Straight from Ubisoft themselves, the announcement came today that Far Cry Primal will be released on February 23rd, 2016. In the trend set by Bethesda, it seems Ubisoft has waited until they had a great deal of confirmed content and scheduling before they told anybody about anything. Sure, people knew Far Cry Primal was the next big project, but nothing has been seen thus far of the development process. Now here we are with all this information all at once, and players seem to be appreciative. Take a look at the reveal trailer posted on the official YouTube channel.
The Far Cry series has always involved the player interacting with the wilderness, hunting animals for resources, prowling around for secrets, and doing reconnaissance of various types, but the primary focus of the games has always been on the narrative interactions between the player and the enemy human characters, and never the wildlife as a main antagonist. Whether or not the end boss of the game will be some human or a mammoth remains to be seen, but the shift in focus is more than obvious.
Ubisoft describes the game as a “full-fledged single-player experience,” much like the previous entries in the series. They go on to say,
They will meet a cast of memorable characters who will help them push back and tame the dangers of the wild. Players will journey as the first human to tame the wilderness and rise above extinction. Along the way, they will have to craft weapons and tools partly from the bones of slain beasts, hunt for food, master fire, fend off fierce predators and face off against other tribes to conquer Oros.
Far Cry Primal‘s Creative Director, Jean-Cristophe Guyot, explained how he sees the Stone Age as the perfect setting for a Far Cry game:
“Far Cry usually puts you at the edge of the known world, in a beautiful, lawless, and savage frontier. The Stone Age is, in a way, the very first frontier for humankind; it’s the time when humans put a stick in the ground and claimed land for their own, the time when we started climbing the food chain. That came with conflict, against other humans of course, but also against nature itself.
With all this in mind, Ubisoft is confident that fans of the series will feel just as at home in the Stone Age as they did in the tropical locales the previous titles were set in. The February 23rd release will be the console versions, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, while a PC version will not see a release until early March.