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.

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.

Choices in KOTOR: It's the Little Things that Matter

There's a lot more to KOTOR than Sand People
genocide, although that's fun too.
Credit: Something Awful

Strategically, a Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) player should probably stick to either the light side or the dark side. However, I always find morality-based games more interesting taking the middle path (except for Bioshock 1 - I could never bring myself to murder even one Little Sister).

Thus, my Jedi Consular had a strong sense of justice, but perhaps it was too strong. Save the Wookiees from slavery? Sure. Spare the slavers? Never! Attempt to negotiate with the Sand People chief? Yes, and then commit Anakin Skywalker-style genocide upon his people when he can't guarantee peace.

By the time my party got to the Rakata world, my character distrusted the Jedi Council due to their manipulative ways, and intended to butcher Darth Malak for all the destruction he had wrought. But then, we met my sorta-girlfriend Bastila again, who seemed to have totally accepted the dark side. She offered the chance to reclaim my dark throne with a Sith babe by my side, and maybe even do some good along the way - though I'd have to keep that a secret from Basty, of course.


Damn, Bastila, 10/10. I'd go to the dark side if this babe told me to. Left picture credit deviantART user Anglu, right picture credit deviantART user JosephB222.

So, I accepted. My companions, Juhani and Jolee, protested like the Jedi sheep they are, but when Bastila asked again, I still said I'd go with her. Then, she asked me to prove my dedication by killing Juhani and Jolee.

That's when the fog cleared. These two had been with me through thick and thin. I'd cured Juhani from the dark side and nursed back her self-confidence, and she in turn saved me from prison aboard the Leviathan. Jolee and I had bantered endlessly, and shared sad moments when he told me about his wife. I wasn't about to murder these people.

The pivotal choice in my own playthrough, though the player
in the picture, virtualcat2010, chooses rather differently. ;)

So, with shame at my previous answers, but a firm conviction as well, I forced my lover to retreat in a starfighter.

To the game system, my choices were: +Dark Side, +Dark Side, +Light Side. But to my character, it was the culmination of his struggle between justice and mercy, between power and humility. KOTOR includes many other moments like these, often in the form of dialogue choices which are functionally identical, but carry different weight and tone. I guess I just wanted to show my appreciation for KOTOR, and other BioWare games, for their understanding that there's so much more to role-playing than skill trees and binary morality systems.

Character Analysis: Security Chief Melanie Bronson from System Shock 2

An under-appreciated badass. (Source: SHODANPEDIA)

Amid corrupt corporate executives and military officers, a hacked AI, and a psionic, parasitic annelid hivemind, Security Chief Melanie Bronson decided to f**k them all.

Bronson wasn't especially well-liked, referred to as "goddamn Bronson" by her subordinate Turnbull, and "that paranoid crank" by Yount from Ops deck. Everybody thought she was nuts, with her conspiracy theories and malfunctioning security turrets, as well as her conviction that some malignant force had infiltrated the UNN Von Braun.

Unfortunately for everyone aboard, she was right.

"Screw Anatoly, screw Diego, and screw whatever poisonous influence has desecrated this vessel... I will not abandon my post or my charge..."

 She proceeded to declare martial law on the ship, and told her men, "Anything that gets in your way, human or not, kill without pause or remorse." She demonstrated this order by executing Malick, a hacker under the influence of the aforementioned annelid hivemind (listen to the audio log below).


(Wait until the end for Bronson's badassery)
(Source: Tindeck user PsychedelicSA)

Of course, she also killed some innocent people who weren't being cooperative, but hey, they probably would have become worm-zombies anyway, right?

Bronson's actions have a huge impact on the player. Her security access doors present both a major obstacle and a reassurance that you won't have to face whatever's beyond the door until you're ready. Her turrets can also be quite a pain, but a hacking-focused character can easily use them to their advantage.

Ultimately, Bronson's incredible balls are what get her killed. Infected by the annelids, Captain Diego sends his military force of about 120, supplemented by various annelid creatures, to take out her numerically weaker security squad. A rebel to the end, her personality and awesomeness can be summarized by her final audio log:


(Source: Tindeck user PsychedelicSA)