“When you come face-to-face with another human who has been through conflict, it makes you think about things a little differently. The difference between taking inspiration from real-world conflict and actually trying to show a real war is key to understanding the setting for Far Cry 4, Mark explained: Places that are referred to as ‘failed states.'”

We needed to find somewhere that had a history of conflict - somewhere that could be politically unstable - the kind of place that you would go to that was on the edge of the map. From that we looked at locations where the two would make sense, and we came to the Himalayas. “We also made a list of environment features we wanted. “One of the first things we did was to write down a list of different animals to include in the game,” Mark told us when we met up with the team at Ubisoft recently in Montreal. We caught up with Mark Thompson, narrative director, and Alex Hutchinson, creative director, to find out how visiting Nepal to meet people who actually fought in the civil war helped to inspire the development of Far Cry 4. Set in the fictional Himalayan country of Kyrat, this nation torn apart by war draws heavily from real-world locations to make the game feel authentic.

Far Cry 4 is the upcoming first-person shooter from developer Ubisoft Montreal.