Ubisoft is pushing a 'light RPG approach' in Far Cry: New Dawn

Far Cry: New Dawn is basically a continuation of Far Cry 5, except that the world has been given a nuclear face-wash and all of the oh-so-important things that you fought, bled, and killed for—as with all things in life—meant nothing in the end. But creative director Jean-Sebastien Decant said in a video posted to Twitter today that there's more to the new game than just a reskin with crappier weapons and cooler cars. 

"We pushed what we call the 'light RPG' approach in the game to create more depth," Decant says. "So you'll be able to craft guns that have ranks, and these ranks, they will be useful to fight against enemies that also have ranks. We have the brand-new Prosperity home base in which you will be able to rally your characters and invest in order to get better upgrades." 

Possibly the most interesting of the changes is the addition of an "escalation system" for outposts. In Far Cry 5, once an outpost had been seized, the locals moved in to assume control and that was that. (The Eden's Gate cult somehow managed to stay active everywhere else in the area, but that's a different matter entirely.) In New Dawn, you'll have a choice: You can take an outpost and its resources, or you can opt to "squeeze it" instead.   

"If you squeeze it, you're going to abandon it," Decant explains. "And now that it's vacant, the enemy is going to come back, put more resources in it, and also more defense, and create a new challenge.

The big question is whether the choice to hold or squeeze enemy outposts will be a meaningful one on some level. I'm all for having a little more to do in Far Cry's tightly structured worlds, but there's already lots to shoot at and more meat for the grinder doesn't do much for me in itself. A sheen of strategy in the form of decisions that actually impact the world, though—if sending people to hold a base reduced their numbers elsewhere, for instance, making enemy activity ramp up in other areas or resources harder to collect—could make for a fun twist on the formula.

Far Cry: New Dawn comes out on February 15. So does everything else.