Far Cry 5’s writer explains why the minimap was axed

Far Cry 5’s Drew Holmes thinks the lack of mini-map will make gameplay even more immersive.

Far Cry 5 might be set in Montana, but it still has a lot in common with past games – including open-world exploration, roving wildlife, and the choice between stealth kills or action-packed gunplay. One of the most notable differences, however, is the lack of a mini-map. Won’t players have trouble navigating the setting if they can’t inspect a map? According to Ubisoft’s Drew Holmes, it should actually make the game more immersive.

“We really want to focus on exploration with a sense of ‘I’m not sure what to do or where to go’,’ Holmes said in an interview with GamingBolt. “The removal of the mini-map was so you’re not staring at a little corner of your screen saying ‘what’s new in the world?’. You’ve got to actually pay attention to the world and the art side is doing a good job of making sure there are good landmarks to orient yourself … It becomes more [or] less the game guiding you on where to go, and more of you saying ‘where do I want to go, what do I want to do today?'”

While the absent mini-map might be frustrating to some players, there is something to be said about its immersive quality. After all, it’s not like ordinary people dropped into real-life disasters always have maps to orient themselves.

“I think when you set a game in a more familiar setting like Montana, we wanted to compare it to ‘what would I do in this situation?’,” Holmes continued. “I’d have to go and try and meet some locals, see if they’d do anything. Or go to a town and see if there’s anything to do around there. So the goal really was to get rid of the towers as a way of forcing me to interact with the people, pay attention to my surroundings. And sort of intuitively figure out ‘well, if there’s a town here, there’s a gas station down the road’, so everything sort of feels like a believable world”.

Far Cry 5 launches for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on February 27, 2018.

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