Far cry. What do you imagine when you hear this name?? An interesting, bright and shocking villain? Or the cartoon characters that surround the protagonist? Maybe for you Far Cry is just a more down-to-earth Just Cause? Or non-stop madness with fun gameplay, outposts, guns, vehicles and animal companions?
Far Cry 6 was released a couple of weeks ago. And while someone is fighting the charismatic dictator of sunny Yara with the help of cute dogs and rap, I suggest you go back a little. At a time when Far Cry as we know it now was just beginning to emerge. We will talk about Far Cry 2, try to look at this game from all sides and decide: “Could it become a worthy part of the famous series or its place on the outskirts of history?». Take out your pocket watch, lover of madness, and rewind time 13… years… back..
Far Cry was born from a demo of another game: X–Isle, which was developed on the new engine of the German game studio Crytek, founded in 1999. In 2000, Crytek presented X–Isle at E3, and Ubisoft became interested in the project. Word for word, and the French publisher decided to finance the development of the first game of the young studio. The events of X-Isle were supposed to take place on some tropical island, and the main opponents were dinosaurs. But during the development process, the concept of the game changed: the island remained an island, but the dinosaurs were replaced by mercenaries and mutants, and the gameplay in general became more realistic and down-to-earth. And finally, in 2004, we saw the familiar Far Cry, with beautiful graphics, elements of tactical gameplay and high complexity. The former special forces soldier in a stylish Hawaiian shirt brought his creators sales of more than 1 million copies, so the question of a sequel was rhetorical.
After the release of Far Cry, the developer and publisher broke off relations, and all rights to the game went to Ubisoft. In 2008, after the release of several branches, gamers were able to see the second part of the future series. Initially, the sequel, like the original, was supposed to be exclusive to PC, but the publisher still decided to release the game on consoles.
Krytek did not take part in the development of Far Cry 2, it was handled by Ubisoft Montreal. And it’s clear from the game that it was made by completely different people than those who gave us the original. Almost everything in the sequel was different from the previous project. Far Cry had vibrant tropical jungles? In Far Cry 2 you will find a dim African savannah, in which one of the developers decided to turn the contrast slider to minimum. The first part had a linear plot? In the second you will often be given the right to choose (not God knows what, but still), and also in the sequel there will be several endings. The original was reminiscent of an action movie of the 80s, where the hero easily mowed down crowds of opponents in one shirt, and not only people, but also mutants? In the sequel, yes, the protagonist still sends enemies to the next world in batches, but now he is a well-equipped and trained mercenary, and there is no smell of any secret laboratories or modified monkeys here. But still, the game inherited something from the first part: the popular title of a technological masterpiece. The first Far Edge was a technically outstanding shooter. Advanced graphics for those times, water, vegetation. The game had immersive sim elements. The levels were semi-open, and in some you could choose the tactics of your actions: go ahead, try to stealth (although it was not performed at the highest level), clear the area from a relatively safe distance, or try to somehow get around your opponents. The sequel was developed on an improved version of the CryEngine engine, later called Dunia (modifications of this engine, by the way, are still used in games in the series) and boasted realistic physics, vegetation, fire and even wind.
Plot
There is no point in retelling the whole plot. He’s not here as such. And I think that you played this game and at least roughly remember something about the plot of Far Cry 2. Well, if you haven’t played it, then you can open a short retelling or game film on YouTube, or even go through the game, because reading a retelling of the game will be more boring than watching paint dry.
The most basic thing you need to know: the protagonist is a mercenary who flew to Africa to complete a mission. The fact is that in the country in which we are located, there is a civil war between two groups: SNS and OFOT. The warring parties buy weapons from the same person: Jackal. And our mission is to rid the world of this merchant of death. Immediately upon arrival in the country, on the way to the hotel, it turns out that we fell ill with malaria. Once at the hotel, we meet the Jackal for the first time. He delivers his monologue, which is a little more interesting to listen to than clearing outposts in New Dawn. He found out that we came to kill him, but for some reason the merchant himself does not kill the main character. And from this moment on, problems begin in the plot of FC2.
The antagonist explains his decision by saying https://nonukonlinecasinos.uk/australian/ that our plan went wrong, the protagonist was fired, and no one will pay him, and since mercenaries work only for money, the main character is no longer afraid of the Jackal. If what the Jackal said was not true, then why didn’t he kill the mercenary while he had the opportunity?. And if what he said is true, then why do we continue to hunt for the Jackal?? After all, often the main character will note in his diary that he performs some tasks because of the opportunity to obtain information about the antagonist. If a mercenary is fired, then his assignment is automatically canceled, and accordingly he no longer has any point in staying in Africa. And either I don’t understand something, or the entire further plot simply shouldn’t have happened, because the main character doesn’t have even the simplest motivation.
After meeting the Jackal, nothing interesting happens at all. You run from one point to another, performing monotonous tasks, working alternately on the OFOT, then on the SNS. You end up teaming up with the Jackal to get the refugees out of the country. You are given a choice: detonate dynamite to block the path of militants or take diamonds to customs as a bribe so that refugees are allowed to cross the border. In both cases, the protagonist dies from an explosion or a bullet, respectively, because: “Every cancer cell must be destroyed”. The Jackal himself, in theory, was also supposed to die (the reason depends on what kind of death the main character chooses), but it is stated that his body was not found, which seems to hint.
Let’s be honest, the plot doesn’t look very good on paper. But in the game itself… He’s not very good either. Or maybe even a little worse, because completely unnecessary and uninteresting missions appear there, which will be discussed later.
Oh, by the way, I almost forgot. Before starting a new story, you are given a choice of a character from nine possible ones. Each of the characters has their own biography. Cool, I would say, if it somehow influenced the passage or at least played on revealing the character’s character. But all this can be thrown into the trash, because the story of the main character does not affect the plot, and the protagonist himself will not utter a word during the game. (a parallel is involuntarily drawn with part 5). When choosing one of the characters, the rest will appear in the game as possible partners, who, in fact, are also not of interest from a narrative point of view.
All dialogues (if you can call them that) are as simple and concise as possible. I would even say too laconic. Usually everything is limited to a short greeting and briefing before the task. Sometimes the characters try to have a conversation with the protagonist, but he remains silent, and the dialogue essentially turns into a monologue like:
– Hello, I’m a local doctor. Why did you come?
-And no one is immune to malaria.
-Thanks for the warning.
It looks a little strange. The dialogues are empty and almost never talk about the characters, the setting, or any events. In general, forget about the written characters, they are not here. Most NPCs are simply quest givers (I continue to have very strong associations with Far Cry 5), not arousing either sympathy or even hatred. It gets to the point that I forgot the names of absolutely all the characters (with the exception of the Jackal), although I replayed the game right before writing the blog, so in order to remember at least someone’s name, I have to look at Wikipedia. Moreover, I forgot the names of most of the heroes even during the game. Of all the characters, only the Jackal is of any interest here. And only because the rest of the characters in the game are just dummies.
In the game’s plot itself, we learn little about the Jackal. But the tapes from the interview that Ruben conducted with the arms dealer are probably one of the best things in the game. Thanks to them, the Jackal reveals himself well. From the recordings we can learn more about the antagonist’s worldview, his past, present, his work process and his experience gained over the years of illegal arms trafficking.
For example, the Jackal does not consider his work something terrible and does not see much difference between the arms trade and the sale of auto parts, because he does not start wars, he only makes money from the warring people. The Jackal has no sympathy for those who are waging the war, he considers it pointless, and speaks of militants with contempt and a bit of irony. It is known that in the past the antagonist has seen some shit that influenced his personality, hardened him, revealed the Jackal’s true human essence, but did not deprive him of his humanity. He feels compassion for the innocent victims of war, civilians, especially children, although he may try not to show it openly.
You can dig up a lot of details like this about a character. What a pity that there are so few films themselves and they only tell about the Jackal, although it was possible to tell in more detail about other characters, the war and opposing factions.
Speaking of them. What about OFOT, what about SNS they give you practically no information. Who is fighting for what?? Why do the parties conflict?? Who is right, who is wrong, or is there no right at all?? The sides do not have any bright details that would make them stand out and make them memorable. Neither the members of the groups nor the methods of action of the parties are fundamentally different. It happened that sometimes I forgot whose mission I was performing, or even whose headquarters I was at at some point. I distinguished them only by one detail: at OFOT there is always a poster with the inscription UFLL hanging on the far wall. And that’s the only great thing I found in the game. You can only learn anything about the parties to the conflict from Wikipedia.
Style and atmosphere
Admittedly, Africa in FC2 looks incredible… sad. The pervasive brown filter gets boring after 3-4 hours of play. Perhaps, in this regard, FC2 loses to the rest of the franchise. The local landscapes cannot be compared with the bright tropics from FC and FC3, nor with the picturesque mountain expanses of FC4, nor with the sun-filled Yara from the final game, nor with such cozy, but at the same time dangerous views of Montana. It’s as if the FC2 artist was told: “Here are 50 shades of brown for you, make it beautiful for us,” and he tried. Even here you can take good screenshots or just admire the sunset or sunrise and forget for a while that you need to drive across the entire map to complete the next task.