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Far Cry 2 game - Spoilers, but a discussion of the concept of chivalry within it

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Sir James A:
I finished playing Far Cry 2 a few weeks ago. I saw my brother play Far Cry 3 a few times, and the game play was different and interesting enough for me to play a First Person Shooter again for the first time in years. Plus, part 2 was only $10 on Steam. However, nothing in the bits and pieces of the story from 3 that I saw stood out as anything beyond the normal FPS "shoot this, blow up that, rescue person" and I didn't expect much more than a chance to refine my sniper skills which are woefully, years out of practice. :D

That is, until I finished the game. And thought about it. And read a few things online that expanded into my questions. Holy cow, this is a DEEP game mentally, for something where you just run around shooting people constantly... this is a really long post, in part to explain the story line, and in part for discussing the intrinsic theme....

You're a mercenary hired to kill a guy who is supplying weapons to two different factions in a war in Africa ("The Jackal"). He sells to both sides to maximize his profits, of course, and to keep the war going as long as he can. That's his business, after all. Or that's what you're told. However, the very first twist happens at the beginning of the game; you get malaria, end up bedridden, and the guy you are hired to kill talks smack to you, then buries a machete into the wall right behind you, sparing your life ... and then leaves. Embarrassing, the guy you are hired to kill could have killed you and just walks away.

In order to get medicine for the malaria, you have to do missions for an underground group at the church, as the medicine is scarce. It involves "liberating" people by killing enemies, and providing travel documents for them to flee the country. That is only to get medicine to keep your malaria in check; in order to get at the guy you're trying to kill, you start doing under cover missions for one side of the war. Including the usual assassinations, burning resources, blowing up things - general type of requests you'd expect in a game of this nature. Shortly into the game, you're "playing both sides" and killing people from the same groups who are paying you to kill people in the other groups. Since it's all covert, both factions actively try to kill you except in the "cease fire" areas where you can get new missions. You are, quite literally, biting the hands that feed you.

At certain parts throughout the game, The Jackal continues to mock you. He says you are coming after him because he's arming people and adding to the war; yet, your pursuit of him and the trail of bodies you leave leads both sides to continue the war against each other, as both factions the other faction is responsible. He tells you that you are no better than him... but, do you believe him?

You make allies, who will rescue you if you are "killed". They'll pick you back up, give you a weapon, give you medical care, and they'll start going after your attackers. They will help you with missions. Sometimes ask you for help with theirs. Then, after you've made some good allies, at one point, you get some "inside" information of a hostile takeover and you have to both rescue the priest from the church who is sending you to the secret underground groups for medicine, or rescue your allies. No time to do both, as both are in imminent danger. I chose to go back and defend my allies. Per the story, infinite wave of assailants until you die or run out of ammo and then die.. at which point your allies are dead and you're thrown on a truck full of dead bodies. Except you're barely alive, and bounce out of the truck in the desert, as your dead allies in the back of the truck roll off into the distance. You're alone, seriously injured, unarmed, and stumble to a nearby shack before passing out - before the Jackal comes back, yet again, to taunt you mercilessly. This guy hates you, but won't kill you. It's strange.

The country essentially gets overrun to the point where neither side has control any longer, and they all start to flee. Both factions have lost their control and are overwhelmed. You have to work against the government to try to smuggle out some of those that you used to work for. Things are too far gone now, there's been a complete societal collapse. Someone tells you where you can find some diamonds in order to pay the guards to let you sneak some people out of the country, including yourself. You head to the area, then are surprised to see the allies you made earlier. Huzzah, some help! Except they ALL try to kill you. They want to claim the bounty on you, since you are now infamous due to prior events. No friendship, no loyalty, they're a hired gun, just like you, to the highest bidder.

After killing all your allies, you find The Jackal - and in a huge twist, head off to do a mission together. In order to safely evacuate some of the people, you have to make a coordinated assault in two different places; but both things will end up with you both dying. He asks you if you are willing to help him, and which of the two things you prefer. He tells how he began his time there in the same way you did; a mercenary wanting to put an end to the war, and how similar the two of you really are. You learn that this wasn't a "good guys and bad guys" life. It's greed. You killed to make money. Money that people pay you with, that they earned by killing others or stealing from them. The "friends" who turned on you for money. The people you killed to make money; the same money you use to buy more weapons from black market dealers who steal them from The Jackal, so that you can keep killing more people to get to The Jackal himself.

Think about it. You're not any kind of hero. Are you even a good person? You made allies, then killed them all when they tried to kill you. The one purpose you went there for, to kill The Jackal, you don't even accomplish. You let him walk off to his part of the mission, and he'll die in the process under his own terms. Not because you killed him, not because you forced him, but, because he wants to - and for a noble cause too.

In the end, you both profited heavily from the war. He made his money by selling arms, you made your money by using those arms to kill countless people. People not inherently good or bad, people simply pulling the trigger for the highest bidder. Just. Like. You.

So, you both manage to get some people out of the country, and you both die in the process. One of the memorable lines is when The Jackal tells you it doesn't matter who dies doing what, because "neither of us deserve to live through this".

You begin the game thinking, this is a bad guy, my job is to kill him, and restore peace and order to the country. But there's always someone who steps up to replace them. And in fact, twice, you kill the leader of a faction, who is simply replaced and a new leader steps in to continue waging war. By the end of the game, you've killed, in an ultra minimum stealth game, probably 100 people. I think I killed at least 1,000+ (there's no actual stats to track it).

The big moral and chivalry question of it all is ... if you have the blood of 100+ people on your hands to try to restore peace and order to a country - and the 100+ people you killed have the same goal of peace and order as you do - are you any better or worse than they are?

Is your course of action somehow more chivalrous than theirs, even though you share the same end results (albeit different methods)? Does it not make you a target for others to want to kill, perpetuating the conflict?

When the hunter becomes the hunted, are you any less of a monster than those you killed, believing them to be wrong? Are you morally superior for doing the same thing, because you believe it's for a higher purpose?

Did you pursue taking down The Jackal out of purely financial motives, out of desire to bring order to the chaos, or for pure vengeance?

Sir Edward:

Huh, interesting. It does bring some depth and philosophical thought to an otherwise action oriented game. I love when they manage to pull that off. :)

Aiden of Oreland:
What a lot of people don't relize is the concept and art involved in some games. As I tell my folks, "there is more to my games then just violence" and usually why I play the campaign before multiplayer. One of the reasons I like Assassin's Creed so much.

Sir William:
Yea, I love Assassin's Creed, the first one especially because that question was at the heart of the matter.  I don't know that I've had such an in-depth moment of discovery a la Sir James (I tend not to overthink things so even when I notice what's going on, it's more of a 'oh look, that happened' rather than 'I just did that, am I a bad person' type of a thing) but I notice things from time to time.  Since I tend to play as myself, that is, I make the decisions I would normally make if it were me in a given situation, rather than go full-on maniac assault simply because you can, although I'll admit that the guards in AC were more-than-willing pells for my burgeoning prowess.

I like that the games these days have more to them than the what used to be termed the usual; in fact, one of my most memorable gaming moments came in a game that featured very primitive mechanics and was largely story and character driven - The Walking Dead, by Tell Tale Games.  I liked how the choices you made determined the course of the game in certain aspects, as well as how your fellow survivors viewed and reacted to you.  Anti-gamers would tell you to just go outside and live a life but come on, we already do- gaming's about doing things you couldn't ordinarily do.

GTA has always been a guilty pleasure of mine, the latest installment just expounds on the conventions it first brought to gaming ten years ago and made them great.  A lot of people frown on this game because its one of the few out there where you can literally do almost anything - whether it be scuba or deep sea diving, sky diving, learning how to fly a plane and/or helicopter, learn how to shoot guns, all kinds, participate in races- street, water, off-road - you can even go hunting.  HUNTING.  Help out an old friend and do some bounty hunting.  Or check out a movie, or just have your character sit at home, watch tv.  Do yoga.  Start a fight.  Go auto-bowling, see how many pedestrians you can run down before the cops stop you.  Abduct hitchhikers and take them to a cannibalistic cult for money.  Search for UFO parts.  Become an associate producer of a movie-making enterprise...and see your name in the credits once editing is complete.

But even in this game, you'll find yourself at moments questioning the morality of what you've just done...or at least I do.  I think its important that something like this occurs for the gamer...it breaks the immersion and forces them to consider what they're doing and hopefully remember that it is just a game and things like that shouldn't be done in real life.

I think I'll pick up Far Cry 2...it sounds like a great deal more fun than I gave it credit for when I first read about it.

Sir Edward:
I'm glad to hear there's a general trend of developing deeper stories in a lot of these games in general.

That's one of the things that blew me away in the Mass Effect trilogy. Played as a trilogy, with save-game imports, your choices and decisions add up, and major characters can live or die based on your choices, or even entire races at one point. The story has an amazing amount of depth, character development, and emotional impact by the time you complete the trilogy. There's a theme of sacrifice and desperation, and friendship and cooperation, that runs through it, as well as "deep time". It's still mostly an action game, but with the story unfolding in cinematic cutscenes as well.

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