should feel different. Yeah. But does it? It feels done. It feels like it's own thing. It feels polished. Like I said, people who are expecting another Fire Cry will get that, but from the four hours I played, I can not speak to the whole game. I have not played more than four hours. From the four hours I played, it feels like it's own different thing that is worth playing for a little while. But again, the game's always, a big complaint a lot of people will have is the second half is just. More the same. Yeah. Could it survive without being called Far Cry Primal? What if it was just called Primal? Do you think the game is strong enough to stand on its own without being sort of tied to a thing that people know? Yeah, I think could stand on its own but obviously having the Far Cry gives you a glimpse into what you're expecting, instructurally. Yeah, I don't know. Like I know a lot of people thought it might be like a blood dragon size thing at first. Yeah. It's like $60, full sized game. They turned it around real quick. I mean the perception is sort of like, hey where did that come from? It's already out in like a month. Yeah. Totally. Yeah, I could very well see them having say, okay here's a team that while four is being finished, You're gonna start from the same framework and start working on this, and then we're gonna bring those people over. I don't know what the actual internal things were, but I could very much see them as simultaneous things. If not, soon after that started from the same foundation. It's kinda refreshing, like Far Cry 4 I thought was very unique, that was kind of cool, came out of nowhere, but they've done it before with Gone Home, that was a game that was obviously much, much smaller in terms of scale, but that was a game that just appeared out of nowhere. Literally, they were like, hey, it's out, go play it! And it seems like folks are interested in this because it does have those touchstones of the older Far Cry experiences, I guess. Like you got to wonder how much longer they can do this before it starts becoming a little bit rogue. For you did it you know what happen you played four hours? Yeah three hours of the intro sequences and like how they're teaching you everything. Then alone in their own world. Then they jumped us to one point where we had a lot more beast unlocked a lot more abilities and you meet the other tribe and you fight them. Hard to say. Yeah. Honestly in that sort of situation. Did it feel, were you interested to play more? Did it feel like it had, like, legs? Did it feel like it was going into sort of double, what do you call those, spears? Yeah. With the double spearing? Was that fun? It, yeah, it sold me enough to be more interested than I was before I played it. All right. Which says something. But Again, I'm kind of worried that it won't last past five, six hours when I'm actually in the open world and realise that I could be doing this with machine guns. Right. I don't know. I guess time will tell. We'll find out. Last question. Saxton@hotchewbacca on Twitter asks, how much caveman junk is in it? There's a lot- Same as Sea of Dawn? Of caveman in it. Okay I met you. Yeah. [UNKNOWN] junk. I didn't see any. You didn't see any. There's no, no one was hanging. Four at a ton. There's not low hanging fruit? Cut myself off there. No, I didn't see any It's a shame. Again, mods, PC mods. A full review will have specific- Yep. Count of how many. Dongspot.com, we've got you covered. Mike Mahardy, thank you so much for talking to us about Far Cry Primal, appreciate your time. And let us know what you Do you think of Farcry Primal? Is it an exciting game? Are you looking forward to it? Is it a game that your looking forward to this year? Are you a fan of the Farcry games? Or is this one peeking your interest on its own? Let us know in the comments. Below, they're down there, down there.