Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon Is Totally Bonkers, An Actual Thing
On April 1st, a peculiar thing happened: a game company debuted a seemingly implausible spin-off that wasn't a gigantic, painfully obvious hoax. Now, notice I said "hoax," not "joke." Reason being, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon still seems incredibly, absurdly silly. The advantage it has over its smoke-and-mirrors peers, however, is that it's actually, you know, real. What began with a schlocky (though impressively elaborate) '80s-style B-movie adver-site now has a series of neon-soaked screenshots, and - in a fun twist - they look almost nothing like Far Cry 3. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, well, I guess by that metric Far Cry's dev team has some pretty darn sterling mental health. All other indicators, however, would seem to suggest otherwise. In a very, very good way.
The "official" website (which is quite the entertaining entity in and of itself) describes Blood Dragon as follows:
"The year is 2007. It is the future. Earth has been ravaged by a nuclear war and new paths for peace must be found. A U.S. cyborg army may have found a solution: a powerful bioweapon on a distant island. A Mark IV Cyber Commando, Sergeant Rex Power Colt has been sent over to gather information and figure out what the hell is going on."
Sergeant. Rex. Power. Colt. That's so dumb it's actually the most brilliant thing I've heard all day.
For now, however, Ubisoft's being extremely cagey about how this will all unfold in the context of , you know, a game. Obviously, guns, shooting, and an island are still locks, but what about openness, punchable sharks, and horrifying war birds? These are the great questions of our time.
Regardless, this looks to be an, er, interesting swerve off the beaten path and off a cliff that's also a computer that downloaded all of space. Hopefully it'll be more than just a goofy gimmick, but even if not, I suppose it can't be any more egregiously ridiculous than Far Cry 3's actual plot.
