by Tom Chick
At its core, Far Cry 2 is basically a shooter. It's all about setting up cool firefights and seeing how they play out. But if you look a little deeper, there's more going on here. The game raises some interesting questions about what happens when people take up arms against each other. In other words, what are the real world "macro" consequences for what's going on a virtual "micro" level when you play a shooter? Far Cry 2 is the latest in the new genre of shooters with a conscience.
Some games have done this more successfully than others. For instance, Black Site: Area 51 was peppered with political messages about the war in Iraq, post-traumatic stress disorder, torture, immigration, rising mortgages, and so on. Unfortunately, this everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach was clumsy and heavy-handed (it didn't help that it was a terrible game, to boot). Call of Duty 4 was much more subtle with topics such as upheaval in the Middle East, Russian nationalism, and weapons of mass destruction. There was even a chilling message about the detached brutality of modern warfare in the form of a C-130 gunship mission. And of course BioShock was a morality play about the dangers of idealism and the nature of free will.
Now Far Cry 2 is going to try its hand at presenting a game with a provocative message lurking just under the surface of the gameplay. How many shooters bother to reference things like disease, poverty, and economic collapse? There's a certain irony that this game is being created by Ubisoft, the company known for its adaptations of Tom Clancy's glib political thrillers. Now they're bringing you the closest thing yet to a Graham Greene game.
Far Cry 2 is going to try its hand at presenting a game with a provocative message lurking just under the surface of the gameplay.
The setting is Africa, but not just as a type of terrain. This isn't just jungle rivers and zebras in grasslands. This is a place of warring factions, conflict diamonds, child soldiers, European intervention, disease, and poverty. Note that the upcoming Resident Evil also takes place in Africa, but any political message will likely be coated in a cloying horror-flavored candy coasting. Far Cry 2 has no such luxury. Its monsters are far more real.
The story follows the conflict between two almost interchangeable factions, with side stories for each of the foreign mercenaries you can recruit. The increased fighting between these factions and the presence of these mercenaries is the result of an arms dealer called The Jackal, who sowed chaos here by flooding the market with cheap weapons. The idea isn't that The Jackal is solely responsible for the state of this country, like the evil wizard in a fantasy game. Instead, he has unbalanced a delicate equilibrium. Peace is a possibility here, and characters like the journalist and priest you meet early in the game are trying to bring it about. What effect will you have?
So here comes the traditional problem in an open world game. Why do you do what you do? Just because you want to be good or evil? What is your motivation beyond the vague desire as a player to see the "good" or "evil" path? Fary Cry 2 is far less contrived with its moral choices. The catalyst for doing the right thing is disease. When your character arrives as just another mercenary, he contracts malaria (the mosquito or tsetse fly buzzing around on the main menu looks considerably more ominous in this light). Your health (how much damage you can take) and stamina (how long you can sprint) are determined by the last attack of malaria you've had. If you don't have pills to stave off these attacks, you're going to be less effective, and you'll periodically black out. Needless to say, you'll be in plenty of situations where blacking out is fatal instead of just inconvenient.
But you don't just go to an NPC merchant and buy pills off the shelf the same way you'd spend your rupees to buy health potions in a Zelda game. Medicine of any kind isn't easy to come by here. In fact, many of the faction missions involve disrupting deliveries of medicine for political purposes. But in addition to the faction missions, there are underground missions, introduced by the priest in the starting city. These are based entirely on helping people and they're your sole source of malaria medicine. The lesson is that in a place like this, the people who need medicine aren't always the ones who get it.
...the graphics are phenomenal. This is as state-of-the-art as state-of-the-art graphics can get right now. But they aren't always pretty.
The unit of currency here is the conflict diamond. Note these aren't just "diamonds". They're clearly labeled "conflict diamonds" whenever you find and use them. This is a constant reminder that these valuable gems are the product of war and suffering. What's more, since they are the only currency in the game, this is clearly supposed to be a place where the economy has collapsed and traditional money is worthless. You tend to find these diamonds well guarded in centers of wealth and power, stashed somewhere for safekeeping, or laying where their ill-fated owners have fallen.
Finally, there is the actual world design. One of the first and most important facts about Far Cry 2 is that the graphics are phenomenal. This is as state-of-the-art as state-of-the-art graphics can get right now. But they aren't always pretty. In this representation of Africa, nature is lovely, haunting, and awe-inspiring. But it is also scarred by human settlements, most of which are in a state of squalor and disrepair. There's a clear sense this is an idyllic place made messy and violent by warring factions. The Africa of Far Cry 2 is a fallen Eden, and the game is not going to let you forget what Mankind did to bring it down.
Posted: 17 Oct 2008
