this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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My measure of how good a game is is mostly whether it provides an experience that utilizes the interactivity of video games to tie into other parts of the medium and therefore: Far Cry 2 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.
A game can just be a plaything, Tetris is good, but for it to be perfect I believe it needs to be more than the sum of its parts.
you might have to elaborate on how you mean
I vaguely understand that Far Cry 2 is using things like player expectations of enemy patrols. Like enemies are so prevalent and respawn so quickly it's some kind of something to draw the player into frustration over endless conflict. I haven't read much about Far Cry 2, but that's always the impression I got from it. It's presenting a situation where human life is very disposable. You end up working for every side in a conflict and the only winners are the arms dealers you buy stuff from.
Far Cry 3 I felt like handled this theme a lot better, and did something most games are afraid to do. Your character starts as a normal guy, but after becoming powerful enough to slaughter hundreds of enemies, he develops a deranged god complex. He's a scared college guy at the start. By the end of the game he's a snarling murderer who cackles madly at his enemies. That's the only type of personality that would arise from someone performing all those in-game actions
Far Cry 2 paints a very grim picture of conflict and especially Soldiers of Fortune, like you are. You start out with "good" intentions, killing an Arms dealer who keeps the conflict going, but once you fail that you basically start immediatly working for both factions, killing wantonlessly and causing destruction. All your mission objectives are like "Destroy the crops" or "Steam medicinal supplies", and it never even changes anything. Your merc friends might give you extra objectives, like "Hey man, do me a favour and do some other bad shit while you're there"
And it doesn't get you anything, except more gear, to cause more destruction, that also never has a point or changes anything. The only thing that could be argued is good for anyone involved is the missions to refill your malaria pills, where you trade passport papers for malaria pills so refugees can get out of the country that you're currently fucking up, and even that's a coercive deal with the devil from the point of the priests who organize it.
And everything ties into it. The fire mechanics, that spread - in unwanted ways - when you use certain guns. Your weapons all decay. You're, depending on difficulty, rather squishy yourself and the healing animations show you doing grueling stuff to yourself. All the pain and death and destruction, only for a day to go by and the next set of soldiers to stand guard at a checkpoint - and that to me, is the important point. The themes of the game are interwoven into basically every facet of the game.
At the end:
spoiler
The few buddies you have in this world, the other mercs, who did probably save you a lot of times over the playtime and vice versa and as such are the only people you could possibly feel a connection to, all turn on you to kill you over money. Now you learn it would've been smarter to take them all out through getting them in danger for you and letting them die. And then you team up with the Jackal to help some refugees out safely and you die, intentionally, doing it and it just cuts to black. Depending on your choices you may get a bit of text that says there's now 2 million displaced peoples (that you helped displace), but surprisingly little casualties among them due to your action, a final redeeming actBy the end, it's a power fantasy, but it's empty on all accounts, which is great!
Far Cry 3 tried this and fell flat on it's ass trying it because none of the other elements of the game weave into it. It just tries to at the end subvert it by saying "aha, got you!" as per power fantasy but it's too good of a power fantasy that's too fun for that to have any meaning. I am pretty much the actual god of war, nearing magic powers for combat, of course me / the player character is into it, it's easily explained by the Nietzsche Quote in the first 15 minutes of your previous games, you hacks! If you want your power fantasy subversion to have meaning you can't just make a bona-fide power fantasy and then turn it around at the end, you have to be willing to offend the players seeking such experiences a bit.