clyde

Far Cry 5

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23 hours ago, clyde said:

The explosion blows my buddy into the woods, so all I hear is "Help me, I'm not going to make it much longer." I don't have the HUD on so I'm moving around searching for him by the sound of his suffering.

 

Can your buddies die? I'm guessing there is no Far Cry 2-esque option to execute them while they lie writhing in pain... (God that game was grim. It seems inconceivable now that it ever got made in the way it did.)

 

More importantly can the dog die? What happens when the dog gets hurt? Is the dog going to be okay? These are the important questions which the reviews do not tell me.

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1 hour ago, marginalgloss said:

 

 

Can your buddies die? I'm guessing there is no Far Cry 2-esque option to execute them while they lie writhing in pain... (God that game was grim. It seems inconceivable now that it ever got made in the way it did.)

 

More importantly can the dog die? What happens when the dog gets hurt? Is the dog going to be okay? These are the important questions which the reviews do not tell me.

 

Seem like they are just on a cool-down when they die. But you still have the ability to try and revive them when they are dying.
Something worth mentioning here is that there are buddies who are actual characters with stories, and then there are just towns-people you can hire who are pretty much just like buddies but you have to unlock their upgrades. This is a fun part of the game for me. I tend to enjoy running with lady-archers. Sometimes I run into someone and I'm like..."I'd love to have you on my team, but that means I have to let someone go." these potential hires are everywhere. It is overwhelming how many people you can hire. I feel like sometimes I run into the people I have since fired. It's awkward.

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OK, this is the best Far Cry game I've played.

I played 2 and 3.

There are significant mechanical systems that I have not experienced in an open-world shooter before that I am just now understanding the synergy of. I'll preface everything I say by mentioning that this all might be the way I imagine things are happening and not the actual mechanics.

So I'll list the mechanics that seem to be working well together:

1: Sphere of influence:

I get the impression that enemy respawns are based on the general amount of progress you have made in the game and the proximity of "liberated" areas you are surrounded by. Progress you have made seems to effect the difficulty of the enemy units and the liberated areas effect the frequency of enemies arriving on the scene. At first I was kinda working outpost-to-outpost and everything was easy (but that is fine, I don't care if it is easy). But then I decided to just drive a truck way into enemy territory to get a specific story-NPC that I wanted to recruit. I was startled by how many enemies kept showing up, like they didn't stop. I realized that it may have to do with surrounding territory not being liberated, so we have been fighting our way back to friendly-held territory all night. The next point makes that more interesting than expected.

2: The friendly NPCs.

So currently, I can only have one friendly NPC fighting alongside with me. They can either be a story-NPC or just some random schmoe I rescue from a bear or a cult road-block. It seems like I can have as many story NPCs as I want in my roster and 3 schmoes available at any given time, but I can only have one present at the time. But what I'm starting to realize is that even if I rescue a schmoe and I don't hire them, they still pick up weapons and just start roaming the area. So as we are fighting our way back to a friendly town, I'm rescuing tens of schmoes who all grab weapons and then get on a vehicle and go their own way. But they fight without me commanding them.

As we have been moving back to friendly turf, more and more I will hear gunshots in unexpected directions, go to investigate only to find a few schmoes I rescued an hour ago have gotten into an altercation with the cult. This feels significant just because it affects how I have to approach the skirmish, I can't just assume the fire comes from enemies and blow the traffic jam up.

3. The environment and setting are hand-crafted to a high level of fidelity that is not apparent at first. At first it seems like generic woodlands, roads, and farms with big red Just Cause silos that you are to blow up in order to gain piss-off-the-enemy points. But as I find more areas and traverse agricultural fields that initially look just like an agricultural field I've already traversed, I'm seeing that it is just a geographic culture that is consistent and not something akin to repeating tiles. What this means is that the pacing/spacing of gulleys, fences, creeks, fields, farms, woodlands, and roads creates as sense of space denser and more immersive than any open-world game I've played. This becomes more apparent as I go into barns and houses to loot and perhaps end up defending the area from a few enemies who show up. When this happens the space becomes more detailed an intimate as I think about its layout at first for a battle-plan but then as I imagine it lived in as an operational farm as I move around looting bodies or try to Assassin's Creed my way into a hard-to-reach spot that hints at an easter-egg.

These systems interact in an endearing way. An extreme example of this is me and Grace running across a field as a

Spoiler

plane is strafing us

, finding cover on a pine ridge with shrubbery from which we see an

Spoiler

aggressive mockery of baptism occuring

at the river below. We clear them out then I begin to fish from that shore. Grace covers me while I reel 'em in. When I say Grace is covering me, I mean she is putting beads on schmoes we freed an hour earlier as they drive their 4-wheeler to a spot that overlooks us. Those schmoes drive off and we hear gun-fire and it feels like a real possibility that Grace will go help them out while I finish bringing in this sturgeon I've had on the line for the past minute.

This is my favorite Far Cry.

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Glad to hear you're enjoying it so much, clyde. I'll have to finish it before I figure out where I'd rank it in the series, but I am enjoying it very much.

 

I've found they also wrote some great music for this but it seems none of it is in the game! Or rather, alternative "choir versions" of these songs are in the game, but I much prefer the more minimalist renditions of these tunes that are available on Spotify/Youtube. 

 

 

 

 

These Ubigames often have great music. The sea shantys of Black Flag and Hudson Mohawke's Watch Dogs 2 tunes being highlights, but I think this collection of sinister Americana is my favourite so far.

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This really is one of those open world games you can loose yourself in, been playing it all weekend. I'm usually more fond of western settings in the AC games (AC3's America, Syndicate's London), so no surprise I'm liking Montana better than the more exotic locales of previous FC titles. The buddy system is great and reminds me more of MGS V than FC2, tho that's perhaps because my main buddies are a dog and a sniper lady. The cars are more dynamic and fun than in earlier iterations, and the ones with machineguns strapped to the roof kinda make me feel like I'm playing an Interstate 76 sequel at certain points. The planes are pretty good, but the helicopters handle in such a dumb arcadey way that I get no joy from flying them.

 

Only thing that outright pisses me off in this game are the tight parameters of many of the story missions, regarding mission areas and whatnot. In one particularly egregious moment I had set up bombs with timers all over a camp, and as the voice on the radio told me to haul ass I did just that, with bullets flying past my head I ran into the forrest, only to be greeted with a "You are leaving the mission area!" warning. NO SHIT I'm leaving the mission area, there's a huge explosion about to go off! I turned around and saw a mission marker near the entrance of the camp. Apparently "haul ass" hadn't meant "haul ass", so much as "go to this one specific spot and watch the explosion", so I had to (idiotically) run back into the gunfire as the timer on the bomb kept ticking closer to zero.

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This game is a story-engine, but the characteristics of the stories seem to be the most interesting thing for me to analyze. Mostly the sequences of events that entertain me are not relatable enough that the person I communicate them to is entertained, but they will typically understand what was entertaining about it. There are two main references which seem to anchor meaning in these stories: my experiences with rural America, and the goofiness of computer games. I'm not cynical about this at all, I love the combo.

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Huh. I haven't played a Far Cry game since 3 and had to watch a Youtube video and check. I'm not sure about the rest, but trees had physics and reacted to gunfire in 3 too. I see more bending than cutting off branches. Anyway, what a step down. I should fire up Far Cry 2 again :D

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I dug into the Map Editor this weekend and revived a classic! B)

 

 

Search for "Interstate 77" in the Arcade mode if you wanna play it.

 

Map Editor impressions

 

I wasn't too hyped about the editor from the pre-release footage. Map editors for big budget games usually try to walk the fine line between being both accessible and powerful and often end up being a bit bleh, like DOOM's Snapmap editor. The FC5 editor is very easy and pleasant to use, and features tons of objects, and switching between editor and playtesting is almost instantanous. The terrain-sculpting tools are great, perhaps even better than Unity's! But there's also clear drawbacks. The maximum play area isn't terribly big, I use pretty much all of it in this level, there's a budget on how many objects you can place(I maxed out the number of vehicles), and you can only choose from a certain selection of pre-defined objectives. Most problematically for me was that you can't explicitly tell the AI to patrol or use vehicles, you can only tell them to go to a specific area at the start, and if there's a vehicle near their spawn point they'll use it to drive over there. Overall tho, I really enjoyed using the editor, and I might make a few more maps with it.

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I've been wanting to try out Arcade and multiplayer, but I'm afraid that I will stop playing the campaign if I do. I'm having a lot of fun fumbling my way through slowly. I don't enjoy the main-story missions much at all though. I'm working my way through the south-west bunker after killing Joseph Seed and I should just walk back into the woods for a while and come back, but it has a puzzleness to it that I'm fascinated by. My main problem is that I keep on wanting to do this stealthily and I don't know how to deal with the heavies.

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So, I dressed up as Joseph Seed a week ago for a contest for a Dutch gaming store chain, and I won a PS4. Finally, I can play some of the already-classics on it, and of course Farcry 5 first and foremost.

 

It felt great to be a doomsday cult prophet, by the way.

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Roderick said:

So, I dressed up as Joseph Seed a week ago for a contest for a Dutch gaming store chain, and I won a PS4. Finally, I can play some of the already-classics on it, and of course Farcry 5 first and foremost.

 

It felt great to be a doomsday cult prophet, by the way.

 

 

 

Sweet. I love contests like these, there usually isn't much competition so it is typically worthwhile. You are lucky that some 12 year-old in a suit and sunglasses didn't show up.

I myself won a PSP by dressing up like Kratos having never played a God-of-War game.

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You're quite right. I gathered my chances would drop spectacularly if there was one of the following in the running:

a. A man who also made an effort, but looked more like the character (full beard, possibly tats)

b. A woman, making an effort and netting the 'outlier' boon

c. A cute kid going just the right amount of disturbing

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9 minutes ago, Roderick said:

You're quite right. I gathered my chances would drop spectacularly if there was one of the following in the running:

a. A man who also made an effort, but looked more like the character (full beard, possibly tats)

b. A woman, making an effort and netting the 'outlier' boon

c. A cute kid going just the right amount of disturbing

 

I've been watching a spy-show lately so I'm imagining a, b, and c, all getting urgent messages about trouble at home or mandatory detours around the time these pictures of you were taken.

 

----

Henke and I played some co-op for the first time. It's pretty awkward when the story missions pop up. I'm not very responsive to melodramatic cut-scenes when I'm aware that both of us have to suffer through them. Henke is very gracious though.

I also die a lot more than Henke does. I like to use the sniper rifle but I miss 4 out of 5 times, and my incendiary shotgun keeps getting me killed because they run into me after I set them ablaze.

 

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Yeah the co-op is good stuff. Definitely looking forward to teaming up again. :)

 

And congrats on the win, Roderick! What PS4 exclusives are you gonna be picking up? Bloodborne and TLOU (unless you've already played it on PS3) are the must-plays, in my book.

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Stupidly, I have owned three PS4 games for over two years now, just waiting for the console to magically appear: TLOU HD, the Uncharted trilogy and Batman: Arkham: Knightly Endeavors. I will most assuredly get myself Bloodborne as soon as I have time for it, and Monster Hunter World struck my fancy too.

 

Also, Diderot effect already kicking in: my tv is seriously in need of upgrading to account for all these detailed visuals.

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ALL DONE. At 42 hours it dragged on a bit longer than I would've prefered, but I still enjoyed my time with FC5. The ending was crap tho. The ending will have you saying "WHAT? What is this, game? What do you think you're DOING? You did not EARN this! Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck you."

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Yeah I saw that title before I got to the end, and it made me very curious of just how bad it would be. Honestly, it's not the worst ever. Storywise it's garbage, but gameplaywise it's pretty good actually. It could have ended with a QTE bossfight or something, like FC3 and Dying Light did, but instead it's a pretty novel shootout segment followed by a set-piece-heavy driving bit. I actually enjoyed the finale up until the very last bit. It looked for a moment like it was going to go out on a gloriously over-the-top stupid note, befitting of all the ridiculousness that led up to it, but then the game decided that "NOPE, we're gonna go DEEP, maaaaaaaan." and I just rolled my eyes and went ugh.

 

UGH!

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I finished Farcry 5, and about the ending:

 

 

Loved it. I was fully prepared for a feel-good, we-saved-Hope-County finale, tonally like when you liberate an outpost. When that first nuke hit, I went apeshit. Everything that came after was so insane, and you ending up with Joseph Seed in Dutch's bunker, the last two people on earth, was both thrilling and sounded like the most disturbing buddy movie ever. Two Guys In A Bunker [but one is an insane doomsday cult leader]. Honestly, I was just laughing throughout the whole thing. It was such an upending to how these games usually end. Then we got the credits and they saved a gospel song about the Collapse just for that moment, when you'd still be reeling from the surprise. I thought it was a fine, serviceable game up until that point, but the ending made it so much more memorable.


Then I went back to all those articles I saw about it having the worst ending ever, and they're full of shit. Look, they have a point that it's all nonsense. It is. It is nonsense. But there's just no reason to place that entire burden on the ending. If you weren't on board for the nonsense before, why would you expect the ending to magically fix all the problems you had with the game? This ending, in all its lunacy, fits perfectly with its tone. It crowns it. It reaches its peak level.

Be angry with the wasted potential of Farcry 5 all you want. I hear you. I didn't like a lot of it either. (Those repeating shooter set pieces induced by Jacob were crap.) But damn it if this ending wasn't gloriously unexpected and bonkers.

(There's another ending, where you leave Joseph be and go, but that one truly is awful. It starts out really strong, but in the last two seconds they hint at you still being brainwashed, and it just feels cheap. Cheap cheap cheap. Should've ended on the awesome note of the moustachio'd sheriff wanting to call the national guard.)

Also: how funny is it that, within the warped and strange divinity of Farcry 5, Joseph is 100% on the ball, when he asks you to leave him alone? There are two moments where you can walk away, and every time you choose not to, the world just goes further down the drain. First it's a civil war you unleash, then it's the actual end of the world.

 

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I find value in the fact that I care so little about the story a third of the way through the game that I read the spoilers without a concern.

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Haven't finished the game yet, but I found my enjoyment of the open world constantly being ruined by the way story missions are forced on you. Pulling you out of the open world like they do is really annoying and made me try and rush to complete the regions as fast as possible to get them out of the way. Now that I have defeated the 3 sub-bosses I am having more fun going around and doing side missions. Also not really sure why they added so many items, paint jobs etc. Why can't I buy a scope and have it available across all guns? Overall its still a solid open world shooter, I just wish they had let me do the story on my own time.

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