The fire in Far Cry 2 is easily some of the most immersive and fun in any game even to date. It was a shame they toned down the systemic nature of the games after Far Cry 2. They are still very fun and exciting games, just fewer auxiliary systems to play with like this.
Star Citizen are doing some cool things with fire propagation too, with precomputed windflow variables to make the simulations consistent but still systemic and dynamic in a multiplayer environment.
I feel like everything after FC2 has felt progressively less organic and more scripted. I'm playing through New Dawn right now and it doesn't feel like an open world anymore, it feels like a bunch of mini games stitched together and your control system is on training wheels.
The outpost capture system introduced in FC3 just feels formulaic and bland by FC:ND, you can choose to replay it at a harder difficulty and it just moves around alarms or adds higher level enemies. The enemies all use the same AI and just have more hit points and better aim. The Elite enemies are just tanks that can't be tracked.
The controls are borked, there's now a delay and short window to engage the wingsuit where as in FC4 you just belly flop yourself on the ground whenever. This prevents you from using the wingsuit in a lot of scenarios that it was previously accessible and results in a lot of death falls until you just give up on using the wingsuit entirely.
Enemy repawn and reclaiming is ridiculous and kills immersion. You can attack a machine gun nest kiling a squad then move less than 100 yards away and it will be repopulated when you turn your back with new elements.
Each new version feels less open world and more like a level of Super Mario Bros.
I enjoyed the open air sections of Far Cry 2, but definitely found the later games to be repetitive and formulaic to the extent that I never finished 3 or 4, and just never bothered buying 5. It being made by Ubisoft made that decision a bit easier though.
I am obsessed with games or toys that replicate chaos or spreading disasters, like fire spreading in Far Cry 2 or water flooding in Cities: Skylines or collapsing buildings in the newer Battlefield games. I wish there were more games with unscripted chaos.
I recommend you get Noita on Steam. It's a falling sand style game where you are a little wizard whose wands are built from a little Programmingesque component system.
Teardown is probably the state of the art in unscripted destruction. Frankly, there hasn't been a lot of innovation in deep environmental interaction in AAA games for some time. Far Cry 2 still remains a highlight 12 years later.
Teardown is amazing, I for sure thought it would be another tech demo that never released but they made a fully playable game with gameplay loops and story out of it.
Star Citizen are doing some cool things with fire propagation too, with precomputed windflow variables to make the simulations consistent but still systemic and dynamic in a multiplayer environment.
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/17...