Cause and Effect

An early look at what makes Just Cause a possible GTA killer.

Some would say that ‘open-ended’ is a buzzword many developers use to describe a game without focus. It might surprise you to know that a lack of focus is key to designing an open-ended game - as soon as you start forcing the player down a certain road, there’s no way a game can truly call itself ‘open’. Leaving it up to the player to decide where the focus should be, providing them the tools and giving them a reason to achieve certain goals is what ultimately supplies the player with that feeling of freedom.

Open-endedness is used to describe quite a few games these days, and it’s important to define why these games are worthy of such a classification. For Far Cry, it was throwing the player onto an island, telling them to go somewhere and letting them decide exactly how to get there, be it on foot, air or jet boat. In the case of Grand Theft Auto, open-endedness was defined by fast cars, random tasks and lots of guns in a city populated by police, crime mobs and the average Joe, thus promoting emergent gameplay.



The aforementioned titles have both been critical successes, so the argument for open-endedness, be it ‘just’ a buzzword or a total design philosophy, is strong. One could conclude that a game that combines the accessibility of the island in Far Cry with the complexity of GTA should have the makings of an idea fit for a great game.

It seems Avalanche Studios had such an idea, and named it Just Cause.

Change of plan
Odd Ahlgren is the design director on Just Cause at Avalanche. According to Ahlgren, the content of the game is ‘the fuel that propels the story forward’. This of course raises the obvious question – what is Just Cause about?

‘In short, you take on the role of the rugged but suave secret agent Rico Rodriguez. You are a lone wolf, a bad-arse and an expert in what is referred to as “regime change”,’ says Ahlgren. Regime change is just a nice way of saying ‘assassin’. The player, as Rico, is tasked with a secret mission to ‘change’ the government of the lovely sun island republic of San Esperito from nasty to nice. In order to do this, you need to take out Salvador Mendoza, the island’s dictator who is apparently a bit of a bad-arse himself.

‘To aid you in your endeavours [you’ll have] blonde bombshell Maria Kane and veteran agent Tom Sheldon… They drive around in a top-modern RV, dishing out assignments and drinking Mai Tais while looking for a way to take care of El Presidente,’ he says.



No government has ever been toppled by three people (well, no constitutional monarchies at least) so you’ll need to leverage help from a number of groups on the island. These include two drug cartels - one that has allegiance to the government and the other very keen to overthrow it. Also, hiding in the jungles of San Esperito is a guerrilla faction that works in more subtle ways. It’s up to you to decide who you’ll turn to for help and what form it will take.

‘San Esperito is a powder keg waiting to blow. You are the spark that will ignite it,’ says Ahlgren.