PC modders have really begun to dig into Far Cry 3. The mind reels at the possibilities.

Granted, Ubisoft hasn't been as supportive of user-created modifications as, say, Bethesda was with Skyrim. But that doesn't mean we can't put together a wishlist of mods we'd love to see.

I did an informal poll of the Kotaku staff to find out what they'd see added to the game. Fair warning—these are totally pie-in-the-sky, and a lot of 'em are probably impossible. Then again, given what we've all seen modders come up with in the past, it feels foolhardy to ever say the word "impossible." We hope you'll add your own desired (or just funny) mod-suggestions down in the comments.

I just know I wasn't the only one to play Far Cry 3 and think, "Okay, well, now I want a Jurassic Park mod for this. Please." Someone's already doing it for Half-Life 2, now let's see it in Far Cry 3.

I love the map in Far Cry 2. I do not love the map in Far Cry 3. I would probably pay actual money for a mod that let me access a simple, in-game map in Far Cry 3 and keep exploring without having to zoom out to the darned map every time I need to check something. Particularly now that I play the game without a mini-map.

This one is all Luke. He suggests the game have cows in it. I understand the desire, since, you know, cows. Which brings us to another popular suggestion...

Hey, everyone is already unironically calling Far Cry 3 "Skyrim With Dragons." Might as well add some actual dragons to the game. Can you imagine? You're running along when suddenly you're fighting for your life against a fire-breathing dragon. Fortunately, you have explosive-tipped arrows.

Because who doesn't love Malaria, right? Just kidding.

Look, we've all spent a lot of time with Jason Brody. Maybe there's a way to turn him into a character from Far Cry 2 and have him shut up a little bit?

Not everyone's a fan of the first-person driving in Far Cry 3. I like it, but I can see why some wouldn't. So, it would be cool to see a mod that would give players the option of driving from the third-person perspective. Of all the mods on this list, I feel like this one is the most doable.

Sure, the actual game has a co-op campaign. But I'd love to see a mod that let me and another player cruise around the island together a la Saints Row, causing mayhem. When I think of Far Cry 3 co-op, that's what I think of, not the linear stuff that came with the game. Hey, they did it for Just Cause 2, after all!

Three guesses who came up with this one. That's right, it was our resident Brony, Mike Fahey. We've already seen a couple of My Little Pony mods for Skyrim, so some mods for Far Cry 3 seem like they could still happen.

Any guesses who put this one in? Yes, it was Kotaku's resident cat-fan Tina Amini. Tina's got a point though—I didn't think I would grow to love my Torchlight II pet to the degree that I did, and yet here we are. I'd love to have a dog or a panther or a dragon follow me around in Far Cry 3.

The New Game Plus overhaul mod makes it so your character runs faster, which is actually a lot of fun; it'd be cool if there could be a mod to make your cars drive faster, too.

As long as we're re-creating our favorite jungle island movies in Far Cry 3, we might as well add a cloaking mode to the game. Hey, it worked for Crysis! It could work here.

And that's our Far Cry 3 mod wishlist. How about you? Any mods you'd like to see in the game?

I've played a lot of Far Cry 3. A looooot. And so I'm always looking for ways to freshen up the game for another go-round. I got about halfway through on a second playthrough, but it still didn't seem quite different enough for me.

Fortunately, PC modders have wasted no time coming up with clever ways to shake things up. I've been watching the recently-launched Far Cry Nexus with bated breath, waiting for the first major overhaul to launch, so that I might try it out.

The Swartz Mod Compilation , posted by user jketiynu, is the first far-reaching mod I've installed, and it is pretty excellent. It's sort of a combination of the realism mods that already exist, along with some tweaks that make it easier to screw around in the game for longer.

The full feature list:

*All weapons unlocked at start but you have to pay for them (note: towers will still give pop-ups saying you unlocked free weapons but you haven't)

*"Welcome to Neverland v2" added. It makes it so that you get a choice whether to take control of a safehouse or leave it be for pirates to take over. All outposts that are not unlocked as safehouses will reset to hostile strongholds once you exit the game. Animal Hunt and Wanted Dead quests available regardless of option chosen.

*Attachments mod with max attachment slots opened up

*Shotgun silencer attachments unlocked

*Silver dragon knife unlocked

*Wingsuit unlocked at start

*All crafting recipes unlocked at start (note: except "cheating" ones)

*All skills unlocked at start (Note: You still have to earn them, they're just unlocked)

*2nd island unlocked at start (tested, works)

*Modified wallet sizes to carry more money since you can end up with lots of money very easily in the game

*Modified extra large ammo pouch size ammo amounts, and modified amount of C4/Mines you can carry with various pouches.

*Prices on almost everything modified. Good guns are now more expensive, some ammo is cheaper and some more expensive, and animal hides are now worthwhile (hunting a bear will net you $120 whereas something like a dog was originally $15 is now only $5)

*Doubled the range of all guns

*Slightly increased radius of all explosives including hand grenades (except the AI explosives, they remain the same)

*Gave all weapons their real-life magazine sizes

*Standardized damage across calibers (except for sniper rifles and LMG's). The bizon will no longer do so much damage but will instead do the proper damage of a 9x18mm bullet (same damage as the 6P9) [note: Changed these values slightly. Bizon and special variant of P416 do slightly more damage]

*You can now craft explosive arrows using white leafs (because it sucks having to waste a grenade making them)

*"Cannon" signature revolver unlocked from start.

*Player sprint speed increased by 15%

*Laser beams on enemy sniper rifles have been disabled (it made spotting snipers too easy)

*Better Sights mod included

*Increased XP gained for unlocking a tower to 2000 to give you a reason to climb them (since they no longer unlock free weapons)

*Pistols with the exception of the Desert Eagle and revolvers will now shoot basically as fast as you can pull the trigger

*Slightly increased the radius where you can interact with objects

*Made Famas full-auto

*Decreased recoil of Desert Eagle

*Fall-damage radius increased slightly. You\'ll survive slightly steeper falls.

*You can deploy wingsuit a little faster

*Added "Weed" postfx to Nature Boy syringe. Nature Boy now lasts for 5 minutes and gets you high as fuck in addition to helping you see plants :) :420:

*Incorporated part of "Hud Annoyances" mod: there will no longer be squares all over the camera

Not bad at all. Installation is a breeze—you just have to drop two files into a folder in your Far Cry 3 directory. (Of course, you'll want to back up your originals.) I haven't gotten to dig too deep into a lot of the rebalancing, but I can tell you that it's not half bad to start off with the wingsuit. And of course, I love the idea of option to leave a waypoint occupied. And that the nature boy syringe will get you high, ha.

The mod's creator mentioned that he's working on a version that will remove the mini-map (yes, please), which should be added as soon as tomorrow. I'll certainly be downloading that.

In the meantime, guess it's time to start putting together a wish-list of Far Cry 3 mods. Far Cry 3 may not be the easiest game in the world to modify, but that won't stop a man from dreaming.

Swartz Mod Compilation [Far Cry Nexus]

Oh, how we try to fix Far Cry 3. Despite noble intentions, everything about the actual story and writing is terrible and shallow.

Kirk had an idea about how to fix it: make it so that Jason Brody turns out to be Vaas! But maybe that idea ain't crazy enough. We need even more insanity. Think like Mass Effect 3 ending type insanity.

Remember the indoctrination theory? To simplify, the theory postulated that the ending didn't actually happen—it was a hallucination. Shepard has actually been indoctrinated by the reapers. You can read the specifics of why some people believe this here. It's a doozy.

Rowan Kaiser from Gameranx thinks we might do well to approach Far Cry 3 in the same way. Because, when you think about it? Some stuff in the game doesn't really make sense. He poses the following:

The easiest example of this comes in the boss fights, which are quick-time events that take the form of knife fights. When your character gets into these fights, the game's world falls away, and you instead see a nightclub that Jason and his friends had been in before the game proper started. This could be understood as a metaphor for the "dance of death" that is the knifefight, but it's more than that. In one of the fights, Jason is stabbed, through the chest, with a large knife, but he proceeds to fight and win, with no apparent side effects. The final confrontation is even more nonsensical: you argue with the villain in his lair filled with his guards, he starts stabbing, the room changes to the dance club, you fight back, stab him, kill him...and all of the guards are also dead.

What's up with that? There are a lot of unbelievable things that happen in the game. Kaiser has an answer: maybe game isn't real. I mean, you periodically have hallucinations in the story, right? If you eat the pills in the cave, that is. Who is to say the entire thing isn't some giant hallucination?

It would explain why you suddenly turn into a fierce warrior who can command the fear and admiration of an entire island. Sound unbelievable? Perhaps you should read the full write-up here. I'm compelled. But I may also just be desparate to try to meet Jeffrey Yoholem, Far Cry 3's lead writer, halfway with his aspirations.

What do you think though? Are you convinced, is it plausible that the entire game isn't exactly 'real'?

What Far Cry 3 Needs Is An Indoctrination Theory [Gameranx]

A couple of months ago, if I started a new game—no matter what it was—I'd start off on a high difficulty. At the very least, I'd go for normal, but only if it was clear that normal would provide a challenge. I reasoned that nowadays ‘normal' is geared toward a more general audience which may be less familiar with games than I am. And, more importantly, pssh. Of course I can do better than normal!

We've internalized difficulty like that. I hear it all the time: games are getting easier, oh the good ol' days, they're gone, gone! Sometimes, without difficulty, some people start to wonder if what they're experiencing can even be considered a game, like with Dear Esther or Proteus.

But something curious happened recently: I noticed that playing games at high difficulties started to feel grating. I realized that playing normal/high difficulties often makes me feel like I wasn't doing it because I was having ‘fun' per se, but more because I felt I had something to prove. I'd want the better achievement for a high-difficulty run-through; I'd be able to tell people what I did and sound that much more impressive.

Part of the recent change came from being absolutely torn down by Persona 4: Golden's highest difficulty. I'm at a point where going through one level in a dungeon might take an hour, if I manage to survive and avoid getting one-hit-killed. I'll often preemptively kill myself if I didn't do amazing in a skirmish, if I spent too much SP or got knicked enough that it would affect me in the long term.

I remember doing something similar in Super Meat Boy when I saw that I wasted an errant second on my run: it wasn't good enough. I could do better. Except unlike Super Meat Boy, Persona 4 has me feeling delirious. Oh, have I died for the tenth time in a row without making any progress whatsover? Have I spent hours in the same place with nothing to show for it? Haha! I don't even feel a thing anymore. Alrighty, back on the horse we go.

In an effort to retain what little of my sanity was left, I decided that any other titles I was playing concurrently to Persona 4 should be played on easy. Despite that decision, hovering between ‘normal' and ‘easy' on games like Far Cry 3 and Hitman: Absolution still felt wrong. I hesitated. Thinking back on it now, it reminds me a lot of being at a party and not knowing how to relax and just have a good time.

It wasn't until I started watching videos by popular YouTube user Criken, where he does all sorts of idiotic things, that the joy of easy mode really ‘clicked.' Maybe being sloppy and stupid could be fun. It's not so much about wanting to bulldoze through everything without thinking; games facilitate that at normal difficulties too. It's about having the ability to be creative and silly without penalty.

So now my Agent 47 runs around with ‘weapons' like radios instead of guns. Turns out, radios can be just as effective as whatever might typically be in a hitman's arsenal. Imagine my glee when I hocked said radio straight at a guard's head, and everyone screams and points their guns at the radio as if they could kill it? Or when I threw a glass bottle at the wall near a cop, they become alarmed and call dispatch about a suspicious sound... only to then stare at a wall for like two minutes?

It's so absurd, and I'm loving it. Compared to trying to stealthily navigate a level—which was what I was doing prior—what I'm doing right now feels way better.

In the case of Far Cry 3, easy mode is helping me muscle through a story that has clearly gone off the rails and is kind of bad, and, to my horror, still probably has a few hours left for me to experience. Far Cry 3 is not alone in this regard: all too often, I'll find myself wading through a game that goes on for longer than it needs to. I don't feel that very many games respect my time, and easy mode helps alleviate that.

More importantly, I'm moving into a place where I'd like difficulty, but not in the way most games give it to me. Mechanical difficulty is not the only type of difficulty there is.

I want to play more games where I have a hard time putting the pieces together on what happened, like Thirty Flights of Loving. I want games that challenge my values and force me to make difficult decisions, like the The Walking Dead does. I want games with challenging themes and ideas that make me feel uncomfortable, like with Analogue: A Hate Story. I want to play games where the characterization of those I interact with is a tangled web of inscrutable desires and motivations, like in Dragon Age 2.

Physically going through the motions of pressing buttons, at this point, is easy. I know how to do that, I've played a ton of games that have refined my skills and reaction time. Until more games give me reasons to make those actions complicated or messy, I'm plenty happy seeing what a game can offer me when I stop being so serious.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Sometimes what you need is a little realism in your power fantasy. If you feel that Far Cry 3 is missing some crucial realistic bits, maybe this mod is for you.

Here is the "extremely in-depth Realism Mod" by Ubisoft forum user Panzerjager1943. According to the creator, this mod includes:

-Damage is based on actual weapon terminal ballistics tests
-Sway in sights and aiming are factors of the weapon's weight
-Recoil is a factor related to actual weapon recoil, incorporating bullet weight, powder, velocity, and weight of weapon
-Accuracy is based on actual Minute of Arc extreme spreads for the most realism
-Reload time is 25% slower on Assault Rifles, LMG's, and SMG's
-All weapons have realistic magazine capacities, including with Extended Magazines
-All weapons have vastly more maximum range
-Weapons have proper rates of fire (most especially that PKM.)
-Weapons have a new attachment setup that is a modified version of Leechmonger's attachments mod

You can find it here.

Not sure how to mod Far Cry 3, need a little guidance? The initial post in this thread has some tips and resources you can check out.

And remember: this realism mod will probably pair well with HUD-less Far Cry 3.

The images you're about to see are the work of Bruno Gauthier Leblanc, an Ubisoft artist who we've previously featured for his contributions on Splinter Cell: Conviction.

Today, though, we're looking at things a little more tropical in nature. Namely, his work on Far Cry 3.

As you can see, many of these designs made it through to the final game with nary an alteration. And in case you missed it during the game, you can also get a good look at Jason Brody's face. Just in case you didn't think he was smarmy enough already.

You can see more of Bruno's work at his personal site (thanks CAW!)

"So what is this game?"

Seems like a simple question, right? Usually there's a simple answer: "It's a platformer where you save the princess by jumping through deserts and oceans." "It's a sci-fi shooter. You blast away aliens." "High-school simulator meets dungeon-crawler."

Far Cry 3 is a little bit harder to define. Maybe that's why I like it so much.

I started playing the third Far Cry over the weekend, and although I haven't gotten very far just yet—I've played maybe three, four hours?—I'm already in love with the Rook Islands and all of the things you can do there.

Kirk already did a great job describing the feeling of playing Far Cry 3 in his review, but I wanted to write up a few quick thoughts of my own.

What I like most about Far Cry 3 is that it defies video game genre. It dodges conventions. It's not just an open-world adventure, it's also a shooter. And an RPG. And a stealth game. And an animal hunting simulator.

Some have called it Skyrim with guns, but I think it's really more than that. Far Cry 3 is Skyrim with guns, and paragliders, and skinning, and driving, and boating, and tigers, and drug trips, and no draugr. It's a game where you can sneak up on enemies and silently snipe them with a crossbow, or explore the jungles of a LOST-like supernatural world, or just run around with an assault rifle blowing up everything you can see. It's a game that defies and combines genres to the point where it becomes something unique, something unlike just about any other game out there.

And in today's gaming world, where marketers and business executives are constantly looking to stick their games with catchy little subheads—"it's Call of Duty meets Dragon Quest, you see!"—I love seeing something that shies away from convention. Even if there is a little too much dubstep.