Our intrepid hardnosed reporter came across a scoop on his beat this month; well actually your Ed cornered the producer of Far Cry 2 in the press lounge at rAge while he was mooching free food. What transpired was a rather interesting chat with the big cheese himself, and it went a little like this...

Young, confident and very Canadian, 'LP' introduces himself before unleashing some serious insight into Far Cry 2, or as we used to refer to it, A Far Cry from the original. As many of you are aware. Far Cry 2 is no longer the tropical island, black and blue lagoon story of old. This prompted our first question which asked why they took a game with such a strong identity and completely changed it. LP explained how when he came to Ubisoft for Far Cry 2 they met extensively with gamers and discovered that the majority of them preferred the early mercenary stages over the mutants that followed. Realism was a core element.

Since Far Cry now hides chronologically behind the ever imposing bulk of Crysis, it is important to remember how the tropical settings made the original unique. Building on the concept of realism in a novel environment, the Canadians decided that the next exciting place to kill people should be in Africa, something the continent has perfected in reality for many years now. This time however, the game will be non-linear and set across 25 square kilometers patches of prime African real estate, think of is as Grand Theft SkorroKorro Masai Mara with 80 hours worth of play time.

In line with the core element of realism, LP says players will be immersed; from a lead character that thankfully never talks to an open world, which is completely devoid of �playing the radar, like Crysis’. That said; the man is insistent that in every other way the game is still Far Cry.

We probed for a little behind the scenes info and found out that Ubisoft Montreal has 1800 employees, 170 of which are in their own building working exclusively on Far Cry 2. There is even a South African contingent where local voice talents are being harvested. They began in May 2005 by setting 50+ engineers loose on the new engine called Dunia which is Swahili for Earth. The name is no doubt a result of LP and company's tough research touring the continent before hand to get the African feel just right, which by the looks of things they did.

To finish off we chatted to LP about the figure Acer gave in September in which they stated PC gaming eclipsed consoles at which point he looked rather confused. Brace yourself because according to his estimate, PCs only account for about 25-30% of gaming platforms that utilize their software. The fact that many PC players are pirates doesn't help either. Nevertheless, he maintained that FPS games are bigger on PC and overall games have far longer lifecycles which is especially true for Far Cry which, according to LP is still in the top 10 in Germany.