Far Cry 6

As a level designer on Far Cry 6 at Ubisoft Toronto, my primary role was to be the owner of 3 player bases (camps), world designer on the Esperanza team and the owner of guerrilla lookout points across the map. Some of my responsibilities included:

• Designing, implementing, managing throughout production and delivering 3 players bases (Tutorial, West and Central region), including location, scripting and crowd life
• Helping bring the city of Esperanza to life by building treasure hunts, gameplay POIs and implementing world life
• Assisted and guided newly hired junior level designers with their tasks

guerrila camps

Guerrilla Camps are key locations in Far Cry 6 . They play an important role in missions, usually coming in at the end of a quest, contain multiple cinematics with important characters, and serve as player bases for the player, allowing the player to build them up as they see fit and contribute to the guerrilla initiative. My roles and responsibilities as the owner of Guerrilla Camps included:

• Designing and building the locations
• Creating the crowd life of each camp and scripting NPC behaviour
• Ensuring the camp meets all the technical requirements

CAMP MAXIMAS (central guerrilla camp)

Camp Maximas, or Central Guerrilla Camp, serves as both a combat space and player base. Before the player unlocks the location as a base, they must defeat Castillo guards and free the revolutionary musical group Maximas Matansas. The camp is built as a former tourist attraction, now abandoned. The location consists of 5 interconnected islands, each housing important player base and gameplay elements. The central island acts as the focal point of the camp; it is raised above the rest of the camp and contains a tall canopy and the DJ booth for one of the main characters. All of that allows the player to get naturally pulled in towards the middle. Since the space needed to function with combat and in third person, the space was designed with both first-person and third-person camera perspectives, ensuring sightlines, architecture and visual language were appropriate in both modes.

Montero farm (West guerrilla camp)

The Montero Farm, or West Guerrilla Camp, transforms into a player base after the player completes one of the first important missions in the West Region. It houses the Monterro family, important characters in the narrative of Far Cry 6, as well as everything else that each guerrilla camp needed to contain. Since it does not act as a gameplay/combat space, that changed the camera and player-view considerations for me when designing the map. The space was designed with a primarily third-person camera perspective in mind.

Guerrilla camp technical setup

Guerrilla Camps were very intricate in their implementation. Each camp needed to consist of:

• Quest giver NPCs
• Foreman NPC for base upgrades
• 2 upgrade slot locations
• Vehicle spawners
• A mini-game specific for that region
• A certain number of NPC crowd life per camp phase
• Other interactive items for the player

I needed to ensure that each of those elements was properly implemented and scripted to unlock at a certain time, function correctly or trigger a specific event. One of the most complex scripts in each player base was the crowd life. Each region goes through certain story moments and the camp needed to reflect that. Through the use of scripting, spawners and crowd animation stations, I had full responsibility and control to make sure:

• Correct number and type of NPCs spawn at the correct time
• The NPCs would go and perform their required tasks for X amount of time, before going on to their next scripted task
• Each quest giver NPC would be at their correct station, performing appropriate actions
• NPCs would de-spawn and re-spawn in the camp based on player progression in the story
• NPCs would also play correct conversations as the player walks by them

Another important element of the player bases was the third-person volume, which changed camera perspective from default first-person to third-person.

esperanza treasure hunt

“THe last one to leave”

I designed this treasure hunt in the Esperanza region. I needed to work within certain limitations:

• The coastal region of Western Esperanza was pretty empty, consisting of small shacks
• I could not do too much interior gameplay, so exterior gameplay needed to make up the majority of the experience
• The interior that was permitted needed to be minimal

I came up with a simple story of a Yaran family, consisting of a mother and her three children, trying to escape the oppression. The mom hid their family belongings from the military in the small power station; only those who knew the secret could open the stash. They key is to activate the three nearby levers, in any order, to open the door and get the loot.

To help guide the player where they need to go, the objective space has 3 power lines connecting to the three switches the player needs to find. All they need to do is to follow the lines. To help confirm correct actions by the player, a traffic light was placed at the objective location: once the player would interact with a switch, a corresponding light (red, yellow or green) would light up, letting the player now they are on the right path.

The puzzle consists of 4 gameplay spaces:

• The objective room
• Navigation puzzle
• Hazard puzzle
• Interactive puzzle

Each space would contain a puzzle for the player to solve before finding the lever.

• Navigation puzzle has player climbing roofs and water towers;
• Hazard puzzle has a continuous stream of poisonous gas in one of the shacks, placed there by the military, the player needs to overcome. They can either blow up the poison tank or turn the stream off before advancing
• Interactive puzzle consists of 3 objects the player must interact with in correct order for the switch to be revealed behind a moving bookshelf (there are notes telling the player the right order)

To add a little spike in challenge and pacing, I scripted a military patrol encounter that would drive into the Coastal Village after a certain amount would pass from when the player started the treasure hunt. If the player solved the puzzle quickly, they would not have to fight. If the player slowed down, they might have to deal with a military patrol!

Once the player activated the three levers and the traffic light lights lit up fully, the power station door can then be opened and the treasure collected.