Can we blame Ando for Far Cry 3

[Ford Prefect]

Wait...I only saw the youtube link but that is supposed to be the good ending? The one where Spoiler

you cut the throat of defenceless women and then get stabbed during sex by some crazy chick straight out of "Cannibal 101"? Not that the other one is much better, considering how the poor oppressed people turn out to be CRAZY NUTCASESSpoiler

. Holy crap. I can't believe nobody caught that stuff during story meetings. This stuff looks pretty much like clan propaganda.

I understand that we have a rule about hiding spoilers in threads not marked as such, but I am convinced it is actually harmful to spoil anything regarding Far Cry 3's story. It is simply too repulsive to keep secret.

The ending where Citra stabs Jason during sex is the 'bad' ending. Lines like 'the most perfect of your kind (ie. white people)' serve to make explicit the white man's burden subtext that is at the heart of the game. Citra wants a white child from the most superior white person. Even without this aspect, the mere fact that the Rakyat's customs lead to Jason slitting the throat of his defenseless girlfriend and all his friends and him being murdered is all part of this dangerous savage aspect of the story.

That aspect is repeated in the 'good' ending, where Jason frees his friends and leaves the island. The part where Jason says 'there's still a good (white) person beneath the tribal warrior the savages made me' is just beyond a joke.

[CaptHawkeye]

What was the racism in there? Been toying with the idea of buying that game but don't want to give money to idiots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0ci6rYOleM

What is the story about?

Spec Ops' story is totally an indictment of the video game shooter genre and American chest thumping. It's absolutely loaded with subtext about those problems sewn right into the gameplay.

[Thanas]

What was the racism in there? Been toying with the idea of buying that game but don't want to give money to idiots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0ci6rYOleM

To be honest, that looks to be far worse than Far Cry 3, because in CoJ one can simply dismiss the whole think as stupidity and lack of effort. In Far Cry 3 it seems to be as if they almost made a conscious effort to be as racist as possible.

[Aaron MkII]

My wife said "its like they wanted to see how far they could push it."

The soundtrack is good though, just ignore the fucking Skrillex gunfight. That was terrible.

[PeZook]

So, the shocking twist is that the locals are actually (mystically, magically) evil and have corrupted the good white mang and turned him into a monster?

[Aaron MkII]

All the other whites on the island as well. Every white guy you meet, other then your friends is crazy. Aside from the CIA guy who is a paranoid shut in and Sam, who may or may not believe his own lies.

[Stark]

Without playing the game you can't appreciate how those attitudes pervade every cutscene. From the souvenir-shop native empowerment to the Powerful American not as Powerful as you because whoops - he's black. The way the main character and the player are drawn through and built up through absurd empowerment and forced obedience really gives an even more disturbing context to the endings, which are just...

It can't be an accident. If they say 'oh yeah I guess it could be construed as obviously racist in the vein of racist shit from 150 years ago' I won't believe them, because all those themes drive the story, right down to 'power' being 'how big your sweet-as tribal tattoo is bro'.

[weemadando]

My wife said "its like they wanted to see how far they could push it."

The soundtrack is good though, just ignore the fucking Skrillex gunfight. That was terrible.

I thought it was a clever segment - showing him losing his inhibitions more and more. Raving about how fun a flamethrower is while people are burning alive, getting high as a kite off the smoke and having that music pumping all show how far he has fallen, but that he really hasn't changed that much.

It was one of the few story missions that actual "worked" for me.

As for the talk about Spec Ops Thanas, I encourage you to play it and read "Killing is Harmless" by Brendan Keogh (an Australian academic & games journo) alongside. It's a ~50k word critical reading of the game that was fascinating.

[Stark]

If only he'd been not a standard video game character for longer then ten fucking minutes it might have worked. It would have been too hard for the clowns to sell him as unskilled and unmotivated to kill in a free-roaming game, so they didn't even try. By the time I played the terrible story missions I'd taken over the entire island so the linear missions telling me to be stealthy because I couldn't possibly kill three guys at once were just retarded.

And you don't need to read anything but statements of the guys who made Spec Ops about player volition. The game was designed to troll players who unthinkingly buy into video game expectations, which is amazing shit.

[weemadando]

Between that mission and the "now it feels like I'm winning" conversation shortly after, there is such a tantalising glimpse of what this story could have been.

[Stark]

At one point they clearly had a point to make, which is why I got the impression the game was about people doing what they're told if they're given rewards and how obfuscated bullshit appears profound when you're on drugs. Vaas and the CIA guy certainly appeared to be possible futures for the protaganist.

But no, its actually just terrible. CIA guy should have just got a sweet tattoo.

[Vendetta]

Now, I've heard a thing about this game, apparently the writer thinks that everyone is stupid and didn't Get his story which was too clever for all of you, and had references to Alice in Wonderland and shit to show how craaaazy it was all going to be, and will you ever recover from the crazy?

And how the "bad" ending where you have been manipulated all along by an evil woman was totally all about subverting all your princess rescuing fantasies because you're a misogynist, obviously.

I take this to indicate that the writer of Far Cry 3 is only accidentally a massive racist, because he's actually a moron of the highest order.

[Stark]

Dude the Alice in Wonderland quotes were the fucking best part! Six missions of boring Tomb Raider nonsense at the beck and call of a brutal teleporting rapist and IT'S OKAY GUYS - MAD HATTER SAYS WIERD SHITS! So deep! Who am I? What is happening? GAME DOESN'T CARE SMOKE MORE DOPE BRA.

Its kind of amusing that the game doesn't sell Citra in need of rescue at all; she has an army, they're not presently under attack by Vaas, she has no challengers to political control of her faction, etc. The only thing she needs saving from is NOT BEING WHITE.

I can sum up how stupid the writer is in one example. You can literally 'take the red pill' in this game; it's there in your absurd cave of escape. This isn't used to explore reality and consent to activities or the ridiculous ideas of personal empowerment through doing what you're told or anything - it just plays a winamp visualisation ... I mean trippy drug experience whoooooo so cool.

[Ford Prefect]

And how the "bad" ending where you have been manipulated all along by an evil woman was totally all about subverting all your princess rescuing fantasies because you're a misogynist, obviously.

Man you know that would have been pretty interesting, but it's too bad it was a total and complete failure and basically racist propaganda.

[Vendetta]

Although I'm fairly sure you can't make a point about the misogyny of the audience's impulse to rescue princesses by telling a story about how women are evil and manipulating you and will then stab you once they have harvested your essential bodily fluids.

There's probably a story about that that needs to be told in videogames, but the way Far Cry 3 tried to do it was as bad or worse than the original portrayal of women it was apparently trying to examine. Maybe it was in Enslaved, but I haven't played that (Doubt it though).

[Stark]

There are 100% the seeds of those themes in the game; they're just totally ignored or go nowhere or simple swamped by the terrible bullshit. With a few changes, the story could fully have been about someone desperate for meaning who latches on to something obviously wrong or fake and uses it to build a false identity that then collapses when reality catches up... but this isn't it.

Because that, ladies and gentlemen, was Spec Ops.

[weemadando]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/12 ... nd-satire/

That is a hilarious interview. From the post interview summary: "There’s definitely an impression that the answer changes to excuse the game. With such stark contradictions in intent, it doesn’t seem too surprising that the game has failed (in my mind) to convey the meaning he wished."

[Stark]

Some of the dialog and events clearly seem to be for plot threads that never occur, so either the writer is an idiot or someone restructured the game.

[Aaron MkII]

"The People" is the laziest tribal name ever? Has he heard of the Inuit?

Oh! And he tells us how to interpret his art! More acid is obviously required before we can see what he sees.

[Stark]

Authors intent + terrible author = oh dear?

If you've still got it, Aaron, play the first few story missions again and try to imagine if the rest of the game followed through on the plot hooks they throw out. The unreality, the isolation, the desperation.

Just forget everyone you talk to is explicitly not a native (and probably American). :V

[Aaron MkII]

There's actually a story in the Japanese letters that talk about the men going mad and the CO going paranoid and seeing Americans everywhere. It parallels the abandoned theme of how the island drives people mad.

[weemadando]

When I started just mainlining the plot and got about 4 cutscenes in under an hour each of which prominently featured the tragically slow scrolling Alice in Wonderland quotes I went "ooooh, so it's *that* lazy".

And yeah, I agree with Aaron that the best part of that plot was the letters.

[Stark]

Doesn't this actually make the game a powerful metatextual statement on racism?

[weemadando]

Nope, it just means someone competent wrote the text. :V

Also, due credit to whoever wrote the flavour text for the handbook. They obviously realised just how dumb everything they were involved in was.

[Stark]

No, I mean that the intent was to make a statement against racism, but that it was so full of (apparently unintentional) racism that it made a series of extremely racist statements instead. Doesn't this mean that racist ideas can be so pervasive that one may not even know when they are being racist, or that racism can be expressed unintentionally even when trying not to be?

In Australia I see that sort of thing all the time; people try to be 'accomodating' or 'understanding' or 'tolerant' and actually come across as massively white mans burden, eurocentric, stereotypical racists.