Just Cause players are encouraged to cause as much mayhem and destruction as possible, while creatively using a variety of tools, weapons and vehicles. Just Cause 3 intends to dial up the insanity a couple notches when it releases on December 1st, with a massive open world set on an idyllic Mediterranean Island for players to explore and blow up.
Marketing for the game is also looking for bold moves and a big score. Promotions for the game include everything from 360-degree VR videos showing the bird’s-eye view of the world as the main character, Rico Rodriguez, flies through the sky in a custom wingsuit. Taking things several thousand steps further, the Just Cause team will hold a competition where the winner gets his or her own island. That’s right. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One pre-order players that score high points in the game by creatively causing mass destruction have a chance to win a real life island.
[a]listdaily speaks to Rob Rutter, Brand & Marketing Manager at Square Enix for Just Cause 3, to talk destruction, human flight and where they found an island to give away.
What would you say it is about the Just Cause series that keeps fans coming back for more
I think the Just Cause series offers gamers something that’s actually missing in a lot of games nowadays – a real sense of fun, action and truly open-ended gameplay. The sheer size of the world, and the options to play around in it and experiment with the physics and destruction is a really appealing mix for a lot of gamers, and it’s something that offers hundreds of hours of fun.
What inspired the creation of The Wingsuit Experience VR app and panoramic video
I was discussing with the Just Cause 3 production team about trying to find a way to create something really immersive to get players into the game world and experience it first-hand before the game launched. Avalanche Studios have created this incredible Mediterranean island republic of Medici and we didn’t just want to release another series of cinematic video trailers, when we’re really selling an interactive experience. We’d recently seen some incredible 360-degree pop videos from groups like The Black Eyed Peas and Boyz Noise and we wondered if it’d be possible to create something similar in a videogame. We found Mindlight, a developer who’d made some tech demos of this type of technology and the production started from there.
How did the Just Cause 3 Win An Island Challenge come into being
The US team had this great idea to run a competition to win an actual island – we thought this sounded really cool, and then the US team ran with the idea and brought it into a great in-game competition for the launch period of Just Cause 3. We’re looking forward to seeing how much Chaos people can create once the game’s out as they try to win this!
How do you grow the Just Cause audience with each game
We don’t bring Just Cause out on an annual cycle like some other open world games, and that brings with it challenges of keeping people aware of Just Cause as a franchise. There’s an element of having to re-educate people and new gamers about what makes Just Cause such a special game. Growing the audience is about trying to build on the great foundations of the previous games, and Just Cause 2 has given us a really strong community base to reach out to and work with on YouTube and other channels to show the world why this game is so awesome.
What are some of challenges in conveying the size, scope, and wild open-world gameplay Just Cause 3 has to offer
There are a lot of things to consider when communicating the size and scope of a game like Just Cause 3, because it’s the type of game where it’s really the sum of its parts. As a player you want to see everything — the huge world, the number of vehicles, the variety of locations and gameplay. It’s really difficult to wrap this all up into an easily understandable message. This is why we brought out our “This Is Just Cause 3” trailer so early at E3. Typically, a “101-style” trailer that explains the game in detail comes very late in a campaign, and we wanted to show the core elements of the game much earlier and in a lot more detail. It’s also why we’ve been working with big YouTubers to show longer gameplay footage, which really shows people the full scope of the game in a very open way.
