Far Cry 3 (

2012

)

Video games, being an interactive medium, are open to many issues with immersion and tonal dissonance that other art forms never have to worry about. Clashes between the story and the gameplay are only the most obvious point of tension. There's also a possible tension between the player character and the player's motivations are not aligned. In some cases the player can be left fulfilling various tasks that they find repugnant because the character they are controller wants to do them, a situation that can cause considerable discomfort in the player as was shown with the backlash against The Last of Us Part 2 [2020]. However, more often it is the player character who must behave irrationally or absurdly to accommodate the whims of the player. Indeed, this is extremely common in story-driven games as video games for the player are almost always a fun diversion from real-life concerns, while the situation for the player character is usually a life and death struggle. Laura Croft in Tomb Raider [2013] is sickened after her first kill but the player is thrilled. Adam Jensen in Deus Ex: The Human Revolution [2011] is wracked with horrible dysphoria because of his cybernetic body but the player is more than happy about the upgrades they can make to it. Probably the worst offender in this regard is The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories [2018] which makes the gruesome mutilation of the main character a necessary element of progression, so the player is downright thrilled when they see a whirling meat saw that they can swan dive into. One can only hope that poor JJ does not feel the same.

That is why I'm so impressed with how Far Cry 3 handles its protagonist: Jason Brody. Brody is not too far off from many of the young men likely playing the game, well at least if they had the financial independence necessary to spend their time in various thrill-seeking leisure activities around the world. He is directionless and immature, to be sure, but he has a degree of selfless gallantry that is not entirely unappealing. He certainly does not have the world figured out and is easily manipulated by those with more experience than him. The game opens with Brody and his friends going skydiving during their vacation in the South Pacific only to be captured and imprisoned by Vaas and his gang of pirate psychos. Jason and his brother Grant quickly escape, only for Vaas to kill Grant in the process and order his army of goons to chase Jason through the jungle. Jason escapes and then teams up with the natives to fight Vaas and his pirates. So far so typical. However, Jason's mentality changes very quickly upon arriving on the island, after being initially frightened and overwhelmed, he quickly starts to become accustomed to the violence around him. Indeed, he's channeling his inner Rambo and before you're even done with the tutorials. He loves it in the jungle, and before long his life beforehand feels more like a dream or hallucination than anything that's happened since he came to the island. Before long his viewpoint has become so warped that it is utterly alien even to the friends he rescues from pirate captivity. This is brought into sharp relief when you play the mission where Jason saves his girlfriend Liza from a burning ruin. She is terrified the entire time, barely even able to drive the car during the escape sequence, while Jason, on the other hand, is exhilarated.

This makes Far Cry 3 a welcome departure from the trend modern games have of constantly assuring the player character that “they can do this.” I have heard this phrase uttered constantly in games from Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider [2013] reboot to Red Daniels in Call of Duty: WWII [2017]. I know I can do this; I have infinite continues, you don't have to reassure me. Nobody has to tell Jason that “he can do this” he either is absolutely certain he can or indifferent to the consequences of his failure. In addition to serving as a refreshing change of pace from modern AAA action tropes, it also offers us some explanation as to why Jason never even tries to contact the proper authorities. He and his friends are all American citizens, more than that they are the jet-setting children of various super-elites (when they aren't even more notable than that, Liza, for instance, is a Hollywood starlet). I'm sure a call to the nearest US embassy would be enough to mobilize a Navy task force more than capable of blowing Vaas and his pirates to Kingdom Come. It's not like Jason couldn't do this either, because he has a phone that he uses to get and make calls after every mission. Even if we accept that the phone has limited range, later on in the campaign Jason befriends an American spy named Willis! Surely this guy could pass along the word to the proper authorities. If Jason was the usually sniveling wimp of a protagonist I would be yelling at him the whole time, but because he's having a grand time mowing down pirates in the jungle I can let it pass.

This peculiar personality also gives Jason something so many action game protagonists are lacking: An arc. He starts as a frightened douche-bag frat bro lost in the jungle and then in turn gradually becomes a vicious tribal warrior. In many ways this is a positive development for him, he becomes more assured in what he wants and more focused in the pursuit of his goals. Yet this transformation is tinged with darkness, initially, he is only pursuing the strength to save his friends but the constant bloodshed corrupts him and before long he is chasing vengeance alone. It's not so simple as Jason becomes the bad guy, the villains you're fighting against, particular the replacement they fly in for Vaas after the halfway mark, are so cartoonishly evil that killing them is really the only solution to all the problems posed by their continued existence. However Jason does lose a piece of himself in the process, and it soon becomes obvious that he will never be able to leave the island any more than Walker was able to leave Dubai in Spec-ops: The Line [2012].

Outside of the protagonist though, there isn't much about Far Cry 3 that could be considered unique. It's the usual pick and mix bag of AAA gaming. There's an open world that doesn't serve much purpose, a ton of collectibles that are even more worthless than that, some light stealth, average gun-play, and RPG elements to make you feel like you're progressing while spinning helplessly in your hamster wheel. To be fair, this approach to game design was a good deal more innovative in 2012, before every Ubisoft series from Assassin's Creed to Ghost Recon to Watch_Dogs collapsed into the same indistinguishable sludge. However, when reviewing the game in 2020, it's hard to appreciate the unique aspects of Far Cry 3.

Playing through Far Cry 3, shortly after having played through Far Cry 5 [2018] really gives one an appreciation for how Ubisoft has damaged the formula of the game with their constant tinkering. In Far Cry 3, there are three types of thrown explosives: Grenades that go boom right away, C4 that goes boom when you hit the detonator, and molotovs that start a fire. Each one is distinct and has its own uses (though to be fair, the molotovs have as much chance of killing you as they do of hurting your enemies). In Far Cry 5 the number of thrown explosives ballooned so in addition to the three classics you have dynamite, pipe bombs, throwing knives, and proximity mines half of which seem to just be grenades with a different name and different amount of damage. Adding new features to a game series is fine, but upgrades like this just scream “we added a pointless new feature to fool you into thinking it's not just the same game as last time.” At least these tweaks are harmless, other changes that Ubisoft made to the series are outright detrimental. I can't tell you how glad I was to see that the Light Machine Guns in Far Cry 3 did not have the option to add a suppressor, because this meant that I actually needed to use other guns like the assault rifle or the sub-machine gun when I was trying to be sneaky. Giving it a suppressor turns the LMG into the go-to solution for every fire-fight and makes the vast majority of guns in your arsenal superfluous.

The first half of Far Cry 3 is a very solid action-adventure game with an unusually compelling protagonist but it all falls apart right at the midpoint. The most obvious problem is that once Jason kills Vaas and tells his friends that he's not going to leave the island with them there really isn't anywhere for his story to go. This is what everything since the game's opening has been building to, and now that it has been achieved it feels like the story should have ended already. It doesn't help that the game hastily adds another pirate leader in the form of Hoyt as the real mastermind behind all the evil on the island but he is neither as interesting nor even as well written nor as well acted as Vaas. Sure Hoyt was mentioned before in the game but it still feels like a desperate attempt to stretch out the playtime of what could have been a solid and concise game. The problem is, Ubisoft is operating under the mistaken belief that the more stuff you put in a game, the better it is. I can understand where this mindset comes from. In an age with hits like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim [2011] and Fallout: New Vegas [2010], one could be forgiven for mistaking their expansiveness as the sole reason for their quality. Indeed, on paper, the idea of more of a game I've been enjoying is an enticing prospect, but that hinges on everything in the game being of the same quality and Far Cry 3 is something of a Potemkin Village. The deeper you delve into it, the more empty and pointless it all seems.

The main missions are great, as is the core gameplay of sneaking into enemy outposts and liberating them; however, many of the side objectives are just pointless diversions. Climbing radio towers to open up new regions of the map gets tedious after the first couple of towers. The collectibles scattered throughout the island are obviously worthless from the start, though gathering them is at least a relaxing pastime in-between gun battles. Still collecting the 120 relics is so useless that even the developers decided they had better just give you the achievement when you find 60 and call it a day. Nobody would be willing to find all 120 of the blasted things. The hunting and assassination missions always boil down to the same kill X enemy with Y weapon, and offer little in the way of reward either in money or experience, not that you'll need any as the main missions give you everything you'll need to complete the game. Still, these cookie-cutter missions are downright compelling when compared with the “Side Missions” which are just embarrassing exercises in tedium, usually either gathering a series of collectibles or going to a place and doing some extremely simple action. As the game wears on though even the fun stuff starts to get boring and repetitive as you'll quickly discover that every outpost on the island can be cleared out with nothing more than a vantage point and a sniper rifle and that a LMG will reduce even the toughest enemies to a bloody pulp. Once that happens the game plays itself.

Somehow, Far Cry 3 still manages to get worse. Pretty much everything, after you kill Vaas, is pointless, tedious, annoying. Or some combination of the three. It starts with the mission that sends you to the 2nd island for the first time. First, an ally calls and tells you that he has a plane that's leaving for the island in five minutes, and he will leave without you, so you have to race across the island to get to him. This is absurd because it's not like he's leaving on a commercial flight, he's piloting his own single-engine plane. Surely he could just wait for me to show up. However, when you get to the landing strip you see he's under siege by pirates... The same pirates I thought I wiped out in the last mission. They attack the strip in extremely slow waves while your ally gradually fixes the plane. There were several times during this firefight where I was left twiddling my thumbs waiting for enemy reinforcements to spawn in. Then when the plane is finally up and running you get a cut-scene before Jason jumps out with a parachute. Your next objective is to land on the beach inside an unmarked five-foot square. If you miss this by even a couple of feet the game will kick you back to the last checkpoint to try again. Yet even when you're finally on the 2nd island the game continues to degrade. It is obvious that less care has been put into this island's geography. Everything here looks the same, a series of rolling hills interrupted with the occasional clump of trees and pirate fortresses. Compared with the diverse biomes that you saw on the first island it just seems downright lazy. The missions too are either tedious, repetitive, or annoying. The rest of the side objectives had already grown stale long ago and the only thing to liven things up are a few new guns that are unlocked from the vendors.

The biggest insult though is the game's endings. Up until this point Far Cry's story has been completely on the rails but in the final mission, you're given a choice to either stay on the island (and kill your girlfriend Liza) or return to civilization. Neither of these endings is satisfying or consistent with Jason's character. He does not hate Liza, indeed he is the sort who risks life and limb to save his friends even when it seems hopeless. Brody is nothing if not gallant. Yet, he's also deeply lost in his previous life, and I cannot see his willingly going back to it after tasting the freedom offered by the island. I could see him forsaking the island's tribe for some deeper wilderness or wandering the globe as some soldier of fortune, but certainly not for a return to California and an internship at a movie studio. Consequently, both endings are dreadful and serve to undermine Brody's previously established character. It's doubly frustrating too because the game already had a perfect moment for an ending when Jason tells his friends, as they are preparing to leave, that he is staying on the island.