Ubisoft announces Far Cry 3 patch that removes HUD issues entirely

In an effort to alleviate complaints players have had with Far Cry 3's busy heads-up display, the company has announced an upcoming patch that allows users to simply strip the entire thing out.

Far Cry 3 is a great game. We don’t need you take our word for it, as praise for Ubisoft’s open-world jungle adventure has been almost unanimous. However, that’s not to say that the game is perfect, and since it hit store shelves earlier this week we’ve heard numerous complaints about the game’s heads-up display. While functional, the display is cluttered. Ubisoft did excellent work in making the various on-screen indicators useful and information-dense, but the company almost went too far, and the result is a heads-up display that occasionally obscures crucial parts of a player’s vision.

It seems that we weren’t the only people listening to these complaints as this morning Ubisoft announced an upcoming patch which will allow players to tweak the HUD to their liking. “Based on feedback from both press and fans, the Far Cry 3 production team is working on a patch that will allow you to toggle most HUD/UI elements based on player preference,” an Ubisoft representative wrote in a message to Kotaku. “The patch will also avoid issues encountered in the .dll hack that might create a mission walkthrough break (missing QTE prompts, critical information, etc). The team is excited about how the Far Cry 3 community and fans of the game are enjoying themselves, and finding new ways to experience the Rook Islands. More news will be coming on the patch shortly…”

You’ll notice that the announcement includes neither a release date for the patch, nor word of what else it might change in Far Cry 3. We expect all of that information to appear quite soon, as Ubisoft seems ready to do everything in its power to build the extant Far Cry 3 playerbase now that the game is officially on shelves.

On to more pressing matters though: Why did Ubisoft send that announcement directly to Kotaku?  Because yesterday the site published a piece detailing a relatively simple hack to remove Far Cry 3′s in-game HUD. The writer, Kirk Hamilton, claims (accurately) that replaying Far Cry 3 without any of Ubisoft’s hand-crafted user interface elements blocking the screen makes the game experience quite different (and, as you’d expect, significantly more difficult). Unfortunately, Hamilton’s hack does cause unforeseen problems with the game’s periodic quick time events, making them effectively unbeatable. Ubisoft, already hard at work on a patch that will allow players to strip out the HUD without breaking anything, must have seen Hamilton’s article, realized he made an excellent point, and decided to drop word to Kotaku that the developer was hard at work on improving Hamilton’s new way to play Far Cry 3.

For the most part though, that’s boring, “inside baseball”-type stuff that won’t interest you unless you get paid to write about games. The important part here is that Ubisoft is paying very close attention to how people feel about Far Cry 3 and are working diligently to improve any problems that might arise. We’re very excited to see what else this next patch might add to the game, and will have more word on when/how it will appear just as soon as Ubisoft makes that info public.