Far Cry 2: Realism+ Redux – Return to the Heart of Darkness news - Far Cry 2: Realism+Redux mod for Far Cry 2

Realism+ Redux is a crossover of the Realism+ and Redux mods for Far Cry 2, and features some of the best features of both to provide a fresh and exciting gameplay experience.

Almost every aspect of the game has been tweaked or enhanced, and both BigTinz and I would love to go over some of the most significant features which we’ve included in this new modding project.

As of our latest version, there are now different downloads available which allow you to choose to have the player's position on the map, to restore the game's original colours, and shorten the taxi ride at the start of the game.

Graphics

Far Cry 2 is without doubt a game of its era. While the plains and jungles of Africa are well-realised and a true sight to behold, the original game’s presentation is covered in late 2000’s classic brown, and comes with a short draw distance alongside distracting LOD and shadow deficiencies.

Realism+ Redux addresses this by first boosting the game’s saturation to bring out some lively colour. This is done by simply removing the desaturation values, so what you see is the game’s assets with their original colours. On top of that the game’s overall graphics are pushed as far as the engine will allow, with improved draw distance, LOD values and shadows. New textures have also been added, with AI-enhanced versions used alongside some which are newly created.

All the screenshots used in this article are straight out of the mod, and the GIF below gives a comparison.

The game’s UI has also received a facelift, again with AI-enhanced textures used with newly created artwork for weapon and map icons. There is a comparison below showing some of these changes.

Gameplay

Our most exciting new feature is a fix for the annoying outposts, which are infamous for respawning as soon as the player leaves the immediate area. The talented Scubrah has written a newscript where once all the enemies in an outpost have been killed they will only respawn once half an hour real-time has passed. We are so pleased to finally have a solution to this absolutely renowned issue with Far Cry 2, and very grateful to Scubrah for letting us adapt his mod for Realism+ Redux. This feature is demonstrated in the video below.

The next most significant change is an overhaul for weapons and combat. The original game had bullet-spongey enemies, with pistols and shotguns being particularly ineffective.

Realism+ Redux gives an overall boost to player and enemy damage, which immediately makes combat deadlier and more impactful. This has been balanced around two new difficulties ‘Hardcore Redux’ and ‘Infamous Redux’. Both have increases for weapons’ max ammo, ‘Hardcore Infamous’ has the same combat difficulty as the original Infamous difficulty, and ‘Infamous Redux’ is a new, more difficult experience fit for experienced players. In addition to this each class of weapons has been re-balanced to try and make them all equally viable - no more pathetic shotguns!

There are a lot of overall changes to gameplay, too many to completely list here, but these include the removal of the player arrow from the map for more immersive exploration, infighting between enemy factions, expanded arsenals for enemies and buddies, a reorganized shop, new upgrades for DLC weapons and vehicles, faster vehicles, new vehicles for enemy patrols, improved hang gliders, improved stealth, less sluggish player movement, controls tweaks, and a whole lot more. Come and check out the mod description for all the details.

Playable Characters

One aspect we are particularly proud of are the new options for playable characters. We have added the female mercenaries to the playable roster, and also the option to play as an ‘Anonymous Mercenary’ where a player model is randomly generated using the same system which generates enemy fighters. Having a more diverse choice of people to play as is really nice to have, and you can see some of the results of being an ‘Anonymous Mercenary’ below.

Bug Fixes

If you’ve played Far Cry 2 before you may be well acquainted with things like weirdly bouncing npcs, getting soft locked through being unable to rescue buddies, silent phone calls, and a whole host of other weirdness.

We’ve gone to great lengths to fix as many of these issues as possible, and while it’s not 100% bug free (seriously, don’t use DX10), we are confident in providing a stable Far Cry 2 experience.

Thanks and Links

Realism+ Redux has been possible thanks to the now more than a decade old Far Cry 2 modding community, and we’d particularly like to thank Scubrah for their awesome outpost respawn script, and FoxAhead for their ever so reliable Multi-Fixer project.

We’re more than happy to answer any questions and help out if you have any difficulties. The install is practically drag-and-drop, so it’s really quite simple.

And as a side note, Realism+ Redux is completely Steam Deck compatible! We have an 'Official' control scheme availaible in Community Layouts.