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Ugly In The Morning posted:Far Cry 2 was weird because you would end up adopting tactics used in the real world (without it actually telling you to do them), like using a car parked on the side of the road to time setting off an IED. Or how I passed up on the .50 cal sniper rifle, because the Dragunov would let me wound with a gutshot and then I could pick off the people going to help the guy I just crippled. And then as I was doing that, they would start freaking out about it. FC2 wasn't anywhere decent as an open world shooter (loving CHECKPOINTS AND JEEPS.  ) but it inspired you to be an absolute bastard if you just wanted to survive. Some of the poo poo you had to do in that game to play on par with the AI could get you put on a war crimes tribunal in real life if you did it there.And if you somehow took the companion system seriously you'd inevitably do even more crazy and evil poo poo just to try to keep your little virtual friends alive so you could avoid that morphene injection animation. It was the one way you could be moral in that story and while they botched the final execution of it the underlying theme of all of the characters being evil/insane bastards (With yours being marginally better at most.) was still sort of there. I never played FC3, but I watched people play it. Outside of the videos with the crazy bugs and animal attacks it didn't seem that interesting. Though the animals and bugs looked funny as poo poo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9HhYAGIWdk
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Nov 9, 2014 03:23
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Lonos Oboe posted:Well I don't subscribe to the idea that comedy needs to sidestep taboo issues and I think that video games can explore any themes they want. I will totally agree with the point that they did not write the islanders well with horrible racism, white saviour etc. But when I played the game, 90% of the time I was thinking "What an rear end in a top hat" The fact ALL the rank and file bad guys look the same/ speak the same. I felt like the character was slowly going nuts, almost like he is trapped in this story and even though he is supposed to be a good guy reluctant hero saving his friends, he finds himself getting all like the guy in 'The Beach' Enjoying the blood, sex, violence, drugs, dominating his bullies and loving beautiful unobtainable and sexually aggressive women. He gets off on the same power fantasy that the players do. Whatever about the portrayal of the Islanders. I think the main character was certainly a satire. Spec Ops: The Line did the whole "the monstrosity of a power fantasy" thing a lot better. Except the writers in that game's development team understood that the character needed to realize he was a monster at the end and make it the real climax of the game to be an effective narrative arc. Granted, Spec Ops: The Line did a lot of things. Some good, some bad. But the narrative behind the main character and how he's basically every cliche generic CoD hero personality turned on its head and forced to face reality is pretty magnificent. Archonex fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 04:22
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Samurai Sanders posted:Did the writer of FC3 ever say he was influenced by The Line? I'd like to think it had SOME influence on the FPS business, even if misguided. It sure looks like the genre as a whole just went on trucking as if nothing had happened. That would be interesting if it did. Far Cry 2 touched on the same stuff, only with a terrible mary sue character that drove the plot into the ground. Serious  regarding FC3 and Spec Ops though:The problem I have with framing FC3 as a satirical power fantasy is that the narrative doesn't hold up under scrutiny of the gameplay. Part of why Spec Ops worked so well is that the gameplay was literally an earlier generation of CoD (Before the ridiculous stuff became the norm.) with the perspective flipped so that the character wasn't some one dimensional super rambo. It was a bit monotonous and fairly down to earth. So when poo poo got heavy that monotony helped to lend to the brutality of what was going on. There weren't any psychopathic animals or any of that stuff. Just people in a bad situation that other people unknowingly kept making worse. I mean, the realization that the character is an arguably well meaning yet vile person who had the skills and luck to hurt a lot of people on a quest to be a hero that never needed to happen in the first place is great. But the gameplay was so "down to earth" that the transition from "generic CoD" to "Heart of Darkness" was really only a few shades of perspective off and can really shake the player when they're made to realize what they've done in the name of fun. Far Cry 3 by contrast takes place in an absolute loving madhouse of an island. The wild life are all some sort of roid raged killing machines. The other men with power (except for certain key players that are personally important to the main character) all look alike. There's an insane amount of violence that trumps even the most chaotic third world country where ever you go. And even the down to earth characters are a bit nuts. At one point the game has you literally murder hordes of dogs with a flamethrower just because. That's not satire, that's straight up putting a slapstick face on the concept of a satire. And there's nothing where the character steps back and say "Holy loving poo poo, did I take a ton of acid at that club last night?" and realize that he's slowly turning into a psychopathic mass murderer with delusions of heroism and grandeur. The closest is the crazy tribal lady pointing out that if he goes home with his friends he'll be bored with his life. If you had some sort of coastal city that was normal you could visit and do normal stuff at at some point in the game past the start it'd work a lot better to contrast the crazy over the top nature of the gameplay. Hell, Spec Ops even touched on this stuff. The CIA agent that destroys the water supplies is just as crazy as the main character on some level (The Middle East isn't going to go to band together and go to war over the actions of one detachment of soldiers.). The radioman is crazy because of how the Damned failed. Konrad went crazy because he turned an already bad situation into a massacre. Play through the game a second time it slowly becomes apparent that everyone in the game is a little broken. But it's never up front. Narratively speaking, at some point the character has to step back and realize the accountability of his deeds. He can't just have redemption for murdering a gently caress ton of people by freeing his friends. In a well written book the friends would be a goal the hero has to work towards within the morality of his viewpoints. Or failing that, an example of how he has to go outside those views and beliefs. Not absolution. That undermines the narrative and turns them into the same one dimensional prizes at the end of a level that a satire would criticize. All those being said, this seems to be kind of a theme the Far Cry's have been iterating since 2, Blood Dragon excepting. It gets a little better written each time as they patch out the holes. So i'd be interested to see if FC4 is going to go that route too.
Archonex fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 04:58
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Orv posted:http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/12/19/far-cry-3s-jeffrey-yohalem-on-racism-torture-and-satire/ This is pretty much what I was saying. Archonex fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 06:16
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-pithy, we're not necessarily saying it wasn't intended to be satire, we're saying the writer hosed up. Hard.
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This game is really drat pretty at least. Is the whole avalanche thing actually a mechanic you can properly pull off anywhere in the Himalayas? I want to be White Dudebro, Bringer of Psychopathic Animals and Avalanches. Preferably both at once for maximum  .Edit: In fact, let me ride one of those elephants to outrun the avalanche. 
Archonex fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 23:18
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