Far Cry 2 as told by Jebus

As Slevin mentioned, we are playing Far Cry 2 in conjunction with each other. Our original idea was to play the game and after each night or two compare our experience. We got this idea after I found this interview (which is totally worth reading) about how Far Cry 2 will have some bold new fully interactive narrative. According to the interview, the story is told in a series of vignettes (missions) that can be done in more or less any order because they are designed to not have a chronology. We thought this would lead to two very different experiences of the same game. Sadly after playing for about 7 or 8 hours and getting through what I think is the first third of the game, this does not appear to be the case.

After I typed up a brief synopsis of my first session, then read Slevins’ and then played another 4 or 5 hours it became quite apparent that the story in this game unfolds similarly for everyone. There is some, but not much choice as far as the main story is concerned, and there are a 3 or 4 different side quests lines you can do at any given time. So I’ve decided not to bother boring you with my journal entry style post because if you already read Slevins’ you probably won’t want to read mine.

Having said all that, I still think this game is fantastic. Like I said, I’m not entirely convinced they accomplished their new story telling structure as I had imagined it in the interview, but there are some exciting things all the same. For one, the buddies allow for you to make a choice of how you want to accomplish every mission, but most of the time it seems to get you the same end result. This isn't the case every time because after my last big mission Slevin ended up with nothing but the payment, and I ended up with a pimped out Jeep and a full fledged med pack at all my safe houses. I might also be on very very bad terms with the UFLL when I get back, we’ll see. Also your buddies can die permanently (one of mine already has) so I imagine if a crucial one bites the dust that could lead to no alternate choices on missions. All these are differences you control, but none seem terribly narrative altering in a significant way.

I think the real unique player experience they were going for really shines through in the way you play the game, and not necessarily the missions you take. For instance you can stealthily sneak up on a base with a sniper rifle and a camo suit on and snipe everyone before they can do anything about it. Alternately, you could do it my standard way and plow through the entrance in your jeep, running over as many people as you can in the process, then blowing up said jeep with a grenade on your way out possibly killing more people and starting a huge brush fire. Then simply picking off the rest amidst the chaos. My way tends to lend itself nicely to a lot of those “Holy shit, that was awesome” type moments.

Though even with all that choice, I don’t feel like the game has really done that much new. You could take on missions in various ways and orders in GTA4, and you can focus your play style into sneaky, or Rambo or whatever in games like Oblivion. The entire game feels like a really polished Ubisoft take on GTA if it was set in Africa during a guerrilla war. I said it was fantastic because that is hardly a bad thing.