When I wrote about Far
Cry 4 last, it was about how I was sure that I could already see the end of
the game unfolding just so, propelling me towards an absurd conclusion bereft
of choice. As I calypsoed past the third
boss into the framing narrative notes bracketing the final conflict I rolled my
eyes at just how right I'd been: this villain, who I met only briefly, whose
antagonism to me represented little more than an inconvenience, less of an
inconvenience than other characters who I was meant to take as friends and
allies, died. I never got a chance to
know her, much less to decide her fate. Then
it was on to the last handful of missions before the credits rolled. I thought I knew what was coming. In retrospect, I suppose I sort of did. I knew that there would be an internal
political struggle, wherein I'd be asked to eliminate so-and-so's
competition. I knew that after that, I'd
be asked to finally assault Pagan Min's fortress, which would give me access to
the last of the collectibles, sheltered until then by impassable walls.
But I was surprised by just what happened from the
conclusion of that internal power struggle on.
And here's where the spoilers really begin, because I'm going to talk
very frankly about the end of the game, at least as I experienced it, and, to
me at least, it was genuinely surprising.
I never imagined just how bloodlessly I'd be able to resolve
those final conflicts, how I'd be able to let Sabal live while still supporting
Amita, how I'd be able to let him walk away without some kind of trippy
scripted fight sequence. I certainly
didn't think that, after a fairly pabulum assault mission with some neat
scripted aspects to it, I'd be able to drive right up to Pagan Min himself and
sit down to eat dinner with him, where I'd actually have a discussion about my
mother. I never thought, after watching
Noore pointlessly hurl herself to the beasts of her own arena after learning of
her complexities as a character, that I'd be able to civilly talk about old
times with this man who had been, in his own mind, my stepfather. But I was given actual choice in the end of Far Cry 4, and that choice redefined the
game for me. If I ever play it again
(and I probably won't), I wholly plan to sit at that dinner table and wait to
see if anyone comes back.
The notion of resolving a first person shooter without
conflict, resolving a shooter by talking to people, is original conceit,
especially when it's set against a game as bloody and absurd as Far Cry 4. Over the course of Far Cry 4 I killed
hundreds, maybe even thousands of people.
Murder became a casual act for me, more a casual, low-stakes interaction
than engaging with a character in conversation.
Even the most visceral takedowns felt casual by the time I finished
playing, less like I was stabbing a man through the heart with a kukri and
using his pistol to mow down his teammates, more like I was opening a letter
and dislodging its contents with a healthy shake. It was little more than clerical work as I
ventured in search of the next narrative "whatever" the game was
going to throw my way. The casual
violence started in the game's tutorial and never really let up, which is why I
was so pleasantly surprised by this conclusion.
Yet to hear critics discuss it, ending the game this way was
the height of betrayal. Their game was
terminated, after all, without a boss fight.
In its place there was a dialogue with a man who, by the end of the
game, I'd become quite similar to. I
understand their complaint from a structural perspective: Far Cry 4 is a game without a climax, a narrative aberration. But the anti-climax that emerged in its place
was one of a handful of strong choices they made in their game, along with
those bold initial formulations I mentioned previously (protagonist of color,
problemitization of imperialistic dynamics and all that). To critics, this anti-climax represented an
act of aggression against players on behalf of developers. Critics were robbed of "an interesting
final boss," and instead were given a fight that, by the end of the game,
they should've been well prepared for, maybe even tired of.
Which was almost certainly the point.
The Far Cry series
has always straddled a strange border, with action sequences that were
sometimes tense and unforgiving or, upon occasion, absurdly broad and
cartoonish. Far Cry 2, my first experience with the series, was perhaps the
most subtle and self-aware entry in the series, though Far Cry 3 certainly aspired to, at least to hear its writer discuss
things, reframe the tropes of the first person shooter genre. Far Cry
4 seems to have done so, if only in its own strange way. By removing a climactic framework, Far Cry 4 plays with the grinding,
repetitive nature of its own gameplay and the inevitable trauma, dissociation,
and desensitization that comes from prolonged exposure to violence. Far Cry
4's ending was the final note in the wavering last movements of a symphony:
after a somewhat disappointing battle which felt easier than any other fight
I'd engaged in to that point, the game ended with me having a quiet discussion
with the man I'd spent most of the game trying to kill. Those frustrating scripted moments of games and
cutscenes past were replaced with actual choices, and when I made those
choices, specifically a set of choices aimed at discontinuing a cycle of
violence, I was rewarded. Not by a grand
conclusion, but by a quiet dissolution into something that wasn't quite peace,
but wasn't the perpetual conflict I'd spent the game entreating either.
Far Cry 4's
anti-climax plays on some of the game's fundamental problems: by the time it
rolls around, most players will probably have long since maxed out their
character, and the "best" weapons (particularly the Ripper, which
effectively breaks the game when you're not being forced to play stealthily) will
have been in their inventory for a while.
All of the tricks that you'll use in that last fight will be well
practiced, known entities that you'll have expended in side quests and, in my
case, some marginally more challenging main story missions that precede the
final non-fight with Pagan Min. Some
players, like me, might have even felt bored by the way the game was
playing. It's something of an unfair
judgment, but I stand by it: Far Cry 4
felt tedious by game's end. I still
enjoyed exploration, sometimes, but the actual run-and-gun play wasn't
fun. Even the most dynamic boss fight
(the optional battle with the Rakasha spirit in the Shangri-La quest line) felt
shaky and ill-conceived. I was done with
my war before that last fight began.
Being able to walk away from it actually made me see the entire game in
a new light: not as a celebration of violence, but as a critique of its
cyclical nature, of the inevitable manner in which it begets more violence until,
finally, it undoes its own cycle.
That's a bit of a bummer, and it's not what we're accustomed
to seeing in first-person shooters at all.
Even smart, savvy FPSes that really work to let players avoid conflict
or invert violence against their opponents, games like the Half-Life series and the Portal
series, build up climatic boss oriented action sequences that effectively
terminate their games. The kind of
dragging boredom that weighs down Far Cry
4's systems in its fourth and fifth acts is different. It has less in common with the repetitive
violence that inhabits most FPSes, and more in common with the grind that draws
4X games to their conclusion.
As I watched Pagan Min fly away, I was at first
mystified. But then I thought of every
game of Civilization I'd ever won:
I'd spent my game grinding the AI down, beating them back, slowly building up
my forces until I could steamroll not only the enemy I was fighting, but the
enemies I knew would come at me afterwards.
By the time it all ended, I was never happy or euphoric. I was tired, exhausted by the boom-bust cycle
of play, the feverish micromanagement that all the little subsystems arrayed
before me required. I was ready for the
game to end, ready for the AI to acknowledge it was beaten. As the player, with control over the save and
reload buttons, I had ultimate authority in this space. I could manipulate time, undo my failures,
and repeat every battle until it sorted out just as I wanted.
Pagan Min, flying away in his helicopter, seemed to realize
that.
I could have shot him down.
I did not.
I understand that problematic elements related to my choices
supposedly emerge in Far Cry 4, but I
know this only from reading various game guides. I saw none of it myself. Instead, I simply watched a pair of stoners
pack up and head off to...wherever. I
didn't really care. I uninstalled the
game immediately.
I was done with Kyrat.
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