If you look at extra content surrounding the original, it becomes pretty clear that BGE2 is what they always wanted BGE to be in terms of scope and theme, but after so long in development now, I can’t help but wonder if the restrictions on scope were what made the original truly great.

I hope they manage to pull it together into a cohesive product eventually-- and I will be playing it when they do-- but I would be truly surprised if the sequel is as impactful or memorable as the OG

Doesn’t need to be true, just convincing to some suits

Heard on the radio towers, though I personally enjoyed some of the climbing as a break from the typical far cry chaos. At that point the dead horse had not yet been beaten, though, and it wasn’t as much of an annoyance.

Cheaper / shallower mechanics is definitely also fair, and I agree Ubisoft sacrificed that depth for more realistic visual (common AAA loss). The npc ai in far cry 2 was a rare gem though.

I actually spent a lot of time playing with Far cry 2’s map editor, and far cry 3 was a big step back there too. I guess I just love the world, characters, and story of Far Cry 3.

Far Cry 3 was definitely a step back in some areas (fire!) but I think it was still a great game and pretty much perfected the Far Cry formula. Unfortunately after that game, Ubisoft just cannot move on

Epic provides an engine with a lot of features including a wide swath of performance optimizing tools, but it’s still up to the developers to implement the concepts and workflows correctly to keep their project bloat free at runtime. The ‘crazy visuals’ you’re used to seeing from Unreal are always going to be big studios with a team dedicated to working on optimization, or for projects that aren’t realtime or aren’t interactive.