It’s been nearly a month since the release ofFar Cry 6and many players have already sunken their teeth into everything the game has to offer. For how large the environments are inFar Cry 6, the amount of content is equally ambitious. However, players have started to notice a problem with the population density of NPCs in the world.
A lot of players tend to forget just how integral NPCs are to an open-world game. If there aren’t NPCs to populate a game world, then it becomes barren and uninteresting. This is why many people citeSkyrimfor its memorable NPCs, since every location in the game has its own set of unique NPCs for players to interact with. Now, it seems players are facing the opposite issue withFar Cry 6.
RELATED:Far Cry 6’s Anton Castillo is ‘Sending’ Players Emails Mocking Them
A Reddit user named StonewallSoyah made a post about how very few NPCs there were in Libertad HQ, saying how the base should have a minimum of at least forty NPCs. The same can also be said about FND bases, as well as plenty of otherFar Cry 6locations. Not to mention that it’s always the same NPC giving the player information at each new base. The user went on to say that by populating areas more, whether they be hostile or friendly, the game would feel much more vivid.
To be fair, this isn’t the first time that theFar Cryseries has faced issues with population density. Back in the days ofFar Cry 3, players would often capture enemy outposts, only for the same three Rakyat warrior NPCs to arrive at the outpost to claim it. Though, upon revisiting these outposts and many other landmarks later in the game, there are little to no NPCs around to populate the area.
The goal of any open-world game is to make the player feel a part of the world. If everything in the game revolves around the player, then it won’t feel like an escape to another reality, it will just feel like any other video game. Along withSkyrim, games likeRed Dead Redemption 2andFallout: New Vegasare densely populated with distinct NPCs with little to no overlap.
It will be interesting to see if Ubisoft does anything to address these population density issues withinFar Cry 6. The studio has already fixed a number of lingering bugs withinFar Cry 6, but it’s likely that the game will continue to receive more updates in the months to come, and it’s likely that too many NPCs would cause performance issues.
Far Cry 6is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
