Far Cry 3 is an open world first-person shooter, which also features role-playing game elements including experience points, skill trees, and a crafting system. The player has the ability to take cover behind objects to break enemies lines of sight and also to peek around and over cover and blind fire. The player also has the ability to perform silent "take downs" by performing melee attacks from above, below, or close behind. The game's narrative director, Jason Vandenberghe, said that the story mode map is around ten times larger than in the game's previous installments, indicating that it is still an open world sandbox game. Players are given the ability to survey and plan out their attacks with stealth take down combinations and also tag enemies with the camera in order to track their movement once they break the player's line of sight.
