JUST CAUSE 4
Francesco Antolini explains how Avalanche Studios is blowing winds and minds with the latest Just Cause
It’s raining men… er, man, as we go hands-on, riding the storm with Rico Rodriguez.
Weather-beaten is a phrase that takes on a totally new meaning for Rico Rodriguez, the smooth super-spy in Avalanche’s long-running open world series. He takes the fight to the next level in Just Cause 4, thanks in no small part to Avalanche Studios’ Apex Engine.
Geared specifically around simulating an open world environment, the engine creates all the detail you need to have fun in a crazy sandbox world. Even down, in this instalment, to the vicious side of Mother Nature as she hurls some nasty weather your way. But that weather can be Rico’s friend or foe, depending on how prepared you are for it.
Happily for us, the weather in New York City couldn’t be nicer as the game’s director, Francesco Antolini, takes us around the studio. Proudly he shows us the large map of Just Cause 4’s world that’s pinned up on the wall, alongside early concept art and a swathe of graffiti designs that will feature in the game. He chuckles as he introduces us to the team members, a grin on his face as he tells us about the “destruction designers” whose sole purpose is to make blowing stuff up fun.
THE BIG GRAPPLE
The New York office is personal to Antolini, because joining the studio from Ubisoft to work as lead designer on Just Cause 3 also meant helping to establish the NY office. And he’s proud to be here. “It was kind of a dream,” he tells us of being offered the job. “Those were the guys who made Just Cause 2, my favourite open world game so far at the time.”
Open worlds have always been a passion for Antolini. He’s the kind of person who will tell you all about his thesis project on The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (“It was one of the first open worlds where you could really just go around and do whatever you want. I was mesmerised, taken away by that.”), and check off an impressive list of his favourite open world games through the years.
What was it that drew him, along with so many others, to that second game in the Just Cause series? “The freedom,” he answers confidently. “The system where your destruction was meaningful everywhere in the game, and really it didn’t matter how or where you’d destroy things. I’ve tried a lot to go back to that feeling with Just Cause 4
more than in 3.”
The idea of checking things off a list doesn’t hold as much appeal as going around and experimenting for yourself. “In Just Cause 4 what happens is that destruction is always meaningful wherever you destroy stuff, and it doesn’t go […] into this concept of location completion, it rather accrues your chaos that works a little bit like notoriety.”
FRONTLINE FROLIC
As your chaos increases, the game’s actual front line moves, as Rico’s army gains more control over the country. This isn’t just about liberating regions, but a large, always-ongoing war that’s constantly playing out in Solís. It’s all about context.
“That’s the philosophy that I try to keep in all my games – that the world explains itself,” Antolini tells us. “What you do has actual consequences that you see as part of the world, right?” He grins and goes off on another tangent, this time about Far Cry 2, laughing about how awesome the map was.
He pauses as he talks about another game he won’t name, and how he stopped playing after it wouldn’t let him cross a bridge in the w orld until after he’d completed a mission. “I was just like ‘why?’” he says. “You know that’s the point: let’ s make things so that they are actually real and it makes sense, rather than just being an obs truction from a design standpoint.” We get hands-on with the g ame as Antolini is happy to sit back and see what we get up to, messing with physics objects on a bridge, before diving down to do battle on the fr ont line. Soon
“THIS ISN’T JUST ABOUT LIBERATING REGIONS, BUT A LARGE, ALWAYS-ONGOING WAR.”
enough we’re herding a tornado and flipping through the wind. It’s a thing of power, but not so deadly to Rico that we want to stay away. Instead, we soar dangerously close, looking for ways to turn it to our advantage, and use it to suck our enemies up into the sky.
“You see this battle and you know that if you stay on this side it’s a lot safer, if you go on the other side you are behind the enemy lines,” Antolini explains about the front line.
Needless to say, it makes a great spot to pick up some nifty new equipment and cause some chaos. The idea is born of some of the missions in Just Cause 3 where the rebels and military are in an all-out conflict.
“It was gorgeous to see the whole world in a battle,” Antolini reminisces. “That was so cool, I don’t want this to happen in just 15 minutes of an 80-hour playthrough. [Could] we add this as a persistent thing in the world?”
Thankfully, with improvements to the open-world-specific Apex Engine, proprietary to Avalanche, the answer was yes. Everything makes sense within the world, even to the point where challenges scattered around Solís have a purpose – the wingsuit challenge courses, for instance, are to help make a stunt film. Points earned through this can then be spent to customise your loadout how you see fit and play it your way.
Every Supply Drop (when you call in a delivery of weapons or a vehicle) is the same. You always know what you’re working towards and have the option to peel back layers of customisation – though the s ystems are designed in such a w ay that they’re just as playable without having to wade in too deep.
FREEDOM FIGHTER
But that’s just one aspect of the huge sandbox that makes up Just Cause 4. As Antolini says, it’s about freedom. Playing as Rico, with his multi-purpose gr apple hook, and combination of both a wingsuit and a p arachute, we wreak havoc wherever and however we please, punctuated by plenty of laughter. Between all three grapple modes – retract, booster, and airlift – and the different modifications you can give all those abilitie s, Avalanche promises a mindboggling four million or so possible combinations. You can switch between three active loadouts that define what each mode does, or which ones to do a t once, how powerfully, or what (if anything) to automatically deploy,
“SOON ENOUGH WE’RE HERDING A TORNADO AND FLIPPING THROUGH THE WIND.”