10 Video Games That Had A Bigger Impact Than You Realise
2. Far Cry 3 Bolstered Ubisoft's Open-World Formula
Far Cry 3 is remembered as the game that helped elevate the series to true AAA blockbuster status, but it also had a wider impact on not only the franchise but also Ubisoft's gameplay template as a whole.
The success of focusing the game's marketing around its unforgettable villain, Vaas, led Ubisoft to use a similar approach for every subsequent mainline Far Cry game, playing up the colourful personalities of their antagonists.
But Far Cry 3's commercial success also served as the blueprint for Ubisoft's many open-world games since.
The map filled with Things To Do, presence of radio towers, outposts that need to be liberated, resource gathering, RPG mechanics, and so on, became a cornerstone of Ubisoft's AAA open-world business model in the years that followed.
Variations on this formula have been present in most major titles they've made since: the Assassin's Creed sequels, Watch Dogs, Ghost Recon, and even racer series The Crew.
Other developers have of course adopted aspects of Ubisoft's open-world design, enough that the collect-a-thon formula does feel rather tired today.
Yet Far Cry 3 nevertheless cemented a gameplay loop that kept players hooked into the game world for a massive amount of time.