Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

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Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon
Windows
  • Xbox 360
  • PlayStation 4
  • Xbox One
  • Google Stadia
    • ReleasePlayStation 3
    April 30, 2013
    Windows, Xbox 360
    May 1, 2013
    Classic Edition
    PS4, Windows, Xbox One
    December 16, 2021
    Stadia
    July 7, 2022
    Genre(s)First-person shooter
    Mode(s)Single-player

    Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a 2013

    standalone expansion to Far Cry 3 and the eighth overall installment in the Far Cry franchise. Blood Dragon is a retro-futuristic parody of 1980s action films, cartoons and video games, and takes place on an open world
    island. Players assume the role of military cyborg Sergeant Rex "Power" Colt. Gameplay is largely similar to Far Cry 3, though several systems from the base game were simplified or removed, and it introduces the titular Blood Dragon, a massive dinosaur that fires lasers from its eyes and can be lured to attack enemy garrisons.

    The game's development was completed in about six months. It was part of Ubisoft's initiative to release downloadable content that would appeal to newcomers to the series, and the team was tasked to create something unexpected as Far Cry 3 downloadable content. The game was inspired by movies from the 1980s such as The Wraith and Terminator, and recent movies like Manborg and Hobo with a Shotgun. The director for Hobo with a Shotgun, Jason Eisener, became the game's informal advisor after befriending the game's director, Dean Evans. Michael Biehn was invited to provide his voice for the game's protagonist, while Australian synthwave duo Power Glove composed the game's soundtrack.

    Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was released for

    Windows and Xbox 360 on May 1, 2013. The game received generally positive reviews upon release, and was praised for its gameplay, soundtrack and its 1980s influence, but opinions were divided on the game's attempts at humour. The game was a commercial success for Ubisoft, as it sold 1 million copies by August 2013. A remastered version of the game was released in December 2021, available for players who purchased the Far Cry 6 season pass. While the game did not have a sequel, a spin-off, Trials of the Blood Dragon, was released in 2016. An adult animated series loosely inspired by Blood Dragon, titled Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix, released on Netflix
    in October 2023.

    Gameplay

    See also: Gameplay of Far Cry 3
    In this gameplay screenshot, protagonist Rex "Power" Colt is attacking the titular blood dragon.

    Blood Dragon is a

    health or increased defense, are automatically unlocked.[3] At the beginning of the game, most of the skills unlocked by the end of Far Cry 3, such as swimming for an indefinite duration underwater and chained combat takedowns, are already unlocked.[4] The crafting system featured in Far Cry 3 was removed in Blood Dragon.[5]

    The island is an

    CRT TVs.[12]

    Plot

    Michael Biehn provided his voice for protagonist Rex "Power" Colt.

    Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is set in a dystopian version of 2007 where the world is suffering the aftermath of a nuclear war. Ubisoft described the game as "an 80s VHS vision of the future" where the player must "get the girl, kill the bad guys, and save the world".[13]

    The player controls an American cybernetic super-soldier named Sergeant Rex "Power" Colt (Michael Biehn). He and another American cyber-soldier, T.T. "Spider" Brown (Phil LaMarr), travel to an unnamed island to investigate Colonel Sloan (Danny Blanco Hall), an elite agent who has gone rogue. Rex and Spider confront Sloan, who knocks Rex out and kills Spider.

    Rex is awoken by Sloan's assistant Dr. Elizabeth Darling (Grey DeLisle), who, disillusioned with Sloan's goals, betrays him. He teams up with Darling to overthrow Sloan's plan to revert the world to a prehistoric-like state with his rockets, armed with the blood of the "blood dragons" that roam the island. After liberating bases, saving scientists, and killing animals, Rex fights Sloan's other assistant, Dr. Carlyle (Robin Atkin Downes), who has used the blood of blood dragons to turn humans into zombie-like creatures called "the running dead". After he fights Dr. Carlyle's cyber soldiers and blood dragons, Dr. Carlyle is killed by his own AI, who had been mistreated and acted out of revenge.

    Rex goes into a parallel dimension where he fights legions of Colonel Sloan's running dead. Upon defeating them, he gets the Killstar, an arm-mounted laser gun that allows him to defeat Sloan at the cost of his own vitality. After Rex and Darling have sex, she is abducted the following morning. Rex makes an assault on Sloan's base with the Killstar and the Battle Armored Dragon Assault Strike System (B.A.D.A.S.S.).

    Rex confronts Sloan who, having programmed Rex, prevents him from attacking. Darling and Spider's memories remind Rex of his humanity, and he impales Sloan with his robotic hand and fires the Killstar, killing him. Darling appears and informs Rex of his success in stopping Sloan's plans, then proceeds to destroy the base. They embrace while looking on at the destruction, as Darling looks behind with purple eyes and a sinister gaze.

    Development

    "We’ve worked really hard to do a really bad script and it’s been a lot of fun to embrace that, tick off a lot of tropes, and try to create something that really is quite atrocious. But we’ve gone along that line of so bad it’s good. It’s almost like the Troll 2, or Miami Connection kind of aspect of things."

    — Dean Evans, the director of Blood Dragon.[14]

    Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a

    standalone expansion for Far Cry 3, which was released in late 2012. At the time, Ubisoft was experimenting with a new approach to release downloadable content (DLC) for their games. The company sought to appeal to new and existing players. It first experimented with The Tyranny of King Washington, a DLC for Assassin's Creed III that is set in an alternate timeline. The team intended to continue this approach for Far Cry 3, and allowed the developers to abandon its characters and the settings. Ubisoft welcomed all types of idea for the DLC, and they were approached by Dean Evans, who had previously worked on Assassin's Creed III and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction, about a game that is set in "a 1980s vision of the future". Franchise director Dan Hay and Ubisoft executives in Paris were pleased with the idea, and gave Evans approximately six months to complete its development.[15]

    The game was heavily inspired by

    B-movies released in the 1980s and the early 1990s.[14] Since Hay gave the team free rein to create something unexpected, Evans used the opportunity to "resurrect a VHS-era aesthetic he felt was lost to the times".[15] At the time, the release of nostalgic films such as Manborg and Hobo with a Shotgun made him believe that Blood Dragon would yield similar success, since the genre was underrepresented in the video game industry.[16] Evans contacted director Jason Eisener after watching Hobo with a Shotgun; the two soon became friends, and Eisener became Blood Dragon's informal adviser, with Evans regularly sending assets and soundtracks to him. Ubisoft also invited Eisener to visit their Montreal office to brainstorm additional ideas and read the game's script. Initially, the team planned to include a boss battle in Blood Dragon, which would involve Rex fighting "the Plague", characters from Hobo with a Shotgun. The idea was scrapped due to the game's limited development time.[15]

    Initially, Ubisoft considered hiring Dolph Lundgren for the lead role, Rex "Power" Colt, but Evans met Michael Biehn, who was known for his roles as Kyle Reese and Dwayne Hicks, during a Q&A session for The Victim, and decided that he would be the perfect candidate to voice Rex. Evans contacted Jennifer Blanc to set up a meeting, but he was initially reluctant to meet with Evans due to his unpleasant experience voicing Hicks in Aliens: Colonial Marines, his only voice role for a video game. Biehn changed his mind after meeting Evans, as he found the 1980s influence to be inherently interesting. The team described Rex Colt as "Michael Biehn in Terminator - but if he was the Terminator".[17] Biehn portrayed Rex as "somebody that was old and done [wiping out blood dragons] 100 times". Evans added that Rex was "bored" and "cynical" about the events happening in the game. As a result, the team had Biehn record satirical one-liners with a hoarse voice.[15]

    To ensure that the game captured the aesthetics of the 1980s movie, Evans held weekly "Cyborg Nights", where the development team gathered together to watch films such as

    16-bit animations.[15] Evans also asked the team to design the characters as if they only have a budget of $150.[18] Many characters in the game looked like action figures, and the team incorporated found objects into their design that is commonly seen in "B-movie sci-fi".[15] According to Evans, the team was proud of the script, which was "bad", and boasted about having "predictable and one-dimensional characters", "terrible story" and "minimal emotions" during early preview events.[7] He further remarked that Blood Dragon did not "make much sense", and that the game was designed to be "ridiculous", "fun",[4] "stupid" and "honest". The team hoped that the game could evoke the feeling of playing with action figures when players were young.[19]

    Since the game had a very short development cycle, many systems, such as skill trees and crafting, were either removed or streamlined significantly. Evans said the essence of the game is entirely about "running around with very big guns and shooting cyborgs in their faces whilst trying to avoid dragons that fire lasers from their eyes".

    quick-time events, such as "press A to show emotions" and "press A to cry", but this was subsequently removed from the game.[20]

    Australian synthwave duo Power Glove composed the game's music. Evans asked Eisener, who worked with the duo previously on Hobo with a Shotgun, to help him reach them. The soundtracks were produced fairly early during the game's development, as Evans wanted to use them as a baseline for the game's development. According to Evans, this allowed the team to understand more about the atmosphere and the tone the game was striving for. Concept arts were sent to Power Glove for inspiration. The team first composed the Blood Dragon theme, the theme for Rex Colt, and "Omega Force". The production of the soundtrack went smoothly, as the team rarely needed to ask the duo to revise their soundtracks. The soundtracks produced were mainly electronic music that paid homage to John Carpenter and Terminator films.[17] To capture the retro vibe, the team also recruited the sound designer of Airwolf to serve as the game's audio director.[19] As with Far Cry 3, the game is powered by the Dunia 2 engine.[21]

    Release

    In March 2013, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was found listed on a Brazilian ratings site.

    Xbox Live Marketplace.[27]

    On April 11, Ubisoft officially confirmed the game's release with a new trailer, and that the game would be released on

    live-action video titled Blood Dragon: The Cyber War was released on April 16, 2013.[32] The virtual box art cover for the game was designed by James White, who had previously created artwork for the film Drive.[33]

    A remastered version of Blood Dragon was included in the

    Windows, and Xbox One, and launched for Google Stadia on July 7, 2022.[13][35]

    Reception

    Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon received generally positive reviews according to Metacritic upon release.[36][37][38] The game received a nomination for Downloadable Game of the Year at the 17th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards,[46] and won the VGX award for Best DLC.[47] The game sold over 500,000 copies in two months, which surpassed Ubisoft's expectations, and its success also boosted the sales of Far Cry 3.[48] At Gamescom 2013, the game was announced to have sold over 1 million copies.[49]

    The tone and the theme of the game received mixed reviews. According to

    Jim Sterling from Destructoid and Alex Wiltshire from PC Gamer were more critical of the game's humor; Sterling thought that some of the jokes were banal and lame.[39][43] The game's soundtracks received critical acclaim.[9][41] The cutscenes were generally liked;[44][41] VanOrd compared them to older games such as Metal Gear and Shadow of the Beast,[41] though Dyer noted that some of these cutscenes were too long.[42]

    The gameplay received generally positive reviews. Most critics liked the blood dragons, as their presence gave players an additional way to clear outposts and garrisons. They found the blood dragons' interaction with other enemies to be an engaging experience.[11][41] However, several critics remarked that it was not too challenging to kill a blood dragon in the game.[45][41] Wiltshire added that they were not interesting to fight, and were more interesting as an ally than an enemy.[43] Whitehead praised the game's progression and pacing, noting that the game ends before it overstays its welcome.[40] Bertz disliked some of the side objectives for disrupting the game's pacing, and thought that some of the quests were repetitive and boring.[9] VanOrd and Dyer liked how most of the skills in Far Cry 3 were already unlocked at the beginning of Blood Dragon, with Dyer noting that this made Rex a very powerful character. Many critics remarked that the gameplay strengths of Far Cry 3 remain in Blood Dragon.[43][41][44] While several critics were disappointed by the lack of new gameplay additions,[44][39] Arthur Gies from Polygon thought that Blood Dragon was a more manageable game due to its smaller size and simplified systems.[11]

    Legacy

    Evans initially planned for a sequel,[50] though Far Cry 4 director Alex Hutchinson later added that the game would not have a follow-up.[51] Although no sequels to Blood Dragon have been released, a Trials game titled Trials of the Blood Dragon was developed by RedLynx and released by Ubisoft in 2016.[52] Evans left Ubisoft in March 2018 after his project was cancelled internally.[53] Following the success of Blood Dragon, Ubisoft continued to release spin-offs for the series using assets built for mainline games, which led to the release of Far Cry Primal in 2016 and Far Cry New Dawn in 2019.[54] Blood dragons return as enemies in Dead Living Zombies, the final DLC pack for Far Cry 5.[55]

    In 2019, it was announced that Ubisoft was collaborating with Adi Shankar to develop an animated series inspired by the game, titled Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix.[56] The show was released on Netflix on October 19, 2023.[57]

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    External links

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