Far Cry 3

[Perfect_Chaos]

just so everyone knows i love EVERYBODY here. but anyways ive been playing FC3. got about 10 hours invested. FRICKIN LOVE IT! but does anyone agree that the games cover art is just god awful?

[Bluecast]

It's interesting I think. Does not do the cliche white guy with gun in any cliche pose. It shows vaas who is the most interesting character in the game. Showing who he is. Torturing a soul and has total peace with it. Not juts the guy suffocating but also has a gun to his head. Maybe the guy is saying please end it quick and vaas wants to see him suffer and it's relaxing to him. Perfect Chaos

Yeah I know over analyze but it's what I see. So I like it. on the surface it's just meh,substance behind it IMO makes it perfect

[Vyse Hazuky]

I'd say slaughtering digital animals is the only thing that seems to feel wrong.. especially the (relatively) harmless ones, like the pigs, dingos or goats. It's not like you can't play it without doing it, but it somewhat tells you that you'd enjoy the game more if you do. I wish it felt more vital, like if you had to eat to survive or something.

I think thats something of an issue as well. In AC3 I liked that he said a prayer every time he killed something but it was done more to make stuff to sell stuff, not really because he had to which isn't a good thing. The critters in Far Cry 3 from what i saw my friend play, were very vicious and would attack on sight but even then it seemed like killing stuff just cause. That goes for many games tho, the wolves in Dragon's Dogma, and Skyrim (and just about any open world game) are always just angry animals.

Yeah. The turtles especially, since they cower away inside their shells, and then you go and slash them up for $10 re-sale seems quite harsh.
There are certain things here that make this a less inventive and less ambitious, from a design standpoint, game than FC2.
Anyway the fact that "winning" is synonimous with "killing" is a serious aspect but that far outgrows the problems in FC3 alone. With a game with such a high emphasis on planning your attacks and using stealth, it's strange there's no non-lethal option. Of course, things get much more intense, but it's these little things that niggle it, because they don't really make that much sense from a conceptual POV, in my opinion.

[Segata Sanshiro Jr.]

http://killscreendaily.com/articles/int ... far-cry-3/

It’s not a satire, because for me satire is ironically keeping yourself distant from immersion. But I think it walks the line between those; it’s a meta-commentary of videogames. So it’s talking about not just shooters, but videogames as a whole, and what we’ve turned a blind eye to in videogames. Videogames have all these tropes that they use again and again because they’re easy to design for. I tried to do something where we take those tropes and we subvert them so that they become revealed. We’re revealing what’s weird about these tropes, and also we’re trying to explore them from a fresh perspective.

[OL]

Yeah, that was basically what I took away from it. It felt interesting to me because it was obviously going for a Bioshock style of expression, but doing it in a much different way (the fact that the protagonist is actually a character rather than just the player avatar is a big one).

[Vyse Hazuky]

http://killscreendaily.com/articles/interviews/why-player-side-killing-conversation-writer-far-cry-3/

It’s not a satire, because for me satire is ironically keeping yourself distant from immersion. But I think it walks the line between those; it’s a meta-commentary of videogames. So it’s talking about not just shooters, but videogames as a whole, and what we’ve turned a blind eye to in videogames. Videogames have all these tropes that they use again and again because they’re easy to design for. I tried to do something where we take those tropes and we subvert them so that they become revealed. We’re revealing what’s weird about these tropes, and also we’re trying to explore them from a fresh perspective.

Good God... Well.. it is refreshing to see some writers are thinking about stuff like this, as opposed to, say, Cliff Bleszinsky, but... most of the points he apparently says he makes were already on FC2, and I don't think they come across exactly like he thinks it does.

[Golf Wang]

I have it on Xbox 360 and it runs great. It's not racist. I don't quite understand where people get this idea from, but it's really not. I think it has something to do with the native people not being "complicated" enough with their missions. But what do you expect? They're native people and they live in huts in the jungle. Great game overall. I definitely recommend it.

[Segata Sanshiro Jr.]

I have it on Xbox 360 and it runs great. It's not racist. I don't quite understand where people get this idea from, but it's really not. I think it has something to do with the native people not being "complicated" enough with their missions. But what do you expect? They're native people and they live in huts in the jungle. Great game overall. I definitely recommend it.

Thats alittle forgiving don't you think? Ever heard of the "Magical Negro" trope? Its all over the game. It also isn't that they aren't complicated, they're mostly stupid.

As i find out more about the game the more racist it seems and the bigger a problem it is that no one seems to realize it.

[Golf Wang]

I have it on Xbox 360 and it runs great. It's not racist. I don't quite understand where people get this idea from, but it's really not. I think it has something to do with the native people not being "complicated" enough with their missions. But what do you expect? They're native people and they live in huts in the jungle. Great game overall. I definitely recommend it.

Thats alittle forgiving don't you think? Ever heard of the "Magical Negro" trope? Its all over the game. It also isn't that they aren't complicated, they're mostly stupid.

As i find out more about the game the more racist it seems and the bigger a problem it is that no one seems to realize it.

Never heard of it. Maybe it is racist to some, but not me. I'm 19 dude. I just play the game for fun .

[Segata Sanshiro Jr.]

Well thats another thing that really bothered me, especially when I saw the virtual morals thread. Its terrible that Fun is more important then morality. The idea that we all derive pleasure from this is kind of sick.

Ok, so lets say theres a game where the player has to manage 3 lines in different ways. Each one has a sort of gimmick to it;

For example the first line has a play area thats split into 3 and in order to move towards the goal the player needs to shift blocks to clear a path to the goal.

Now lets say the second is color coded and the player can only move a single colored block thats active and e
very "turn" the active color shifts

and the 3rd line is constantly in motion but various rhythm based obstacles keep interfering with the movement of blocks towards the goal and the player needs to knock them out of the way.

Together it would provide a pretty hectic experience trying to manage all three at once. This could turn out to be a pretty fun game, especially if the designer were able to iron out any logical problems and bugs.

Now we add aesthetics and call the game "Weekend at Auschwitz", the first line becomes a line to a gas chamber, the second becomes a line to a lab and the third becomes a line to a furnace.

Does it now matter that the game plays well if the subject matter is incredibly offensive?

[Golf Wang]

You're looking into this much. Honestly, I don't think the game makers have racism in mind when making these games, dude. It's just stereotypes and ignorance, not racism.

[Thief]

I offered a co-worker of mine -- a black co-worker of mine -- the rest of my fried chicken when I was done with it. He freaked out. Am I racist? No, he's just being a dumb-ass. I'm not going to let stereotypes dictate what I do or who I offer my fried chicken to, and neither should this game; Far Cry 3 should be able to offer fried chicken to whomever it wants.

[Bluecast]

This is coming from me who is hypersensitive that if a feather tickles me wrong I get offended.

Can't freak out about every little thing esp in a game about eithics or racism. AC can be seen as racist because Altiar looks like Desmond who is white and killing Arabs. And no using the term Arabs isn't racist as it's just a abbreviation. It can be a ignorant one however but not racist. I really don;t thing Ubi Soft has any racist motives.

[Segata Sanshiro Jr.]

But Altair is a Muslim with olive colored skin. How is it racist? He's the protagonist, who doesn't really fit any tropes or stereotypes. Desmond miles, his descendant, looks like him.

Ignorance can be racism, especially if its sustained. If someone doesn't know or understand thats one thing, but when its repeated thats another.

Also why shouldn't ethics and racism be thought about in regards to games. If people want to start talking about games as art, the point needs to come where accountability is introduced.

Right now I'm playing Brothers in Arms Hells highway, and I'm not really enjoying it, not in the sense that i think its a bad game, I value the time I've spent playing it, but because I don't like the idea of killing so many people. Call me a bleeding heart, or just plain crazy, but I keep thinking that in world war 2, people died, what if they died just like this, what if a grenade went off, ripping up a person, what if they got hit by a mg round. Worst of all I keep thinking about each person that died, every German or American, what were their stories, why was this happening to them.

Is it wrong to believe that people shouldn't sit there and enjoy this? or that kids, and even adults will play games and see war in such a terrifyingly skewed way. Why is it ok to buy and play games that make war into exactly that, as opposed to offering a look at why we should never allow it to happen.

In the case of Far Cry 3, why is it okay to have a bunch of "Magical Negros", why is it fine that blacks are still portrayed as mewling, uncivilized brutes unable to form a proper civilization and thus offering only a mystic alternative to higher society. What would make things that are seen as unacceptable like blackface, or mammy archetypes worse?

[Vyse Hazuky]

Well... I'd say that while video games show those things, they occur in mostly action-type games which, moreso these days, follow narrative and directorial imprints set in television and movies.

We're getting into "why is killing appealing" or "why do we use stereotypes" but one tends to think that has a very deep root that probably comes from the need of assertiveness and cultural and visual identification that is probably picked up, even if unconsciously, from the first interactions with a world, as you associate with what's near you, common and familiar and distrust what's different. Only later can you be taught otherwise, even though intrinsecally, I think it runs structurally deep.

Using video games I think is just like TV or movies, it's just made worse because you get to interact with it, so it's not as passive because you can't say "oh, it's the director/writer's fault, I'm just watching it". But, on the other hand, I don't think it's used as an end in itself, so it's probably just a way of commercializing on intrinsicalities, and that's why, I think, war is appealing as a subject. Far beyond the strategical implications and the tragic life stories and all that, I think it's really the basic instinct of us vs them, of asserting dominance over something.