The Crying Games

GAMES: Far Cry series / Crysis series

DEVELOPER: Ubisoft Montreal / Crytek

PERSONALITIES: Cevat Yerli, Anvi Yerli, Faruk Yerli, Turko-German game developers generally, Ubisoft as a gestalt

RELEASED: Far Cry: 2004-2018 / Crysis: 2007-2013

NUTSHELL: Open world shooters that initially pushed hardware to the limit and showed us what a true “next generation” PC game could be, but were progressively dumbed-down to make bigger bucks from the console markets.

By the early 2000s, PCs had finally reached a point where gamers could expect truly huge worlds in their games. Morrowind came out in 2002. So did Grand Theft Auto III. World of Warcraft was 2004.

But these games had a very particular graphical limitation: their engines could only really render an area close around the player. The worlds were perpetually shrouded in fog. There was no “far green country under a swift sunrise” as some old wizard might have said. actually did a pretty good job of things by limiting the amount of places the player could even see that far,