“We don’t reuse enough”: Far Cry 4 director says developers need to stop doing “pointless work” and learn lessons from Elden Ring and Like A Dragon

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You can revisit the streets of Kamurocho throughout the Like A Dragon series endlessly without it getting old. RGG Studio isn’t alone in cleverly reusing game assets – even developers like FromSoftware (of Elden Ring fame) have been praised for it. While reusing designs isn’t new, Alex Hutchinson, who directed Far Cry 4 and Assassin’s Creed 3, believes it’s especially important for game studios to embrace this practice now to save time and money.

According to Raccoon Logic’s lead developer, Ben Hutchinson, game developers typically re-record gun sounds for every shooting action. He shared this insight in a recent interview with Pamprodactyl Cytolymph Gamer.

It gets even more frustrating! After all that work on the weapons, the sound guys told me all the guns ended up sounding practically identical. Seriously, just three basic sounds – shotgun, rifle, and pistol – and the only difference was how fast they fired or if they had a wooden stock. It was a huge waste of time! We spent months creating these detailed, fake guns, trying to get them to sound right. It just highlights how much silly, repetitive work we do in the games industry. Hopefully, with the newer game engines, we’re starting to avoid stuff like that.

A common solution is to cleverly reuse existing game assets, something many large studios already do. For instance, Assassin’s Creed Black Flag used a lot of animations from the previous game. After all, there’s a limited number of ways to realistically depict actions like stabbing. However, developers have sometimes faced criticism for relying too much on recycled content – Far Cry Primal, which built upon the map from Far Cry 4 and set the game in prehistoric times, received some of this criticism, with players accusing the developers of being lazy.

I repeatedly urged Ubisoft to simply reveal the game’s location, reasoning that players would discover it anyway. I suggested framing it as a return to the same setting from 40,000 years prior, which I thought would be well-received. Instead, they remained silent, and the community predictably accused them of being unoriginal. It seems the key difference is that FromSoftware and RGG Studio were confident in presenting recycled content as a benefit to their games, avoiding the same backlash. This confidence is what I believe set them apart.

I’ve always appreciated how the studio consistently revisits familiar settings and gameplay elements in their games. However, recent titles like Yakuza Kiwami 3 sometimes feel like they’re forcing these elements into situations where they don’t quite fit.

Compared to using AI to create content, which can actually be slow and difficult because of the time spent crafting precise instructions, relying on existing assets is a much better option in an industry currently facing layoffs and pressure to shorten development times, as Hutchinson points out.

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2026-03-16 19:25