This is why Far Cry 5 looks almost as good as a film on Xbox One X

The makers of Far Cry 5 made the game look “very real” on the Xbox One X by spending days filming actors.

The latest instalment of the popular franchise, which has been enhanced for the world’s most powerful console, focuses on a fanatical cult in Montana known as The Project at Eden’s Gate, and its psychopathic leader, Joseph Seed.

Ubisoft, the company behind the first-person adventure, said gamers would experience a “very convincing” world thanks to how they filmed the cutscenes.

“We used motion capture for the big scenes. The game is also in first person, so we had to carefully craft the sequences we shot. The actors had to learn the whole scene, so when it lasts seven minutes, they are actually doing the seven minutes at once,” said Jean-Sébastien Decant, narrative director of Far Cry 5. “We have to create all the choreography around them, so it’s like theatre. We spent days crafting the scenes, rehearsing them and then playing with the actors. Then it’s translated by the rigging team and the animation team to make it look good in the game.”

Thanks to the power of the Xbox One X, which supports 4K resolution, players can experience the best-looking version of Far Cry 5 on the console.

Dan Hay, Ubisoft’s Creative Director, said all the work behind the scenes meant players could enjoy the experience, with a higher level of detail.

“Far Cry is beautiful, it’s a frontier and we want players to sit back and drink it in,” he said. “When you go to a place that is modelled after ‘big sky’ country, you better make sure when you’re rendering in 4K that all of the lighting works, that players can walk through the world and feel that it’s rich. You want it to feel real. You want people to almost smell it, from when they get into a car – that classic muscle car boosting down the road – to flying in the sky, to meeting different characters, it’s got to feel real.

“I think now, with the power to be able to do that, people are going into what feels like a very real, very convincing, very beautiful experience.”

The game has been enhanced for the Xbox One X – the most powerful console ever made – which offers 40% more power than rival devices. Its six-teraflop engine and built-in supersampling gives gamers better textures, smoother framerates and faster load times, even on a 1080p TV. Players can record game clips in 4K at 60 frames per second and capture 4K screenshots. The console is so powerful that it will improve any game played on it.

Far Cry 5 is an open-world adventure that lets players decide when, where and how events unfold, adapting and reacting to the choices gamers make. For the first time in a Far Cry game, players can also choose their own avatar and customize their character.

Gamers can drive cars, fly planes and fight alongside animals including Boomer the dog and Cheeseburger the bear to take down Seed and liberate Hope County.