A Final Word on Far Cry 2

I finished this last night and I wanted to talk a little bit about the endgame.

When we think about designing a game, we go through three basic steps:

1. Define what you want the user to experience.
2. Describe a mechanic that will lead to that experience
3. Write the rules that will lead to that mechanic

In the previous interview (scroll down) Clint Hocking said:

However, this high level of power in the mid-game is supposed to be the peak… in the end game, after you get your supply of malaria medicine cut-off, you are supposed to get weaker and the game systems should force you to be more brutal – using more and more powerful weapons and confronting enemies who are more and more easily and frequently wounded.

I never ran out of malaria medicine. The malaria was only a nuisance that either made me stop for a second and pop some pills when I was traveling, or made me randomly die if it popped up during combat. So whatever mechanic you had in mind, Mr. Hocking, it didn't work. Sorry.

But there was another mechanic that did work.

There comes a point in the endgame of any shooter where you have access to all the weapons, you've seen all the various types of enemies, you've fought in pretty much all the terrains, and you're good enough at the game that you're somewhat going through the motions to get to the end. This is why there are boss monsters where none of your normal weapons really work and the rules are changed. This is why you have to push buttons for endgames to set up the big lightning machine, or somehow jump into the giant babyhead, or have some sort of race against time. The normal mechanic of the game has become so repetitive (see enemies, avoid their shots, shoot them) that the designers need to change it up to keep you interested.

I like to call it "shooter ennui."

I think it might have been an accident, but Far Cry 2 uses shooter ennui as part of the story. By the time I got to the endgame, random checkpoints were more bumps in the road than actual challenges. I had an exploding projectile gun on my jeep most of the time and could kill any wandering patrols before they could shoot at me. I had a .50 caliber sniper rifle that could one-shot anyone without a head shot. I rarely even got close to running out of ammo. I started to feel bad for the guys repeating to themselves, "He's just one man. One guy. I can do this. I can get him," before I'd kill them.

I was getting sick of the killing. It seemed pointless. Nothing was going to change. There would always be more guys manning the checkpoints. There would always be another warlord stepping up to fill the shoes of the guy I assassinated. Would it ever end?

Which is exactly what the designers wanted me to experience. I became the world-weary killing machine that was all the character definition they had given me. They did it through increasing the power level of my weapons without necessarily increasing anything about the enemies I was fighting. The game actually got easier in the last third, which seems counter-intuitive for a design, but it translated into the correct user experience.

And then they finally gave me an out. So I took it. I'm not sure if there's a "bad" ending. The ending I had was bittersweet. If I didn't bother finding Jackal tapes and giving them to the reporter would he not be my ally? If I had let the reporter die? If I had gone back for my buddies instead of saving the helpless at the end of Act 1? I think my ending was the best I could hope for given the circumstances of the game. Is there a better one? I don't know, but I'm satisfied with the one I got.

Only Africa won.