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Orv posted:Nope, you and everyone who has ever expressed this opinion continue to be wrong. I will freely admit that it's entirely possible that was not intentional. I could believe that what I thought was slightly ironic stereotyping and hunting endangered animals was just bad writing played straight. But when I play it, I certainly feel like it's satirical. If that's just my perception, that's cool, it's entertaining either way. It's like watching Commando. It's fun if you watch it as a straight faced action flick. And it's fun to see all the action cliches in one handy movie. Lonos Oboe fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 03:23
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Lonos Oboe posted:I will freely admit that it's entirely possible that was not intentional. I could believe that what I thought was slightly ironic stereotyping and hunting endangered animals was just bad writing played straight. But when I play it, I certainly feel like it's satirical. If that's just my perception, that's cool, it's entertaining either way. Commando isn't joking about anything that has destroyed countless cultures around the world, so it isn't a good comparison. Samurai Sanders fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 03:29
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If it's a satire, it's a very bad one.
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Nov 9, 2014 03:29
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Would you prefer a black rapper with baggy trousers and an uzi?
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Nov 9, 2014 03:32
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Lonos Oboe posted:I will freely admit that it's entirely possible that was not intentional. I could believe that what I thought was slightly ironic stereotyping and hunting endangered animals was just bad writing played straight. But when I play it, I certainly feel like it's satirical. If that's just my perception, that's cool, it's entertaining either way. Put it this way: the ending you didn't get goes thusly. White Dudebro Protagonist says "gently caress this" and uncuts his friends, Citra says you're doomed to a boring life, Malcolm X gets mad but he stabs Citra while aiming for you because he's an idiot, she dies in your arms, Malcolm X cries about how this is your fault, then you leave in that boat from way back towards the start of the game. Galdarion posted:Would you prefer a black rapper with baggy trousers and an uzi? Sam B was cool as gently caress.
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Nov 9, 2014 03:33
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Yeah don't drag him into this.
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Nov 9, 2014 03:47
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I played Far Cry 3 at the same time as Assassins Creed 3, so I got less of an "amazing white man saves the day, hooray for white man!" vibe and more of a "dumb young dude is great at murder so the people who know what's actually going on string him along until he's left with nothing to really show for it" vibe, same as Connor in AC3 right down to embracing and excelling at the tools of a foreign culture and sort of abandoning their original culture through it. But that might just be because I played the games at the same time and saw a lot of similarities because Ubisoft does love to recycle its ideas. Also Far Cry 3 was fun and I am looking forward to 4, which apparently this thread is about? I have never played 2 but it doesn't really sound like my kind of game.
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Nov 9, 2014 03:52
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Samurai Sanders posted:Even if it was intentional, I don't think the white savior thing is something to be making jokes about, unless you're waaaaay better than this guy is at it. That history isn't far enough in the past yet. 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.
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Nov 9, 2014 04:03
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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. The writer just bit off more than he can chew, that's all. edit: Fortunately, the game is awesome for a hundred reasons and sucks for only one or two, so it's still an excellent game. 4 appears to do away with the one or two reasons 3 sucked. Samurai Sanders fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 04:10
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Samurai Sanders posted:Oh yeah, I have no doubt that it's all meant to portray his ridiculous power fantasy. The problem is that almost all games are almost exactly the same as this, but they are doing it straight. It's just not a good subject for ironic comedy unless it is done very carefully, and it was not done very carefully. Pretty much this. Video games can be a great medium for exploring delicate ideas (even if so far they've bungled basically every attempt) but the writers of Far Cry were far too clever for their own good.
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Nov 9, 2014 04:12
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Orv posted:Pretty much this. Video games can be a great medium for exploring delicate ideas (even if so far they've bungled basically every attempt) but the writers of Far Cry were far too clever for their own good. This man speaks the truth. One opinion or another, this point stands constant.
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Nov 9, 2014 04:17
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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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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.
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Nov 9, 2014 04:33
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Archonex posted: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. Yeah, Spec Ops did it right. I had heard a lot about how it hits you in the gut and expected it to not live up to it. It was very effective and the setting for that game never gets enough credit. A city swallowed by desert full of abandoned and lost soldiers. And picking Nola North to do the voice was a perfect choice (He almost always voices the square jawed snappy one liner hero.) That's a game that really knew what it was up to. I think with Far Cry that maybe one hand did not know what the other was doing.
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Nov 9, 2014 04:36
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Buck Turgidson posted:Are you kidding? Far Cry 2 was and still is a complete turd. They managed to make being a murderous warlord a complete chore.
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Nov 9, 2014 04:40
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i cant wait to shoot giant fuckoff harpoons at people from a mini helicopter
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Nov 9, 2014 04:41
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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 was literally a jihad sim if you equipped ieds, an rpg and an ak or dragunov and just hid in the rocks ambushing convoys 
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Nov 9, 2014 04:41
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I posted this in the other thread, but since everyone has moved here, Ill post it here: The sad thing is that I could probably buy that the game was a satire, if it was in another media format. Because I mean a college age kid landing on a island and then becoming a chosen one and mastering warfare and indigenous culture is ridiculous. But for some reason in gaming, its seen as a legitimate storyline.
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Nov 9, 2014 04:44
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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. No, but both draw from Heart of Darkness thematically.
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Nov 9, 2014 04:49
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Archonex posted: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. Do you feel like a hero yet?
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Nov 9, 2014 04:57
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Radical 90s Wizard posted:FC2 was literally a jihad sim if you equipped ieds, an rpg and an ak or dragunov and just hid in the rocks ambushing convoys The only thing I regret is that I couldn't pack mortar tubes full of dry ice and then aim them at targets so that they went off long after I was out of the area/attacking from a completely different direction.
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Nov 9, 2014 04:57
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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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Samurai Sanders posted:Even if it was intentional, I don't think the white savior thing is something to be making jokes about, unless you're waaaaay better than this guy is at it. That history isn't far enough in the past yet. I think joking about the white savior thing is fine. It's a loving video game.
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Nov 9, 2014 05:08
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blackguy32 posted:The sad thing is that I could probably buy that the game was a satire, if it was in another media format. Because I mean a college age kid landing on a island and then becoming a chosen one and mastering warfare and indigenous culture is ridiculous. But for some reason in gaming, its seen as a legitimate storyline.
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Nov 9, 2014 05:38
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Croccers posted:Didn't the interview of the writer turn him into an idiot that dismissed any chance it was satire? Multiple post-FC3 interviews both made him out to be an idiot and probably got him fired.
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Nov 9, 2014 05:40
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I can't help but suspect that every single person who goes "I don't think FC3 was intended to be a satire" is retarded. Or just doesn't pay much attention to the games they play, and then go off spouting half-formed opinions. Sure, let's go with that. The game is 100% beating you over the head with how the basic concept of "White savior" is all hosed up. You might say that the premise is not as well executed as it might have been - which is true - but the notion that the satire is a post-hoc excuse is just baffling. Besides, when people talk about how badly the premise was executed, they often come up with stuff like: Archonex posted:
Edit - Wow, a compilation of Far Cry 3 cutscenes is three hours long. Probably more time than anyone cares to invest into an internet argument, but still. Xander77 fucked around with this message at 05:47 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 05:44
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Orv posted:Multiple post-FC3 interviews both made him out to be an idiot and probably got him fired. It's this, he was a tremendous dumbass who seemed like he was vastly more influenced by cocaine and generous helpings of his own gargantuan ego then anything else. Also this game looks like it's got a pretty great chance to suck hard. Tons of recycled assets, a super lame looking Vaas rip-off badguy, and backed by Ubi's buggy as poo poo coding. I'll probably wait for the inevitable steam sales.
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Nov 9, 2014 05:48
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Xander77 posted:I can't help but suspect that every single person who goes "I don't think FC3 was intended to be a satire" is retarded. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/12/19/far-cry-3s-jeffrey-yohalem-on-racism-torture-and-satire/ E: I guess to be less  -pithy, we're not necessarily saying it wasn't intended to be satire, we're saying the writer hosed up. Hard.
Orv fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 05:50
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Orv posted:http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/12/19/far-cry-3s-jeffrey-yohalem-on-racism-torture-and-satire/
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Nov 9, 2014 06:14
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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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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljGw68cjMsE I'm going to echo the praise for Far Cry 2 here. I won't go as far as saying it was "fun," because the balance was really bad- The main problem was the checkpoints and the weapon damage. An AK47 in that game took about 7 or 8 shots to kill a guy (a SHIRTLESS guy.) If they had made it so it was about 3 or 4 shots to kill a regular enemy, it would have vastly improved the gunfights in game. There's actually an article on some website called "How to have fun in Far Cry 2" where a guy explains that if you try to play FC2 like a regular FPS, ie running and gunning with an assault rifle, you'll get torn to pieces- instead you have to choose a balanced loadout that includes an SMG, sniper rifle, and explosive weapon for taking out vehicles, which will let you handle all the threats the game can throw at you. I tried it on a third playthrough and it was significantly more fun. FC2 took risks, and those risks didn't pay off in the whole. But at some points, the diamond shines through the poo poo. FC2's atmosphere is awesome- everything is alien, everything is hostile, it's almost surreal. Driving a boat through a river at midnight flanked by steep canyon walls on both sides with the moonlight reflecting on the water feels like it's Apocalypse Now: the Game. Far Cry 3 never achieved the same atmosphere. Which is a shame, because FC3's combat is far more fun than FC2. I thought FC3 was going to take everything FC2 did and improve it, but it didn't. It was a more fun game, there's no doubt about that, but the story was offensively bad, the island felt bland, etc. I don't think we'll ever see a game that does what FC2 did in regards to varied weapons, encouraging insurgent/ambush tactics, healing system, first person immersion, and so on, which is a shame. That said, Far Cry 3, for its few faults, is still the best Rambo simulator ever made. Bow with explosive arrows, stealth takedowns, and a machine gun is a fun as hell loadout. FC4 looks like it will be FC3 with some more varied weapons, a more interesting environment, and maybe a plot that isn't really stupid, so I'm psyched.
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Nov 9, 2014 06:18
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The whole "Path of the warrior!" and weird voodoo poo poo affiliated with Citra etc turned me off from Farcry 3 kinda. I just wanted to swim around and do poo poo, not fight a bigass black demon thing c'mon Citra what the hell???
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Nov 9, 2014 07:00
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FC3 really needed a side with Vaas option. Team up with Buck, convince him to kick Hoyt out, live like god drat pirate kings.
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Nov 9, 2014 07:51
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Capn Beeb posted:FC3 really needed a side with Vaas option. Team up with Buck, convince him to kick Hoyt out, live like god drat pirate kings.
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Nov 9, 2014 07:58
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I legit don't think the "if you say it's satire you're just wrong" crowd remember 99% of the game and just remember a white dudebro.
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Nov 9, 2014 08:01
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Remember when this game was announced and people were like "wah wah imperialism" and how stupid that was? It was pretty stupid. The only part about Farcry 3 that I'd say bothered my delicate feelings in any way was the extended sequence where I'm working for some guy and in between missions he keeps talking about how much he enjoys sodomizing the friend I'm rescuing from him and I was confused why I wasn't just, like, killing the guy and going to rescue my friend but okay I guess I have some missions to do. I guess they were maybe supposed to be jokes but it was mostly just "boy I love raping your friend, also I've got an accent aren't I wacky?" and he wasn't he wasn't very wacky at all actually
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Nov 9, 2014 08:25
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Archonex posted: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. The character didn't need to come outright and say it. They got the point across in other ways. Namely by having his relationships with his girlfriend and his friends fall apart and him turning from this little sissy college kid into a death machine who only cares about killing and revenge. Early in the game he was just trying to find his brother, but later on, he seemed to become more interested in killing Hoyt and Vass, even though his brother was still nowhere to be found. You could easily see his personality changing based on his interactions with other people. Besides, one of the options for the ending was for him to never realize what a psychopath he was, while making it clear to the player that he was in fact a psychopath, which isn't poor narrative construction imo.
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Nov 9, 2014 08:38
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Something about he was hiding your friend somewhere so you couldn't kill him without getting the hiding place or something I think 
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Nov 9, 2014 08:38
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Croccers posted:Something about he was hiding your friend somewhere so you couldn't kill him without getting the hiding place or something I think That was it. Volkerball posted:The character didn't need to come outright and say it. They got the point across in other ways. Namely by having his relationships with his girlfriend and his friends fall apart and him turning from this little sissy college kid into a death machine who only cares about killing and revenge. Early in the game he was just trying to find his brother, but later on, he seemed to become more interested in killing Hoyt and Vass, even though his brother was still nowhere to be found. You could easily see his personality changing based on his interactions with other people. Besides, one of the options for the ending was for him to never realize what a psychopath he was, while making it clear to the player that he was in fact a psychopath, which isn't poor narrative construction imo. The game makes you sort of feel contempt for your college friends too, who are whiny and useless while you're out risking your neck doing poo poo to save them, so there's a muddied message at work--if you didn't become a psychopath, none of you would ever leave the island alive.
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Nov 9, 2014 08:41
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Croccers posted:Something about he was hiding your friend somewhere so you couldn't kill him without getting the hiding place or something I think Yeah, but he was like "IF YOU KILL ME I'LL JUST CALL THIS DUDE AND HE'LL KILL YOUR FRIEND HA HA HA." You were a loving death machine. Kill Buck, find his house, kill everyone there except your friend, and save the motherfuckin day. That whole part was really uncomfortable. I don't think I like Buck.
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Nov 9, 2014 08:42
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