Designing with limited mechanics
When initially designing the level I had wanted a big part of it to be a traversal up the mountain to the mission target in the style that a lot of action/adventure games have. However, this meant that I had to design for a lot of traversal challenges to make the ascent interesting and not just a walking simulator. The part that became tricky early on is that I was limited to very few traversal mechanics for ascending within the Far Cry 5 engine.
I used some smaller mechanics/features like ledge climbing, bridges, and sloped terrain to make the walking more interesting, but when it came to actually scaling the mountain there were grapples and ladders. Ladders are simple and good for climbing quickly, but when it comes to that natural mountain feeling, it doesn't quite fit in. I ended up using the ladders closer to the top of the mountain to signify they were nearing the research base.
That left me with the grapples which worked great for climbing large distances quickly and tying into the mountain aesthetic. However, when playtesting it was apparent that the grappling just felt very repetitive. In my initial design I had taken the approach of adding more grapples in so there'd be more interaction overall, but instead the grapples turned into the original issue of the ascent being boring. To fix this I changed my design method to quality over quantity. I'd have less grapples, but each of them would cover a larger distance or swing over a gap, to induce that feeling of big cliff climbing while still ascending to the same height.
Overall, working with a limited set of mechanics is difficult, but I was able to work around that and find a different way to make the experience more engaging for the player.