Just Cause 4's director Francesco Antolini recently said that ambitions are pretty high in team Avalanche and when it comes to the new instalment in their hit franchise. They want it to be the "best open-world sandbox ever". Tall order?
Most certainly, but Avalanche Studios are confident they can do it. Antolini said that with Just Cause 4, they wanted to rediscover the "feeling of variety and discovery", some of which was admittedly lost in Just Cause 3.
Antolini quoted some player discussions of old, where they discussed that the only limit in Just Cause is your imagination, meaning if you can think it - you can probably do it. Obviously, Avalanche wants to bring some of it back, hoping to cater a bit to us, the easily sidetracked gamers.
Of course, that's not to say that lovers of more linear story progression will be burdened by this, since Just Cause 4's dev is aware that "not all gamers want to fiddle with the sandbox just for the sake of it". So if you've found yourself sticking to the story in the franchise's earlier instalments, you need not worry because there will be more of the same.
Antolini refused to be drawn into comparisons to other third-person shooters, because Just Cause 4 is much more than that. Besides, the team overhauled just about anything, from environments and the grappling hook to artificial intelligence. "You cannot play the game just standing on the ground; you need to be vertical." Anyone who's played Just Cause can testify to this, as strange as it may sound at first.
In case you didn't catch Avalanche and Square Enix's E3 presentation of Just Cause 4, you can find our coverage . At the time, the dev boasted their game's hostile climate, with tornados, sandstorms and blizzards aplenty, adding yet another stumbling block to poor Rico's list of things to tackle.
Avalanche Studios
Avalanche Studios' Just Cause 4 launches on 04 December 2018 for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
