After working a year at Looking Glass Studio on Thief: The Dark Project, in 1997 Spector received a call from John Romero: it was the start of the new Ion Storm Austin team and the conception of another classic title, Deus Ex.
Warren Spector entered the video game business in 1989 when he joined ORIGIN, co-producing Ultima VI and Wing Commander, then producing System Shock and many other classic RPGs. If this was what it was like to be an indentured developer immediately after making the best-selling single CRPG of the 1980s, what would it be like when The Bard’s Tale faded into ancient history? The odds of making it as an independent publisher may not have looked great, but from some angles at least they looked better than Interplay’s prospects if the status quo was allowed to continue. And rankling almost as much as that disparity was the fact that Electronic Arts sucked up the lion’s share of the credit as well very few gamers even recognized the name of Interplay in 1988. Interplay had created one of the more popular computer games of the 1980s in the form of the 400,000-plus-selling CRPG The Bard’s Tale, yet had remained a tiny company living hand-to-mouth while their publisher Electronic Arts sucked up the lion’s share of the profits. When Brian Fargo made the bold decision in 1988 to turn his company Interplay into a computer-game publisher as well as developer, he was simply steering onto the course that struck him as most likely to ensure Interplay’s survival. 'Far Cry 5' Is About Living Under Fear in America What if some people knew a collapse was coming, but didn’t want to wait for the fall? What if one of those movements were run by competent, truly prepared people? They’d probably find a nice and quiet place to get ready. But in the wake of uncertainty, events like the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by an armed militia in Oregon early last year prodded at the idea of a governing body that didn’t have the interests of regular people in mind, and one that wasn’t prepared to respond during a catastrophic event on US soil. Such moments represent the United States at its most vulnerable, a far cry from the utopic, efficient, proud country its leaders so often claim it to be. Hay and the team were inspired by the unrest and confusion felt after events like the Cold War and 9/11.
My dad texted me, saying we’re big time now. Montana, the setting for the next Far Cry, is one of the biggest states in the USA with one of the lowest populations.
I sat front row while Dan Hay, the creative director for Ubisoft’s Far Cry 5, talked about visiting the place I grew up like it was another planet.