What’s been happening Mr.
Stubbs?
Far Cry 3 has
been happening, that’s what.
Was it any good?
Well, it was a lot of fun once
the story pissed off. The worst thing about this game was being
locked into missions. Second to that, I think, was the story itself.
I felt so bored by all the cutscenes. I did like Vaas as a villain
though, but like some forum commenters, I too thought he was
under-developed. Hoyts turned out to be nothing interesting so it
would have been far more interesting to see Vaas still alive and
trying to kill Hoyts as well. The player then could have had the
choice to let Vaas do it himself, but making him more powerful, or to
try to kill Hoyts first to stop Vaas from gaining power, but having
to deal with Vaas at the same time as a consequence. Or something
like that. Overall, the story theme, that of slave-trading, was fine,
but I thought the whole mushroom tripping and amazon-warrioresque
aspects were generally pretty dumb and pointless. So many times
through a cutscene I was pressing buttons on the controller in hope
that the apparently non-mapped ‘skip cutscene’ button would
suddenly spring into existence. But it didn’t, and I was left to
voice my non-caring attitude out loud.
The
story might have had more impact if the player character was one of
the local islanders themselves and had to pick up weapons to save a
bunch of white-American holidayers, or even make them a bit of a
mix-up: French, Canadian, American, etc. In some ways, it could test
the player as to how much they need to care about some random people
opposed to their own fellow local inhabitants who were also in danger
of being kidnapped by Vaas and his pirates. Or even, if the fellow
inhabitants were getting disillusioned and slowly going over to
Vaas’s side, so then some of the missions would revolve around
collecting evidence through the kidnapped holidayers, or otherwise.
And with that idea in place
you could even throw in the twist of if you save the foreigners, they
call their parents/family to say that they are okay, but if you
don’t, the families come in with their ‘big foreign weaponry’
(government sanctioned, or private) and completely fuck shit up but
in doing so bomb you and the locals, thus turning them into the new
and more powerful enemies.
Hmmm. Sounds like a completely
different game now.
Far
Cry 3
just needed to stick to its basic slave-trading template with one
insane villain who was growing more and more powerful.
Here’s another way of
getting around the “white guy saving the locals” colonialism
aspect of the game:
- Player is local guide that takes holiday foreigners on their trip,
- Player is kidnapped with the foreigners,
- Player is constantly being taunted by Vaas to become a pirate like him,
- Player is constantly asking themselves how important saving the foreigners are, opposed to the player-character’s local community who are also in danger of being kidnapped, or losing faith and going over to Vaas,
This would have then given
greater impact to the final choice of taking the life of the
foreigner at the end, especially if she was the first one you saved
and became a love interest who actually fought along side of you.
But then, in this version
there’s no mushroom tripping either, so that choice might not work
as well.
But it could.
Imagine if the syringes that
the player crafted became the trip sequences whenever they were
injected, and the game twisted everything around so it felt like you
were fighting your own people until the effect wore off. Some players
might enjoy that and do the syringes heaps, others would never use
them again, but the final mushroom trip you were given took you over
the edge forcing you to question everything and making that final
decision more potent.
As it was I just wanted to
throw my controller at the wall because the designer or writer had
dared to expect me to think a final choice was hard to make when
throughout the entire time I was completely invested in saving the
lives of my friends. Liza’s whining throughout did nothing to
change that.
