Having finished Fallout 3, I decided to finish FarCry 2, which I’d put on hold for a wee bit on account of work, FO3’s awesomeness, and the fact that one or two things in FC2 were beginning to grate on my nerves.
I’ll say here that I really liked the ending itself; I thought it fit in really well with the game and the nature of warfare in Africa in general.
As far as I’m concerned, if your character takes the “Bribe The Border Guards” option, they survive- figuring that since everyone else has double-crossed them and the Jackal undoubtedly has no plans of blowing himself up, your character isn’t going to shoot themselves- especially since no-one else cares about the country (as revealed by the fact Reuben can’t get his stories published in any of the papers he works for and has to resort to posting them on his blog). No, your character walks away from the conflict an extremely rich and well-armed person, albeit with Malaria, which is nothing Modern Medical Science can’t sort out.
The constantly respawning enemies at roadblocks, teleporting Technicals, warring factions that neglect to tell their own troops you’re working for them (and don’t seem to notice you working for their opposition), and that fact you could unload an SMG into someone at point-blank range and not kill them did annoy me, but overall I enjoyed the game and really felt like I was involved in the middle of a conflict in a nameless African country. As I’ve said before, it felt like a cross between Blood Diamond and The Dogs of War.
I did, however, start to wonder towards the end of the game what was stopping my character from just gunning down everyone who opposed him and taking charge of the country (it’s implied the country is too wrecked to function, but even so). I’d lost count of the bodycount by that stage, and my character had access to an arsenal rivalling that of some first-world countries, so deciding to stage a coup d’etat and install myself as El Presidente really didn’t seem to be any more far-fetched than roadblocks full of baddies that would respawn as soon as you turned your back and walked six feet away.
I like the fact that, by the end of the game, you were at least as bad as- if not worse than- The Jackal, having personally ensured the country was fucked up beyond any hope of repair- blowing up medicine, destroying fresh water supplies, starting bushfires, and generally causing even more chaos than the man who was simply supplying guns to everyone. It certainly gave the game a lot more depth as I came to realise this, I felt.
So, has anyone else finished the game? What did you think of it all?
