In Far Cry 2, Thompson points out, even those players who finished the game are likely to disagree about who was the hero and who was the villain.

And with each new game, the developers push that idea further.

In Far Cry 3, players take on the role of Jason Brody, a guy on a vacation adventure with a bunch of friends. Out of his element, he's too busy partying in places like Bangkok, Thailand to notice the dangers he and his friends are drifting further and further into.

Finally, when things go wrong on some unknown island in the middle of nowhere, it's up to Jason to become the hero. That's not because he's particularly adept at saving people, or surviving, it's simply because he's the one who happened to get away.

"In order to get his friends back, Jason has to do some things that some people would look at say, ‘Is he a bad guy?,'" Thompson said. "He's not being a bad guy. He's just doing the things he needs to do to survive and rescue his friends.

"It's not about right and wrong or good and bad," he said. "That's why the Far Cry games don't have morality systems, there isn't this rigid dichotomy of good and bad in the world, so why reflect that in the game?"

It's important for Thompson and the developers at Ubisoft Montreal that the game doesn't condescend to players. Not the way many other games sometimes do. Not the way television and movies sometimes do. It's an interesting distinction Thompson is making when he explains what he means by that.

He knows, the development team knows, that ultimately they are making a game about killing people and rewarding players for killing people. Killing lots and lots and lots of people. More people than any television show or movie you are likely to ever watch. But they also want to tell a story, a story that doesn't ignore that, or really embrace it.

So when I question the game's ability to tell a story about a man becoming a hero, when that man is destined to slaughter so many, Thompson doesn't shy away from the answer.

"We don't say whether something is good or bad. We don't judge players. Ultimately the game is about killing, and we know that, so we don't want to condescend," Thompson said. "The game asks you to shoot. The game is about killing people to win. So we wanted to make sure we wrote a story that understood that. The story is about killing, the story is about Jason ... Jason comes to the island and he's never fired a gun before, he's never killed before. So the story really explores what it means to become, the things he has to do to become a hero.

"The game is about what is the cost of becoming a hero. What is the personal toll that is exacted upon someone who becomes a hero."

Does Thompson worry when he sees gamers questioning the many people thatUncharted 3's Nathan Drake kills in that game?

No, but he says he has a lot of respect for gamers who start to ask those questions

"It means that the audience is maturing and we as developers, we have to respect the people who consume the content," he said. "We have to respect that the palates of people are becoming a little bit more sophisticated.