Three Ways to Improve Far Cry 3's Story

I came to Far Cry 3 full of hope. Based on the trailers and the footage I'd seen, I was expecting a deep experience that explored the darkness of the human psyche, and played around with the concept of insanity.

What I got was... good. But a little disappointing. Don't get me wrong - I loved Far Cry 3. The open-ended combat and exploration was an absolute blast. But the story felt a little thin. And the sad thing is, a few simple design choices could have improved it tenfold:

1. Start the game with the Bangkok club sequence
The opening of Far Cry 3 is pretty jarring. Your only introduction to the characters is a ludicrously fast-paced "vacation memories" video, and then you're sent right into the action, escaping a pirate camp. Thus, when you rescue each friend, you're meeting them for the first time, and instead of empathizing with the reunion, the player feels out of place and confused. Moreover, seeing Grant get shot, Keith covered in wounds, and other things that should be shocking instead feel hollow, since you have no emotional attachment to these characters.

WHY DIDN'T THEY START THE GAME WITH THIS??? (Credit: gosunoob.com)

Ubisoft actually had the perfect device to fix this problem: a sequence in a Bangkok night club where you get to know the characters a little better. Not only that, but this scene also establishes the reason your group went to Rook Island in the first place. It seems an incredibly stupid design decision to include this sequence as an Easter Egg only available partway through the story. Starting the game with the Bangkok club would have made everything so much clearer and more meaningful.

2. Give Jason some sort of combat-oriented backstory
Despite all the cool moments in Far Cry 3's storyline, I could never shake the feeling of how unrealistic it all was. The entire premise is that a college frat boy who probably never fired a gun in his life becomes this monster of the jungle who shoots down vicious pirates and outguns trained mercenaries. I don't buy it.

One thing that would help immensely with the suspension of disbelief would be to give Jason some kind of combat-oriented backstory. An alumnus of the army cadets makes sense, but I think it would be even more appropriate if Jason was a hunter. Imagine the conversation he could have with Dennis:

Dennis: You ever fired a gun?
Jason: Oh yeah. I hunted deer back home.
Dennis: Well, if you want to save your friends... You will be hunting people.

And that could lead into some sort of training mission where Jason makes his first deliberate kill - and reacts to it. That would be a great bridge between having never shot anyone before and taking an entire outpost (albeit with Rakyat help).

3. MORE VAAS

I love this guy, even though because he's an insane sadist. (Credit: loadthegame.com)

Vaas Montenegro is one of the best characters I've ever encountered in a video game, and he's sorely underutilized. Between story missions, I felt completely disconnected from the people I was trying to save, as well as this one bastard I was trying to kill. Imagine if Vaas spewed taunts and insults over the radio when you tried to take over an outpost, similar to the way the villains radio their troops in the Arkham games:

"You said you're being attacked? Well, find the motherfucker and shoot him!!! I wanna see his motherfucking brains all over the road, okay? Can you do this for me?"
"One of my sister's warriors, huh? Let's see how a warrior takes a bullet through his noble fucking heart. Will he bleed? Oh yes. Will he cry? Oh no. Because one bullet and pop! Dead."
"Jason? Jaaaason? I know you can hear me. Get. The fuck. Off. My turf. You got that?"

There are numerous other ways Vaas could be incorporated. Imagine if you could see him leaving in a jeep right as you approach an outpost. Or you get to the top of a radio tower only to see a bomb with "Surprise, motherfucker" written on it. Little touches like these would make Vaas ever-present, making sure the story is never too far from the player's mind.

My Four Favourite Moments of Journey

Welcome all! To anyone who's been reading this blog, it's been quite a while since I've written a post. But now I've played Journey.

I know that in my very first post, I specifically said I was going to "steer away from obvious examples of artistry in gaming, like Journey". Now that I've actually played the game, though, I feel obligated to write something about it. After all, Journey offers an experience that truly is a work of art in and of itself.

So, here they are: my four favourite moments of Journey. (Spoilers!)


1. Finding the Other Traveler

Credit: Indie Gamer Chick

I started playing with almost no knowledge of the game, so coming across the second traveler was a shock and delight. I used the circle button to chirp in glee when his gaze met mine, and he chirped back. We ran around each other like children at a playground, twittering all the while. Eventually, he showed me how to turn Journey's iconic cloth into smaller, usable pieces by chirruping near one of the cloth-shredding mechanisms. Then, we had a blast seeing how high we could go by chirping to each other to recharge our scarves. Since my companion had no gamer tag or anything of the sort, I performed several experiments to see if he was simply an AI. For one test, I stood still at the entrance to the next level to see if he would go on ahead. He didn't, but I realize now that it wasn't because he couldn't; he was just being patient. Wow. Thank you, Adrian-APCD (I learned that was your name at the end of the game), for all the power-ups you helped me find and for all your forbearance towards me. It broke my heart when you lost connection near the end, and I had to go on alone.

2. Sand Surfing in the Sunset
Everyone who's played Journey will know the part I'm talking about. Midway through the game, Adrian-APCD and I surfed down a spiraling structure filled with sand, jumping and chirping all the while. The sun was setting behind the mountain, causing the sand to shine golden and the pillars around us to cast long shadows. There was nothing "game-y" about this segment; it was just two travelers on a magical thrill ride. What an experience.

3. Dodging the Giant Rock Serpents

Credit: Charleston Hokama

When I saw the ESRB rating for Journey, I noticed it had the descriptor of "mild fantasy violence." I wasn't sure what that would mean for a game that seemed to have no enemies whatsoever - but I would soon find out. The first rock serpent (or "Guardian", as they are officially known) bursting out of the sand really did scare the shit out of me, since I had encountered nothing dangerous thus far. I crept to the side of the underground hall in an attempt to avoid their red searchlights, but they discovered me anyway, and ripped my scarf to pieces - the same scarf I had been lovingly growing for the entire game. It took Adrian-APCD's courage to get us out of there: he bravely surfed down towards a Guardian and jumped right over it, and I ran the hell after him. It may be called mild violence, but getting tossed about by those giant mechanical monsters was far more gut-wrenching than getting shot to pieces in a "violent" shooter.

4. Those Final Cold Moments
Journey's ending is truly special, but for me, it's the section right before which resonated most. I had come so far to reach the peak with the pillar of light, but the mountain did not welcome my dedication. Instead, it sent freezing winds to hurl me back to the desert, and a bitter cold that consumed not only my scarf, but also the cloth creatures I'd grown to love. Step after shivering step, I inched closer to the summit - but the raging blizzard ended my hopes. I watched my traveler collapse into the snow with a solemn understanding. Not all journeys are meant to be.

And in my interpretation of the game, that is where the traveler's life really ended. The white-robed priests of ages past woke me, but only in a spiritual sense - I could not physically reach the mountaintop. And so it goes - there cannot be rebirth without death.

Bioshock Infinite Ending Analysis

(Spoilers, obviously) While I'm someone immediately skeptical of the time-and-space-hopping antics common to many examples of science fiction, it certainly worked well in this story, and I found the big reveal to be both surprising and emotionally powerful - the three Elizabeths holding the player underwater... God! For me, at least, that image drew some unsettling parallels with the bad ending of Bioshock 2. Then, of course, there's the game's depiction of the Elizabeths' disappearances. Apparently, killing Booker was a VERY indirect form of suicide.

Such a sweet and deadly face. Credit: IGN

The fact that Booker can control a bathysphere does indeed suggest that he (or his descendant, given the relative age of the characters) becomes Andrew Ryan in an alternate timeline, creating a Columbia under the sea, rather than in the sky, and with a different ideology. However, the fact that Elizabeth presumably kills this version of Booker as well drew me to a startling conclusion: the Bioshock multiverse could be our own. Rapture, Columbia and all their associated phenomena do not exist in our world thanks to Elizabeth, and presumably, these were the only big differences between the Bioshock multiverse and our own (assuming we have a multiverse, of course).

For all that I'm impressed with the ending, I do wish to point out a flaw which I wouldn't have thought of were it not for a single, interesting choice the designers made: to have the two Luteces be of different genders. It made me realize what a silly assumption it is to say that in alternate universes, Booker deWitt might choose either to be baptized or not, but his DNA will be exactly the same. I mean, every egg cell or sperm cell of an individual is different due to a random assortment of genetic traits. It's not just the sex chromosomes of the Luteces which should be different; every chromosome of theirs, statistically speaking, should be different. And if you take this back all the way to the first humans, each alternate timeline should have an entirely different population due to different sperm cells reaching the egg, or a different egg being fertilized due to a gap in time, or even the simplicity of an individual choosing to have a child with a different individual. This is no real flaw of Infinite's, but rather a flaw with the entire concept of alternate, yet similar, timelines. Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials got it right by having each timeline/universe completely distinct from others. Thoughts?

Brutality in Bioshock Infinite

Booker's very first kill is an astonishingly brutal one. Credit: Gameranx

Well, I recently finished Bioshock Infinite, probably one of the best games I've ever played. I enjoyed the game for many reasons, among them its commentary on violence and brutality, particularly in video games.

In the first two Bioshocks, every enemy the player faces (not the Little Sisters or Bioshock 2's still-sane inhabitants) is either a crazy, tortured drug addict, or some poor sucker bonded to a diving suit and reduced to subhuman intelligence. The weapons given to the player may inflict much pain and suffering, but the actual act of killing these enemies is quite justifiable - think of it as particularly merciless euthanization.

Bioshock Infinite also provides some put-them-out-of-their-misery enemies: the Firemen and Handymen seem to be in a great deal of pain at every passing moment. However, the vast majority of enemies are just schmucks from the Columbian army and police force, or ordinary citizens from the Vox Populi.

Living in a Fireman suit must be hell - Booker's probably
doing these guys a favour, at least. Credit: Bioshock Wiki

On the other hand, your enemies display little morality themselves; the police's first response upon your discovery is to attempt to saw your face open, and the Vox Populi's wanton destruction of Columbia reveals them to be morally lacking as well. Atlas pointed out in Bioshock 1 that Rapture isn't like the real world - barbaric violence is considered normal down there. Such is the case with Columbia - Booker and his enemies dish out violence as casually as characters in a Tarantino film.

Elizabeth at first questions Booker's actions. After an early melee with some Columbian police, Elizabeth is horrified at what Booker's done, having killed so many people. To the player, its a moment of complete surprise; they've likely been killing schmucks and not thinking twice about it. It's like the moment when your mother first realizes all the crap you've been doing in your M-rated game. Then, it's like your Mom sits down and plays that M-rated game when Elizabeth starts to procure turrets, weapons, and other offensive tools for Booker to use, (spoiler alert!) culminating in her (justified) murder of Daisy Fitzroy.

Elizabeth gets damn scary near the end of the game. Credit: Video Lithium

But then, Elizabeth comes full circle. Near the end of the game, Elizabeth asks Booker if he thinks there is any way they can possibly atone for their actions, having killed so many people. This was an interesting comment on a common trope in games: Practically speaking, it's often doubtful that the player character's end goal truly justified all their murder.

Of course, Elizabeth finds a method of redemption - one brutally efficient in and of itself. I'll talk a bit more about the ending in a later post, but it adds interesting fodder to a thought experiment someone else has no doubt conceived, but which has also occurred to me: if you torture someone and then erase their memories of it, were they ever tortured? If you cause death and destruction to the world, and then use dimension-bending powers to erase your actions from history, did they ever occur?

A reviewer once derided Infinite for attempting to criticize video game violence using video game violence, which is true enough, but the fact is, Infinite has some interesting things to say.

Deadly Creatures: An Exercise in Point of View

Look long and hard, little scorpion... They're HUMANS. Credit: 411Mania.com

Deadly Creatures for Wii is a stunningly original title that puts players in the alternating roles of a tarantula and a scorpion. The former is an adept assassin specialized for agility and long-distance strikes, whereas the latter is a straightforward brawler skilled at powerful attacks and brutal finishing moves. The two of them each go their own way through the desert, hunting for food and killing off rival predators.

Intertwined with their individual stories, however, is the quest of two men searching for gold (played exceptionally well by Dennis Hopper and Billy Bob Thornton). The arachnids have a truly unique perspective on this tale for two reasons.

Firstly, their tiny size allows them to see what the humans can't - an especially cool sequence has the player crawling through the bones of a dead prospector, even as the ground shudders from the men's shovels hitting the soil above.

I"m too busy dodging horned lizard claws to care about the parallel human storyline! Credit: Destructoid

Secondly, they are totally disinterested in what's happening. Tiny arachnid brains care little for human affairs; even as the two men come closer to their goal, the tarantula remains fixed on settling a score with a certain rattlesnake, and the scorpion continues to look for a way to the surface. It's an interesting deviation from the typical first- or third-person narration techniques, in which the narrator (or player) has some clear connection to the story at hand, or is at least interested enough to document it.

However, like all good stories with parallel plotlines, the characters' tales eventually intersect, leading to an epic conclusion. Why it's epic, however, is completely different for the humans and arachnids - and while the humans may dwell on these events for the rest of their lives, the arachnids dismiss them as momentary complications, and simply return to their savage, deadly world.

Decay and Restoration in Shadow of the Colossus

I've talked about decay and restoration as gameplay and plot elements in earlier posts. Many games charge the player character with restoring a decayed world, whether that means ousting a tyrant (think of the Lord Regent from Dishonored) or returning light to a realm (dispersing the Twilight in LoZ: Twilight Princess).

The restoration of Dormin, ironically, foreshadows more decay. Credit: Team Ico Wiki

Shadow of the Colossus is an interesting example in that the player's role in the decay-restoration cycle is not clear. Sure, Wander may be working to resurrect his love, Mono, but decay occurs all around him. The colossi, content to mind their own business, are systematically slaughtered by him, and their corresponding idols are reduced to dust. Moreover, Wander's own appearance and well-being deteriorates as he absorbs more parts of Dormin. Lastly, by reawakening Dormin, Wander produces the potential for even more degradation, as Dormin is evidently a destructive force that had to be sealed away.

The idea of decay is also present in the Forbidden Lands themselves. As Crumplecorn notes in his analysis of Shadow of the Colossus, the various pockets of lush forest or meadow within the vast wasteland of deserts, bare plains and scrub suggest the Forbidden Lands were once a thriving natural environment. With increasing habitat fragmentation, the larger species (e.g. the deer seen in the credits sequence) would have died out, but the lizards and birds remain.

The Forbidden Lands have decayed in terms of
both biology and civilization. Credit: Team Ico Wiki

Finally, the remnants of the ancient civilization that once dwelt in the Forbidden Lands are all over the place, from the third colossus's arena in the sky to the arches in the desert to the Shrine of Worship itself. One can only wonder what caused the decay of both the natural environment and the (presumably) human population. Perhaps this was the ancestral home of Wander's and Emon's people, destroyed by Dormin and abandoned once the being was sealed away. Only Fumito Ueda will ever know. ;)

Complete Devastation: Knights in the Nightmare Ending Analysis

Zolgonark: an evil zombie dragon from Hell. Credit: Square Faction

I finally finished Knights in the Nightmare, and boy, the ending's a doozy. (SPOILERS, obviously.)

The whole game had been building up to Wilmgard's (the Wisp's) final confrontation with Lord Zolgonark, the King of the Underworld, who had been summoned to Earth (or whatever the realm between Asgard and the Underworld is called). The battle's pretty epic, with three heads to defeat and a demonic soul that continues to live on after the body's destruction. Just before the player reduces Zolgonark to skin and bones, however, they can use a key item on him, and he will say:

"Order is nothing but an empty world. You know this."

Keep those words in mind.

Next, Wilmgard must fight Melad Margus, the angel Melissa's form upon absorbing Zolgonark's corpse. If Wilmgard loses, the narrator declares that Margus will devastate the universe, rending it asunder with the forces of chaos. There is something hopeful about this outcome, however, for after destruction comes rebirth.

The ending the player receives upon Wilmgard's victory is much bleaker.

When Wilmgard defeats Melad Margus, has he saved the universe from destruction
or stamped out its only hope for renewal? Credit: Lacrima Castle Message Boards

Zolgonark's monsters have killed EVERYONE in the world. Seriously. There are no more knights, no more commoners, no more Tiamats, and no more Westkin. Wilmgard's soul and the angel Maria are left to wander aimlessly in the desolated land for eternity, just as Zolgonark predicted. This isn't even an Adam and Eve scenario, as Wilmgard doesn't have a body with which to repopulate the world, and Maria's a different kind of being altogether.

There is hope in the fact that Asgard (read: Heaven) still exists, but little affection can be had for its angel inhabitants, considering their lack of compassion for the suffering Tiamats and Westkin, as well as their indifference to the whole Zolgonark affair.

The finale is the culmination of all the uncertainty the player has felt the whole game; uncertainty about what's happened, why it happened, who the Wisp is, what the Wisp is doing, and most of all, if it should be doing what it is doing. Wilmgard cut down anything and anyone who stood in his way, and now he is left with nothing - a powerful conclusion to an excellent story.