#The jackal far cry 2 full#

This not only further prevents the player from having to morally consider his actions in the field of combat - вЂњshoot everyone you like,вЂќ the game says, вЂњbecause youвЂ™ll just be killing bad guysвЂќ - but also draws a clear distinction between the civilians and the soldiers, and therefore between who is okay to kill and who isnвЂ™t. It is literally impossible to hurt or interact with civilians outside of the odd Underground mission or story development. The thematic harm done by the perpetually pissed-off soldiers could have been mitigated by the presence of civilians in the actual game world, but they sadly are relegated to the insides of indestructible buildings and cut scenes.

#The jackal far cry 2 full#

Innocent NPCвЂ™s like Oluwagembi the journalist or the Underground priest even show the player a bizarrely immediate sense of trust, further cementing the playerвЂ™s image of himself as a вЂњgoodвЂќ guy in a land full of вЂњevilвЂќ men who will try to kill him for no good reason. Mechanically suggesting that the player kill everything in his path out of simple self-defense obscures this intent.

In order for the playerвЂ™s gradual descent into brutality to be relevant, it must draw at least enough attention to morally differentiate itself from the thousands of mindless, uberviolent shooters on the market today. Subsequently, the player can convincingly frame his mass genocide as total self-defense, and thus put themselves in the exact same mindset one would have when playing intentionally mindless fare like Halo or Gears of War.While one could argue that slaughtering hundreds of living beings without guilt is rather dark and nihilistic in its own way, one would also have to then acknowledge the original Super Mario Bros as a paragon of Nieztschian anxiety. It doesnвЂ™t matter what youвЂ™re doing, or who youвЂ™re aligned with - if youвЂ™re spotted by anyone, they will literally chase you across the entire map just to put a bullet in your brain. Which is more brutal: unprovoked murder or justifiable self-defense?ДЇrom the very moment the player leaves the ceasefire zone at the beginning of the game, Far Cry 2 makes it clear that every single soldier in the game world will try to kill you if they see you. To descend into the heart of darkness, one would think, would require murder to be a clear and conscious decision made for, if not unjustifiable reasons, at least considerably ambiguous ones. While a fair number of players complain about the fact that literally every single person you meet in the world of Far Cry 2 will try to kill you regardless of their faction on the grounds that this decision was annoying or not fun, itвЂ™s far more harmful to the concept of turning the player into a brutal, deliberately amoral killer. Hit the jump if youвЂ™re at all interested in hearing about why I feel this way.

ItвЂ™s not that they arenвЂ™t intended to do something like that - a discussion with creative director Clint Hocking revealed that this was, indeed, the intent - but even after playing through the game three separate times in three drastically different ways, I still feel that the game fails to imbue its essential mechanics with as much fatalism and moral ambiguity as some other critics have suggested. The idea that the game mechanics suggest brutality and nihilism, however, even now fails to strike a chord with me. IвЂ™ve found myself strangely attracted to Far Cry 2 over the past few months, alternately adoring its courage and scope while cringing at its missteps. ItвЂ™s definitely worth reading for yourself, but in it Jeffries takes a relatively popular critical position on the game - namely, that it is partially successful in its attempts to coerce the player into using progressively more brutal and amoral methods of problem solving as the game wears on, using the game mechanics to subtly turn the player into a sort of anti-hero within this virtual Heart of Darkness. JeffriesвЂ™ critique of Far Cry 2 over at Moving Pixels less than a few hours after completing my third complete playthrough of the game (on Hardcore difficulty, this time).