Remember Red Faction: Guerrilla? That incredible game set on Mars where entire structures collapsed when you walloped them with your mighty Thor-like hammer? Remember the truckload of games that followed it up with similarly destructible environments? Yeah, didn't think so. Despite being so cool, destructible environments and structures seem relegated to the Battlefield series, and that's about it. If Far Cry 4 wants to feel truly next gen and up the ante on what gamers can expect from first person shooters that don't involve the military, it needs to bring the boom. Within reason of course - Far Cry 4 should absolutely not be a game where a rocket launcher and hand grenade are tools of world-flattening destruction, but the idea of plowing vehicles through huts, blowing holes in walls and knocking down radio towers is so appetising it should be on a restaurant menu somewhere. It's also entirely possible. Watch_Dogs on Xbox One is an open-world sandbox game where there are very few invisible walls. You can knock down fences, trees, light-posts, and its freeing as heck. Compare this to Grand Theft Auto games where you'd occasionally run up against a fence that wouldn't budge or a strange incline your car would just smash into. This little change in Watch_Dogs made the idea of driving off-road a thrilling ride because so much of the stuff in your way could be driven through. Now extrapolate that into a First Person Shooter where most structures appear made out of plastic. Being able to collapse a roof on enemies via a well placed shot, plow into a camp via a truck you've rigged with C4 to blow up their communications, or having the ability to cut a hole in a fence and sneak through silently adds so many possibilities that the game's replay factor, it would expand mission-approaches exponentially. A Grand Theft Auto retrospective on GameTrailers said it best; "Like toys, the best games are not only the ones you play, but the ones you can play with" - and destructible environments would make Far Cry 4 a macabre toy box of destruction.
