Just Cause 3

Long rumoured to be in development, Avalanche has finally started revealing details of its greatly anticipated, chaotic sandbox sequel. Just Cause 2 earned itself a cult following as players began to embrace its emergent gameplay potential, and what’s been revealed so far of Just Cause 3 promises a much wider appreciation of those efforts…

It’s a homecoming…
Rico Rodriguez is heading home. After many years out in the field toppling dictatorships around the world with his unique brand of opposition via destruction and slicked-back hair, Rico returns to the Mediterranean and his homestead of Medici. General Di Ravello has taken control of the country and so Rico gets the chance to show off his insurgency skills to the home crowd. The game is seta number of years after the events of Just Cause 2 so expect to see Ricoalittle more aged and ragged than in the past. Hopefully the story will be a little fuller this time around too.

New tech to play with…
The grappling hook and ever present parachute are what made Just Cause such an instantly fun game to play, so it’s good to hear those will both be available to you from the start. What is new however is a wingsuit that allows you to travel around Medici at incredible speeds and traverse much greater distances when in free fall. It should also save you a lot of time travelling around the island as doing it by parachute could become a bit of a drag. Combined with the ability to latch onto passing aircraft, cars and enemies the wingsuit should be a potent newtool in your arsenal.

Verticality goes both ways…
Famed for its skydiving, Avalanche is obviously making sure that Just Cause 3 delivers the kind of topography you'll enjoy scaling and plummeting towards, but having lots of verticality doesn't just mean reaching into the skies. Expect to do a little spelunking in this game as subterranean caverns have been added for the first time, meaning you could be dropping as far beneath the ground as you do towards it from the sky. We imagine this will add a lot more options to how you approach enemy bases to cause even more mayhem than usual. Whether or not you can blow up a mountain remains to be seen.

Tighter all around…
If we had one major complaint about the Just Cause games so far (other than the voice acting) it would be that the controls have tended to be a little floaty and loose. Shooting wasn't quite as satisfying as it could be and driving really left a lot to be desired. That’s being addressed according to Avalanche. The team is working to make the moment to moment gameplay and control much tighter and much more satisfying. As an example of how this is being done, Avalanche has hired a number of former Burnout team members to work on the car handling and driving mechanics. We can’t think of a better dev team to tap for this kind of gameplay.

No effect on Mad Max…
While there’s been no official word on the progress of Avalanche’s Mad Max game with Warner Bros, we have no concern over its future. For a start, Avalanche now has a staff of around 250 people split between its home studio in Stockholm and a newer studio in New York opened in 2011, after the release of Just Cause 2. Between those two teams we doubt there will be too much trouble dividing up staff to make sure the open world chaos of a post apocalyptic Australia doesn't interfere or get delayed by the open world chaos of a pre apocalyptic Mediterranean island.