Far Cry 3 is a very good game. So good that, even after beating the main story, all of the radio towers and a good percentage of the outposts, Iâve started a new game and am still playing.
https://lastchance.cc/far-cry-3-the-kotaku-review-5962414%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
All these hours later, one thing still grates: No matter what you do, you canât turn off the gameâs screen-cluttering UI training wheels
Thankfully, if youâre playing on PC, now you can.
Yesterday, a .dll file tweak made the rounds that allows you to do remove all HUD elements from the gameâwith a simple .dll tweak in a HEX editor, every single one of the gameâs UI pop-ups, from the mission reminders to the minimap, vanishes.
The tip was posted to Reddit by user GaulKareth, transcribed from a video made by BenderisPlaying. It took me about five minutes to implement the hack. Hereâs how:
DX9/10: Locate and backup binFC3.DLL, then open the original file with a HEX editor, Iâm using Hex Workshop.
DX11: Locate and backup binFC3_d3d11.dll, then open the original file with HEX editor.
Search for âshowuielementâ
In the next few lines you will see S.h.o.w.U.I.E.l.e.m.e.n.t.
Replace the S.h.o.w.U.I.E.l.e.m.e.n.t. with H.i.d.e.U.I.E.l.e.m.e.n.t.
The Reddit post also has a way to remove the various âaccentâ sound effects the game makes to go along with the HUD, but I actually donât mind those, so I left them in.
Iâve been playing the game with no HUD for the past day to see how it works, since I didnât want to just recommend doing this if it messes up the game. Fortunately, this tweak works perfectly, causes no stability problems, and really does make Far Cry 3 feel different.
One Caveat: The only problem Iâve come across with this tweak is that on some story missions, youâll be required to do quicktime events, and the prompts no longer show up on-screen. I got attacked underwater by a pirate on a mission, and was unable to guess my way to victory. I had to quit the game, go to my backed up original .dll, and fire it back up. The bummer was that the QTE happened near the end of the mission, and thanks to Far Cry 3âs stupid save system, I had to play the whole thing over again.
If youâre going to implement this hack, keep a backup of your original .dll file easily accessible (youâre doing that anyway, right?). Then, going back to the UI is a matter of a quick copy/paste. Alternatively, you could go check out a letâs play video and find the QTE in question, I suppose, if youâve already played the game and donât mind seeing it again.
I wouldnât recommend this for people going through for the first time: Youâll have to be pretty familiar with the button prompts, your weapon-wheel is gone, and you wonât get contextual cues to do takedowns and the like. (Though if you are playing for the first time, Iâve got some beginnerâs tips for you, as well.) But if youâre a seasoned player, taking off the training wheels is just the thing.
https://lastchance.cc/before-you-start-tips-for-playing-far-cry-3-the-best-w-5965573%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Just like when removing the HUD from Grand Theft Auto IV, youâll quickly acclimate and begin to experience the Rook Islands in a more intense, heightened way. Itâs so much fun that itâs all the more bizarre that Ubisoft opted to leave any HUD-adjustments out of the Options menu. Itâd be great, for example, if I could just have a compass on-screen. (And I guess itâd be too much to ask for Far Cry 2âs awesome in-game map.)
https://lastchance.cc/youve-been-playing-gta-iv-wrong-5828760%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
https://twitter.com/embed/status/276829501042868225
Like any good open-world game, Far Cry 3 is built around redundancy. You donât need to see enemies on the mini-map, because you can tag them with your camera. And you donât even need tags, because if you use your ears, you can hear them. Or, you can finally use those combat syringes you crafted but never wound up using. You donât need a waypoint to tell you where an outpost is, because outposts all spout columns of smoke that can be seen for miles. You donât need to mark radio towers on your map because radio towers are⊠well, radio towers. Theyâre pretty visible. Want to know where to go next? Do what youâd do in real life: Make for higher ground and look
Other things to try: Dial up the difficulty to hard. Experiment with your weapon loadout (No sniper rifle? Pistols only? Fire weapons only?). Turn off the music, turn off enemy tagging. Suddenly, itâll be like youâre playing a whole new game. Or at least, a very different one.
Iâm being glib with the âbestâ thing, of courseâthereâs no one âbestâ way to play a game. This mod is something of a scorched-earth approach, but until more mods surface or Ubi patches the game, itâs an interesting and fun way to go. There are some other early mods and patches floating around, notably some patches that remove elements from the minimap, but I havenât tried them, so I donât know if they work or not. If youâve used any other tweaks, I hope youâll share your experience in the comments.
Thereâs some concern on Reddit and elsewhere that tweaking your .dll will get you banned from Uplay. I havenât been able to turn up any evidence of this happening to anyone (and it hasnât happened to me), but Iâve sent a note off to Ubisoft to ask if this kind of thing can get people in trouble. Iâll update if I hear back.
In the meantime, Iâm having a blast. A game that used to look like this:
now looks like this:
Nice.
How to remove all HUD/UI & Sound indicators in Far Cry 3 [Reddit]
