Alex Amancio began his career over a decade ago in the world of professional military flight simulators where he worked for clients such as the USAF and NATO. He then migrated to the videogame industry where he led the art teams on a few PC and Xbox titles before joining Ubisoft in early 2005. A forerunner in next generation artistic pipelines, Alex has given various lectures and master classes around the globe, tackling the challenges of creating top tier next-gen visuals.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


When we chose Africa as a setting for Far Cry 2, our original plan was to research the continent extensively through literature, cinema, photo journalism, and even random safari photos people posted online from their vacations.

We were essentially looking for anything we could find that documented African culture.

However, when we first began developing the Far Cry 2 world, it became apparent that something was missing. The universe that we were creating felt somehow hollow – like a film set rather than a credible, living, breathing world. It quickly became clear that we needed to experience Africa firsthand in order to do it justice in the game. And experience it we did.

Our first step was choosing a destination. We needed references from a wide variety of biomes ranging from jungles to deserts and few African countries actually possessed that level of variety.

Kenya quickly came to mind as it possesses almost all of the core elements that we needed. Its western border with Uganda was lush, the Serengeti plains ranging through its southern border with Tanzania provided our quintessential African Savannah and the Ethiopian border to the north was the perfect reference for our arid plains.

However, even as we planned our trip there was talk of growing political unrest in Kenya and we were gently encouraged to reconsider our destination.

We decided to take our chances and ignore the suggestions to choose a different destination. Had we known of the violence that would erupt a few months later, I doubt that we would have made the same choice. In retrospect however, Kenya was perfect for our needs as the Serengeti added to our appreciation of the natural splendour of Africa, where the turmoil in Nairobi gave us insights into the nature of conflict on the continent.



We landed in the Kenyan capital in the middle of the night. The first thing that struck me as I looked out from my airplane window was the pitch black darkness that surrounded us. I half expected to see a troop transport pull up next to the plane packed with soldiers carrying AK-47s. Then I spotted a dim light at a distance that slowly drew nearer until it eventually materialized into a tractor. It was there to pick up our luggage; we had arrived.

Our guide Clive was Kenyan born and of British descent; his family has called Kenya home for two generations. A cross between Michael Caine and Crocodile Dundee, he was the spitting image of what I had imagined the classic safari guide to be.

He also knew Kenya like the back of his hand. We really owe Clive a great deal of credit as he truly took us down the off-beaten path.



We traveled to areas that likely had not seen an outsider in years. Some of the campsites that we used had actually been abandoned for decades and they had sometimes incidentally become elephant paths.

We even had quite a few interesting encounters in the middle of the night as our small party seemed to attract everything from elephants, to hippos, curious hyenas and even some lions.

Running for cover into a Land Cruiser in the middle of the night as your armed escorts cock their AK-47s makes for a very intense “Blair Witch Project” moment… though that’s not quite how I would have described my experience at the time. Needless to say, that night I waited for daylight before leaving the tent to use our makeshift latrine.

We ended up making it back in one piece after two intense weeks and brought back over 40 hours of HD footage, over 8 Gigs of reference pictures and a truly priceless experience.



Our trip provided us with an opportunity to see native central African architecture firsthand. I took photos of every step of the construction process – everything from small buildings to mud huts.

This really helped in giving the architecture in the game tremendous credibility. Being physically in the savannah, jungle and desert truly provided a sense of space that we could not have obtained from photos. One of our biologist guides gave us tremendous insight into the African vegetation, its seasonal cycles, and which plants and trees grow in proximity to one another. Walking up to the bushes and trees to take high resolution photos of bark and leaves was crucial in our goal to develop an authentic African landscape for Far Cry 2.

I have often wondered if the trip was worth it. Did our experience in Kenya and the reference material that we brought back truly impact the game? I actually got my answer at a recent press conference. We had just finished presenting the game when a group of South African journalists came over and shook my hand thanking the team for vividly capturing the essence of their beautiful continent.