Far Cry is becoming Fallout and vice versa
This post is about the recent directions of Fallout and the Far Cry franchise. For a while, I've had an idea forming that I wanted to put into words and discuss, but never knew how to word it. After seeing the recent comments on
r/farcry, I think I do. This is a long post, and the tl;dr is that the newer Fallout titles are moving from RPG to FPS, and Far Cry is moving to more RPG elements but one is leaning away from what made it great, the other is leaning into what's making it better.
Fallout began life as a top down RPG set in post-apocalyptic America. The gameplay was, quite frankly, as far as you can get from the most recent entries being Fallout 4 and Fallout 76. The game was so much more technical back in 1997. You had your S.P.E.C.I.A.L points, your skills displayed in percentages, optional traits, and more. Text was displayed in a box that you could ask questions about, and those reactions to your questions and comments were modified by several other perks and points.
Fallout: New Vegas was sort of in the middle of both games. It was simplified, as there was only your S.P.E.C.I.A.L points, and skills that you could put points into, and that's it. It was an FPS with a tactical pause you could target specific body parts. It wasn't exactly a run and gun, but it also wasn't a strategy game. The dialog was affected by speech, and one or two perks. The dialog was also amazing, and it felt like a real RPG with a lot of choices you can make in that world.
2015, almost two decades after the first Fallout was made, and the franchise looks completely different. For one, everything is oversimplified. You still have S.P.E.C.I.A.L, but the perks are different this time. They aren't checks like the other games New Vegas and before. They're perks like a COD game. There's +20% damage with automatic weapons, or +20HP, or -25% AP drain. The only thing the game checks is your S.P.E.C.I.A.L, and apart from Charisma, it's nonexistant. The dialog? Boils down to Yes, sarcasm, No, maybe/angry. There was no 6+ option menu for most NPCs like New Vegas, it was always the yes/no, and if you're lucky you get a "more info" option too.
Now let's talk about Far Cry. I'm going to skip 3 and 4, because they were still similar to the newer games but different enough that you can see the games have more RPG elements. Also because this post is getting long.
Far Cry 5 is where the series got more technical. Now, you must loot for materials for crafting and money for more guns. You can also loot for different drugs to use that provide buffs. There's also different ammo types that you use depending on what you're fighting, with some being armor piercing or flaming or whatever. You also did challenges and received points to put into a wide range of perks that changed your gameplay up by letting you carry more grenades/ammo, or by opening new takedowns, or giving you a grappling hook. There were three regions you had to clear, and that involved going after small settlements and clearing out all the enemies, not unlike Fallout 4 had you doing half the time. Once you had enough points, you went after the mini boss of the region and reclaimed it.
Far Cry New Dawn is where the franchises really started to overlap. Both are worlds ravaged by nuclear war, and both play very similar. Now you don't just loot for grenade materials, you loot for everything. Guns are no longer bought, they're crafted with various materials. Ammo is no longer bought, it's crafted at stations with copper you find. There's 8 types of grenades, and you can craft all of them on the fly. Enemies have levels too, and you must use the correct level of weapon or else you do less damage. The challenge system is gone and replaced by a scavenging system, where you reclaim outposts and receive perk points and Ethanol, a material that lets you upgrade your base. Yes, just like Fallout 4, you do quests to help settlements and you upgraded your base. Upgrades let you do more crafting, healing, and mapping of resource caches across Hope County. There was also an upgrade system that let you do repeated runs against a standalone outpost (like a radiant quest on FO4) and you put x materials in for +5% damage.
The new Far Cry 6 is looking even more like an RPG, while Fallout is slowly becoming an FPS with RPG elements. You can now craft, modify, and upgrade guns at your bases that you take back and create. Resources are more important than ever, and the radiant quest system from FCND comes back in a similar way. You will be able to talk to NPCs, and there's leaks of more than two endings to the game. Why does this matter? Because Far Cry can lean into RPG elements as much as it wants, it will still be an open world action shooter. Fallout can't really lean into an FPS because it's moving away from what made it Fallout, and more like a shitty Far Cry clone. It can be an FPS, but it needs care and thought put into the RPG aspects too. I don't mind the direction of Fallout now, but without the RPG elements and choices what makes it Fallout?