Square Enix and Avalanche Studios have released the fourth and final developer diary for Just Cause 3. The video shows team members talking about the game’s story and characters. David Lorentz, the game’s Lead Mission Designer, says that the story shouldn’t take itself too seriously, since the game is primarily the player doing silly and outlandish things. Roland Lesterlin, the Game Director, says that the studio has focused on giving depth to the main protagonist, Rico. Players had complained that there wasn’t much to Rico in Just Cause 2, which is why the third game takes place in Medici, Rico’s home country. He has come back to help a new leader bring democracy to Medici.
Characters shown in the video include Mario, who is described as someone to bring comic relief to the game. Di Ravello, the game’s primary enemy, is billed as a super villain trying to establish a rivalry with the player. Avalanche says they want the characters to be fun, like the gameplay itself.
Instead of doing regular performance capture and VO, Avalanche instead did full body motion capture of the actor’s performances. This allowed them to have a camera man, who had an LCD screen showing the actor’s performance live in the game world while they were filming.
The video also discusses the game’s missions: “Our missions are excuses to let you try new things and cool things and we’ve kept there the same philosophy, which is all over the place in the rest of the game, which means leave the player free to experiment and reach his goals the way he prefers.” Says Francesco Antolini, the game’s Principle Designer. There will be 20-30 missions in the game, compared to its predecessor’s roughly six or seven.
You can get a look at a few of the game’s deadly vehicles here.
Just Cause 3 will be released on December 1 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows.