It won’t. And they haven’t said yet whether they’ll release the editor for download, either.
Even without an official editor, mods will exist, for PC at least. There just won’t be as many as there are for say Oblivion. They also may not come as soon after game release.
I think I read somewhere that they plan to release a mod editor with the game or make one available shortly after release. I know there is a pretty big mod community for Oblivion…I have a friend who plays the game and has several mods running at any given time. According to her it’s like a whole new game, and I guess many of the mods she uses make the game a lot better than what originally shipped. Of course, she may be biased (and a bit mad) since she is practically an Oblivion fanatic and plays pretty much nothing else. I’ve tried to tell her that there are actually other games out there but she just doesn’t believe me.
(She IS planning to get Fallout 3 though…but mostly because it uses the Oblivion engine. She has never played the older Fallout games so really doesn’t know much about it other than that and the podcasts I’ve had her watch)
-XT
As someone who runs anywhere from 50-100 mods on their game at a time, I can say, yes, it definitely does. For one, it makes the game *you want. If something bugs you about the game, there’s a good chance you can change it. Just want more of something (quests, monsters, spells, magic items), add in mods that throw them into the loot tables. Don’t like the world-leveling system? Fix it. Different method of raising characters? There are numerous ones to choose from.
*Some of the user-made quests are extraordinary in breadth and scope.
For anyone interested, here is GameSpy’s review of Far Cry 2. I know that GameSpy isn’t a favorite of some folks here, but I’ve normally found their reviews coincide with my own assessments of games fairly well.
-XT