Far Cry 2 is an upcoming 2008 first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft and is the sequel to Far Cry. Crytek, developers of the original game, are not involved in the development of Far Cry 2. It was announced on January 3, 2008, that in addition to Microsoft Windows, Far Cry 2 will also be available on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and will ship simultaneously with the Windows version on October 21, 2008 in North America and October 24, 2008 in Europe.

Gameplay will revolve around the player character's manhunt through a fictional region of Africa and will be entirely open-ended, with the player being able to ally with anyone he/she chooses. The player's choices are completely unfettered, giving a sandbox style of gameplay and allowing the story to progress at the speed the player chooses. Instead of using individual maps, the game will take place in a sprawling African landscape, with terrain ranging from Savannah to jungle. The gameplay area will be 50 km2 (19.5 sq miles). Some members of the Ubisoft Montreal team spent two weeks in several locations in Africa filming and photographing native wildlife. The team will use the animal footage and environment photos to create an extremely realistic environment.
The player's actions may also have a lasting effect on the environment: for example, one of the missions shown so far by the developers had the player sabotage a pipeline owned by one of the factions that's pumping fresh water from a lake to a neighboring country, exchanging it for arms and munition. After the player destroys it, part of the surrounding area becomes flooded, including a mine where another mission may take place.
Various factions and vehicles will be featured; enemies will include human mercenaries, but sci-fi creatures such as the mutants from Far Cry will not be featured. Furthermore, the player's feral abilities introduced in Far Cry Instincts and its expansions will not be returning in Far Cry 2. A dynamic weather system has been added that varies the weather based on the player's ability - if the player is doing exceptionally well the sky will be clear and sunny, but if problems arise the sky will become dark and stormy.
A pre-alpha video of the game, showcasing visuals and 13 minutes of gameplay with developer commentary, was made available online in spring 2008. The video showcases many dynamic gameplay features which included procedural breakage of vegetation, allowing players to shoot down trees and shoot branches and leaves off of trees, which can eventually re-grow. The developers also showcased dynamic propagation of fire, and volumetric wind effects capable of breaking vegetation and spreading fire. Man-made structures were also shown to be highly destructible.


Far Cry 2's African-themed setting and visuals.
The game will be much more realistic with features such as the player having to use a map and navigation system to get around, and more life or death related features such as having to use tools to dig bullets out of the body and pat themselves down when on fire. Weapons will disintegrate over time, adding a grimier look to them, and causing them to jam and eventually just explode in your hand . Several species of African wildlife can be encountered in the game, and will be able to distract the enemy as well as make them aware of your presence. All the large animals in the game will be grazing herbivores only, such as zebras, wildebeest, gazelle, buffalo, impala, gemsbok, and the like. The reasoning was thus stated by one of the developers: "The problem was, if we wanted to put predators into that ecosystem we would have to balance it to make sure the lions didn't eat all the gazelles and then all starve to death."

The game's producer, Louis-Pierre Pharand, says that the single-player game will "potentially have close to 50 hours of game play." It has now been stated and claimed by Ubisoft that the game will near approximately 100+ hours of gameplay.

During a demo at the DreamHack Summer 2008 event, Ubisoft developers also showcased some new game play mechanics, such as weapon jamming, vehicle damage, propagating fire, destructible environments, adaptive enemy artificial intelligence, as well as day and night cycles, and dynamic weather.
The player will also be able to tag certain objects and locations such as cars, sniper towers, ammo pickups and buildings, so that they will be able to monitor them on their map. The player will also have to deal with malaria. Every 30 to 40 minutes real time, the player will have to take a pill in order to combat the effects of the illness. When the player runs out of Medicine, he or she will have to do a simple mission in order to get more. The player's reputation comes into play as the more and more notorious the player becomes, the harder it will become to obtain the medication.

Multiplayer in Far Cry 2 attempts to include the dynamic elements of the singleplayer game (such as fire propagation) and to provide as accessible gameplay as possible so that it is available to all skill levels and so that players have specific gameplay aspects to keep in mind when designing their own maps in the map editor.
There can be up to twenty players per map, and the game will ship with fourteen developer-designed maps ranging from the slightly undersized to the modestly corpulent.

Four modes have been confirmed to be shipping with the game:
Deathmatch
Team Deathmatch
Capture the Diamond - a slight variation of the standard Capture the Flag
Uprising - Each team has a captain who must capture points across the map, with the assistance of his teammates. Once all points have been captured, the opposing captain must be assassinated to win the round.

Multiplayer gameplay is class based. Each class can choose an appropriate primary weapon and a side arm, as well as carry explosives such as frag grenades or Molotov cocktails. Players are able to unlock more powerful weapons within each class by spending up to three "blood diamonds" on a class; diamonds are earned through experience points gained by killing other players and completing objectives. Potential upgrades for individual weapons within a class include operation manuals, maintenance manuals, and bandoliers.
There are six classes:
Commando - "Mid-range assault class. Effective at fire-and-movement tactics."
Sharpshooter - "Long-range specialist. Armed with highly accurate weapons."
Guerrilla - "Short-range class. Specializes in close combat and ambush tactics."
Rebel - "Specialist in explosives and fire. Strong on offense or defense."
Gunner - "Heavy firepower specialist. Highly effective from static firing positions."
Saboteur - "Equipped with silenced weapons. Specializes in stealth tactics."

Awesome post. I was waiting for some info on this.
+rep