No doubt there are those out there who are genuinely looking forward to Just Cause 4’s continuation of protagonist Rico Rodriguez’s story. For the rest of us, however, the series’s continuing appeal can be reduced entirely to the free-form environment, or as we put it in our 2015 review of Just Cause 3, “the impressive, kinetic insanity” and the somewhat exhilarating feeling of using a “grappling hook, parachute, and new wingsuit to traverse the environment.”
It’s appropriate, then, that Square Enix’s new trailer for Just Cause 4 plays so viscerally to the franchise’s strengths. Presented in an ultra-wide 4K format, this panoramic trailer begins with Rico wing-gliding mere feet above a waterfall, before cutting him out of the picture entirely in favor of a glimpse of the wildlife clustered around a clear blue pond nestled in a frost-tipped mountain valley, followed by a lush bird’s eye shot of a reddish caldera, bursting out of the ground like a popped blister.
On dazzling display throughout the trailer is a variety of traversal mechanics—an ATV being airlifted by balloons—and range of weather extremes, from a dust storm so severe that it looks like you’re riding a motorbike across the surface of Mars to a tornado so massive that it just inhales a jumbo jet.
If Just Cause 4 ends up a disappointment, it won’t be on account of its visual designers, but don’t take our word for it. Check out the trailer below.
Square Enix will release Just Cause 4 on December 4.
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