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Interview: Avalanche Studios’ Omar Shakir on Just Cause 3

Stevivor recently spent some time with Omar Shakir, Producer at Avalanche Studios to find out what’s new with Just Cause 3.

Stevivor: What can you tell us about Just Cause 3?

Omar: Rico is returning to his home land after being gone for 20 years. He’s come back and he’s realised the home he left behind is not the home that exists now. A brutal dictator has installed himself as an oppressor in the region. Because of Rico’s past throughout the Just Cause series he’s the perfect candidate to liberate his homeland. He meets people from his past, people he left behind, he meets some new characters that help aid him on his journey.

Stevivor: What changes can we expect from past games in the series?

Omar: With Just Cause we started looking at what did work and what didn’t. What didn’t work we improved on it; what did, we made better. For example we improved Rico’s general motion which we call flow motion. Theres now 4,500 animations across all the things that Rico does. So we increased the fidelity of the stunt animations, we added the wing suit witch is one of out new core traversal mechanics, we stabilised our parachute which was a little bit more of an adrenaline fused experience in Just Cause 2, not so much a very reasonable form for combat.

Stevivor: How does the change impact gameplay?

Omar: We augmented it, we improved on it now when your in the parachute you really have that sense of control to precisely aim at enemies on the ground and other things as well. Because of that obviously we added the wing suit witch is the sort of adrenalin junkie mechanic that we had to add since we balanced the parachute a little bit more. On top of that obviously it just goes on and on.

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Stevivor: Tell me about the Island.

Omar: We’re in the Mediterranean now, its a completely new biome. Big giant costal cliffs, crystal blue water, scrub land, forests, sunflower fields. Our vegetation is completely interactive and destructible. Rico can flatten sunflower fields, he can destroy bushes, he can level forests with explosives. One of the other interesting things we augmented was the stunting. In Just Cause 2 it was a fixed point, you could kind of move around on different angles but for the most part you couldn’t move. We changed that. We figured it would be much more fun and much cooler if you could actually use all of the same basic moves you have on the ground while on a vehicle. Oh and that goes for all vehicles. For a jet you can go across the wing of the plane, you can do a backflip of a plane, you can eject into a parachute. We thought that would just make things a little bit more intense and increase the spectacle.

Stevivor: The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Just Cause is destruction. Are you turning it up to eleven for this one?

Omar: The fidelity in our destruction have improved significantly from Just Cause 2. Its now dynamic rather than procedural. No thing will be destroyed the same way twice. For example the dictators concrete statue that he has in all the towns, that’s havoc based. If you destroy the legs it will topple over from the legs. If you catapult a car into the statue and it hits the mid section it will crumble form the middle. If you tether his hand to his face and retract, if you have enough strength he’ll slap himself in the face and topple over.

Stevivor: The grappling looks amazing. Especially with the wing suit.

Omar: Yeah Rico can grapple from his wing suit, if you’re a Just Cause 2 fan you’ll remember slingshoting. We were like, “hey that was fun that you can sling shot using your grapple while in the parachute” so now we bring that to the wing suit. When you think about the physics of it and the gravity of it it doesn’t really make senses but somehow it feels very sturdy when you fire a grapple hook while wing suiting at high speed and retract you basically catapult yourself even faster. Skimming the terrain is pretty awesome.

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Stevivor: It looks like Spider-Man and Superman combined. Do you have any ideas for multiplayer like the mods for Just Cause 2?

Omar: There wont be any multiplier in Just Cause 3 of the shelf. There’s a pretty robust synchronous system that will feature challenges and compare leaderboards with your friends and play against the ghosts of your friends. For example you can challenge your friends to stay in the wing suit for as long as possible or kill more enemies with a single grenade or keep a car at a certain speed for a longer time than your friend.

Stevivor: Sounds like something my competitive friends an I will get stuck doing for hours. Just Cause 3 looks to have a lot of freedom, how do you pace narrative within sandbox game?

Omar: We’re still working on that. It’s a question of balance. We’re trying to interlock the systemic gameplay with the mission progression and see if we manage to find the sweet spot. It’s always hard when you do that. You need to make both types of player happy. You cant really completely detach them because you’ll find narrative about oppression in a town you just liberated so it has to make sense.

Just Cause 3 will be available in September for PS4, Xbox One and Windows PC.


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About the author

Shane Wall

I'm just a simple man trying to make my way in the universe. A game geek turned audio engineer/musician. Shane's life is a delicate balance of video games, music and science fiction.