Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Far Cry 2 is My Muse!

I’ve always found that my writing is influenced heavily by other art I engage. Movies, books, comics, paintings, even games; even if I don’t love something I still find that it makes me think about writing, how I write and, in some weird, cosmic cases, just compels me to write.

There are lots of weird examples I could rattle off. People I’ve shared creative writing classes with who irritated the living hell out of me, but made me just feel compelled to write. The Walking Dead comic books, which make me think about zombies and character development more than most “proper” novels I read do. Trashy mysteries which make me want to write better, equally trashy mysteries.

Oddly enough, Far Cry 2 falls into this category as well.

Other games have elicited creative impulses in me before. Sometimes playing a game turns into a kind of performance art because of this (see Assassin’s Creed), sometimes it simply makes me reflect on stories and how they are told (see Bioshock). And sometimes, as is the case in Far Cry 2, it inexplicably draws ideas out of me.

Far Cry 2 is a game with a lot of problems. There isn’t a whole lot of complexity to it, it has some serious repetition going on and the story jerks around like a man having a seizure. The Jackal’s inexplicable shift from McGuffin to Best Friend and the “uh oh, better kill your friends” twist in the final area are, at best sloppily executed and, at worst, can ruin the game for someone who enjoyed FC2’s plodding, character heavy storytelling.

But it’s also a game with staggering visuals and a “go anywhere, do anything, try to break the rules” mentality which is surprisingly well executed for a game with such severe limitations on what you can do. Far Cry 2 is possessed of an old school sensibility that certain areas will simply be inaccessible, and if you beat your head against the wall trying to get to them you will perceive that you are making progress while you’re really not.

Its a strange game with a strange world, and it could be considered a new step in gaming art, but no one is going to head to Far Cry 2 to take writing lessons or game design lessons. It’s standard shooter fare with the game classic guns we’ve seen copy-pasted a thousand times before. Its sole unique weapon, the silenced shotgun, has to be purchased through DLC and even then, you’ve already used a shotgun in this game. Seeing this slightly different shotgun probably won’t rock your world if the game didn’t on its own.

Despite an almost pedestrian modus operandi and a world where you are perpetually retracing your steps, however, Far Cry 2 manages to make me feel...different. It makes me change my approach to video games, and I’m not entirely sure why.

I normally take a highly methodical, completionist approach to gaming. Digging up Holocrons, unlocking hidden characters and class bonuses, finding hidden supply caches – these are the things I find myself forced to do unconsciously.

But in Far Cry 2 I barely care about the collectibles. That’s not completely accurate; I care about them enough to get out of my car whenever I see that little green light go off. I care about them enough to look for a guide on how and where to find all of the Jackal Tapes. But I don’t find myself invested in searching for minutia as I normally am.

Perhaps its the relative uselessness of some of the collectibles. For example, the Golden AKs, scattered throughout the game world, eliminate one of the game’s most interesting features: weapon decay. You can just carry that shiny new all-purpose through the whole game, never worrying about jams or breakdowns. You’ll miss out on the diverse options available at the shop but the game itself will get a lot easier.

And the diamonds, while diamonds and ergo desirable by nature, just aren’t that handy after a certain point. I mean, sure, they’re diamonds and you want them and you want the guns they let you buy, but I found myself out of purchases to make well before the end of the game, and I barely found half of the things. Eventually I was going off the beaten path to find them just to see what sort of original and inventive hiding place Ubi had cooked up for me.

But Far Cry 2’s collectibles don’t trigger my OCD the way Assassin’s Creed’s do. Maybe its the slipshod nature of the game world, the constant feeling that everything is going to fall apart that the game elicits so effortlessly. So I’m freed from that burden and left to experience a strange and vibrant setting.

And, for some whack ass reason, this makes me want to write. Not just about Far Cry 2, although the game definitely had that effect on me too. No, Far Cry 2 makes me want to write about motion through spaces, about friendships you don’t really enjoy having, about unpleasant work environments and the hideous irony of human nature. Far Cry 2 has that je ne sais quoi that makes me want to sit down and do stuff, and it has it in spades.

I didn’t really notice until all of the releases I’d been catching up on had kept me from it for almost a week. Suddenly I found myself feeling down, struggling for ideas. Instead of being able to sit down and tap something out I had to stare at a coffee cup and will ideas out of my skull. Then I’d take a quick five minute break, kill some bad people, steal some of their ill-gotten gains for myself, pop a few pills and then log off to let the ideas flow out.

The game is so cavalier in both its successes and its failures. It knows what its doing, and it knows it well. It doesn’t always succeed, sure, but it doesn’t have to. All it has to do it take you away from where you are and let you play there, where you feel safe because you have nothing to lose. Maybe its not the greatest game ever, but it doesn’t have to be. It just has to be a good game. And that uncautious swagger, that confidence in its simple act of being makes me happy. It makes me feel okay. And it makes me want to make something too, even if its just one of many rough diamonds. Because sometimes the small payoffs are the best ones.