It’s a mercy that consoles of the time wouldn’t have memory to spare for flies, or else they’d cover the single fluorescent lamp that illuminates the counter.Įvery last patron of Mike’s Bar is a mercenary. Out front, plastic tables and chairs face the swamp, while indoors the windows are boarded up. It’s not much to look at - a brown building that blends into the dirt roads of Leboa-Sako, the northernmost region of Far Cry 2’s African state. But all this future-gazing began over ten years ago, halfway across the world, in Mike’s Bar. It’s the approach to design: one that pairs scripting and cinema with deep, deep systems that allow any resident of the capital to become protagonist, even just for ten minutes.
It’s not just the Samsung curvature of the double-decker buses in this sci-fi England, nor the drones spoiling the view from the London Eye.