Far Cry 3's lead writer says the story is misunderstood, developers should trust players to interpret

Far Cry 3 lead writer Jeffrey Yohalem thinks the game's story is misunderstood. In a recent interview with The Penny Arcade Report, Yohalem says the story unfolds like a scavenger hunt and that many gamers are skipping the first clue.

"The story is itself something that can be solved, like a riddle," he said. "What makes me sad is that people don't engage with playing the riddle, trying to solve the riddle."

Yohalem hopes that through talking about the game, players will begin to see the parallels drawn between Jason Brody's journey and that of the heroine of Alice in Wonderland. He thinks that the lack of story-delving on players' part is due to them constantly being "talked down to."

Players need to think differently when they play, and pay attention to words and movement in games like an audience watching an actor on stage. Yohalem also believes developers need to trust gamers' ability to analyze and interpret tropes and stories, and design games around that idea.

"It's really a bad, abusive relationship [between developers and players], because developers say ‘Players won't get it anyway, so we're just gonna do something that holds their hand,'" he explained. "It doesn't respect them, and then players say ‘I hate this,' or ‘I hate that,' or ‘This game sucks,' and that hurts developers.

"So what I'm hoping is, at least Far Cry 3 will create a conversation between people about what they expect from video games and how much the player can be involved in an analysis of the game," he added. "Once that happens, developers will have to deliver."