42) Far Cry 3 (2012)

With pre-production beginning in 2008, Far Cry 3 was initially meant to form a single cohesive narrative with the previous entries. However, due to the departure of several members of the creative staff, including the original creative director and the narrative director, production was partially restarted in 2010. After evaluating feedback from Far Cry 2, the team identified areas that either needed improvement or removed all together. Among these, the weapon degradation and malaria aspects were removed as they made the game less fun.

We open with some found footage style clips of a group of wealthy white people enjoying an island vacation which gives a brief introduction to our cast of characters. Things go awry and the group is captured by a group of pirates who plan to ransom them off, sell them into slavery, or possibly just kill them. It's here we take on the role of Jason Brody, the middle child who came along with his two brothers and their friends. Jason's older brother, Grant, happens to be a member of the US Army Reserves, which gives him the experience he needs to free himself and Jason and to try to escape. This is a really fun way to give us a brief tutorial on how to sneak and evade enemies, and Grant's level head paints a stark contrast to Jason's fear and complete inexperience. Before we can escape, we're spotted and confronted by the pirate leader, Vaas, who kills Grant in front of us and gives us a head start to run.

After a brief and tense chase, we're rescued by Dennis, an adopted member of the local Rakyat tribe. We wake up as he finishes giving us a sick tat, and it's here we get a rundown of the situation on the island. Vaas and his group of pirates have essentially overtaken the islands, and a small group of natives seek to push them back. We learn that our friends may or may not be alive, and thus the objectives and gameplay loop are revealed. We must try to find and rescue our friends, and doing so means we'll need to assist in helping the natives retake their island. We're set loose and can freely explore the island, though we'll need to repair radio towers to expand our map, and taking enemy bases will make traveling much safer.

I was initially put off by our protagonist, Jason, as he's initially presented as a whiny nepo fuck boy, complete with a stupid hair style that didn't look good in 2012 and certainly doesn't look good now. He admits that he doesn't have much experience with guns and has no combat experience. It seemed an odd choice for your playable character in an FPS, and the fact that this untrained white guy is supposed to come in and help liberate the island reeks of white savior complex.

Standing in stark contrast to our lead, Vaas is a thoroughly enjoyable and terrifying antagonist. Every time he shows up is an absolute delight, as he emanates a threatening, unhinged aura. He was, at one point, meant to be a hulking six foot tall, 300 pound bull of a man, but those plans changed when Michael Mando auditioned for the role. The character was changed to resemble Mando, and Vaas absolutely steals every single scene he's in with Mando's flawless performance. He always comes off as confident, though comepletely unhinged, like he could go off at any moment.

As we progress through the game, we meet more of the locals and slowly begin finding and saving our friends, and it's here that my views on Jason began to shift. He starts off as scared and completely out of his element, but slowly starts to become desensitized to the violence and murder. The shift is so gradual that I didn't even notice it until an optional interaction with one of our friends. She stops what she's doing, turns to us, and asks with genuine concern if we're okay. In that moment, I was floored, as it re-contextualized the game and the underlying theme of the story. How much does it take for a person to become like Vaas? How much had Vaas been pushed to become who he is? It's the kind of morally gray questions that rarely come up in the genre.

Unfortunately, around halfway through the story we have our showdown with Vaas. Like a few other narratively important fights, our showdown with Vaas strips away the setting, the two of us locked in tense knife fight in a black void. Though the fights are little more than glorified quick time events, the atmosphere presented elevates them immensely, especially with the jarring contrast of snapping back to reality and finding ourselves over a dead body or bodies. Once we kill Vaas, the primary antagonist we're left with is nowhere near as compelling. The game ultimately ends with us making what should be an incredibly easy choice, but given the context of everything that happened, I chose what could be considered the bad ending, as it felt the most narratively satisfying.

All of this, and I haven't even touched on the gameplay, which is excellent. There's plenty of incentive to explore the island, and it's actually fun to run around in this setting. There are plenty of optional things to do on the side that often give you rewards that make them worth doing. We also have an experience and skill tree system, allowing us to find the playstyle that suits us. The biggest mechanical issue I encountered was with the incredibly stupid AI. At one point, I watched a car filled with allies drive past me, come to a fork in the road where they chose neither path and hit the barrier between them, then back up, driving over an embankment and into a river. Curious, I walked over to check on them, only to find all three men drowned next to the car. It made me think that maybe these natives really do need help from anyone who is even remotely competent.

I had a ton of fun with the game, and despite how I feel the narrative slips in the second half, the overall story was really good. Playing as a naive and innocent young man who slowly devolves into an emotionless monster was frankly not what I expected. Vaas, though he has little actual screentime, makes for an excellent looming threat who makes an indelible mark on the game. With my only experience with the series before this having been the more experimental spin offs, I now fully understand why the franchise is so beloved.