Previous leak
āOne of the biggest issues stalling the games secret development was the comedy aspect that made the original a cult classic. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon reinterpreted the gameplay within a neon-soaked 80ās aesthetic, with tangential references to the decade that were reportedly selected by throwing darts at a board. For the sequel, the writers were hoping to up the comedy factor even further with references to more contemporary pop culture and memes; the majority of developers working on it were interns and grads who had little frame of reference on the 80ās other than watching the YouTube short movie Kung Fury and looking at a poster for the movie DRIVE, which posed an issue on expanding the setting, but they knew memes pretty well.
The shift to more modernised comedy hoped to make things easier but they found new issues in that this particular vein was already tapped by Borderlands 2. A developer, who wishes to remain anonymous, recounted the situation in a foul quƩbƩcois accent:
āWe had a game where you shoot guns with neon strapped to them. That already put us at risk of being negatively compared to Borderlands. And then our writing team says, hey, can we put some memes in there?
That sounds great in theory but Borderlands 2 had Minecraft, it had trollface, double rainbow, the third game has guns referencing Elon Musk⦠Not to mention all the annoying, overly long dialogue that always happens when youāre trying to copy the writing from Portal 2. What could we do that Gearbox didnt? We already did Lazer Collection. Some developers were tasked with scouting Know Your Meme but we were fucked, really.ā
Frustrated, many of the games 20 writers quit the company in unison, leading to the projects discovery by higher ups. Some later found success in copying the writing from Portal 2 on games like High on Life.ā
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