Yet Another Ubisoft Open-World, But One That At Least Still Has Something To Offer.
Following up the surprising hit that was Far Cry 3 was always going to be an interesting push-pull for Ubisoft Montreal (and the handful of other studios that chipped in). On the one hand, it was innovation that brought the previous game such acclaim over the earlier installments in the franchise (which isn’t to say Far Cry 2 doesn’t have it’s fans, it absolutely does). However, on the other hand, the comfort of something that works was an alluring idea as well. Ultimately Far Cry 4 opts to leans closer to the latter vision and delivers an experience that feels more like an expansion in many ways than it does a completely new experience.
The good news is this model still works the second time around. You play again as a newcomer to a foreign land – Ajay Ghale – who has come to the fictional mountain nation of Kyrat, the homeland of the Ghale family, to spread his mother’s ashes as per her dying wishes. Once there, he gets caught up in a civil war between the ‘Golden Path’ rebels, a resistance movement started years ago by Ajay’s father Mohan Ghale, and the charismatic, but crazy dictator who has taken control of the country, Pagan Min.
The comparisons to Far Cry 3 are pretty much impossible to ignore, so the immediate bench-mark to hold Pagan up to is Vaas, the delightful psychopath of the Rook Islands… or at least, one of them. The major point of separation between Pagan and Vaas is that Pagan remains the antagonist throughout the game, whereas Vaas was dealt with around two thirds of the way through Far Cry 3. Despite this constant, looming presence, Pagan has just as little to say or do as Vaas did, while being less interesting in the scenes he does make an appearance in. While he does at least stay in radio contact with you to read out some “funny” anecdote about his day and how you’re making his life miserable every now and then, Pagan feels even more under-utilized as a villain, especially with a real earnest performance from Troy Baker behind him.
Even more bafflingly squandered are the three lieutenant characters working under Pagan who each have a control over the various districts of Kyrat. Despite being among the main antagonists of the game, the three of them combined would be hard pressed to put together ten minutes total of screen time, and are basically introduced and dispatched in the same breath. This is juxtaposed by the two Golden Path leaders, the traditional but sanctimonious Sabal (Naveen Andrews), and the pragmatic but radical Amita (Janina Gavankar),who are always around at the beginning of almost every campaign mission to spout the same spiel about their way of doing things at you as if it’s the first time you’ve ever spoken to them.
Finally, there’s Ajay himself, and frankly there just isn’t much to talk about regarding him. Unlike Far Cry 3 and Jason Brody, Ajay doesn’t have a character arc himself, or even very much dialogue. He’s just told what to do and goes out and does it with almost no opposition or clarification at all times. At least with Brody there was a story about how he secretly – and eventually not so secretly – liked the killing and the conflict, but Ajay’s story is more about fulfilling his mother’s last wish, and learning more about his parents, to the point where it started to seem like a game about his parents and their relationships and dealings with Pagan Min twenty years ago would have been more interesting.
However, even with the character and narrative short-comings, the real draw of Far Cry 4 was always going to be the gameplay, and it’s a good thing too, as that still mostly holds up. While the driving isn’t anything to write home about, the other forms of movement all feel good, and are fun to do, including the new grapple hook, and the wingsuit, which is obtainable significantly earlier this time around. With the mountainous terrain, verticality is a big factor in getting from place to place, and there’s still nothing quite as satisfying as leaping off a cliff and soaring down to the ground below to find a new enemy outpost or other mission it would have been less fun to walk to.
As with the last game, the outposts are probably the most fun you’ll have, as you stake out the area, try and disable all of the alarms and then deal with the remaining guards as silently as you can. Even if the alarms are tripped, it rarely becomes too much to handle a wave or two of reinforcements – especially with a good grenade launcher at your disposal – but the stealth always tends to work as a better alternative, and is generally more satisfying. This time around there are also fortresses after defeating each of Pagan’s lieutenants, which provide even tougher challenges to take down. The one knock on this system is that until you do take out the fortress in an area, enemy soldiers will occasionally try to re-take liberated outposts. Nothing was as frustrating as creating a way-point for my next mission, throwing myself off a ledge to glide down through the trees, only to be told my outpost was under attack, and be forced to land and trundle back up there to kill twenty or so dudes before going back to doing the thing I wanted to do.
As an open-world game from Ubisoft made in the last five years, the loop of gameplay is mostly driven by finding towers to uncover more of the map, and with it more of the quests and scripted content of the game. It is then no surprise that there is what could be described as too much to do, with the map appearing more like a smattering of icons strewn about haphazardly than it is of the actual terrain. There are outposts, hunting quests, races, supply drops, cargo trucks to capture or destroy, arena fights, evil masks to find (for some reason), propaganda posters to tear down, propaganda centers to burn down, strange journeys to “Shangri-La” and numerous collectables like letters and pages of Mohan Ghale’s journal. As well, there are also non-scripted spontaneous events such as the aforementioned outpost attacks, hostages to rescue, and defenseless citizens to save from the countless dangerous animals. The amount of stuff to do seems endless, even after all the campaign missions are complete, so chances are you’ll never be wanting for things to do if you’re looking.
Far Cry 4 could have been a lot worse. There very well could have been no care or effort put into recycling the assets of it’s predecessor into a “Far Cry 3 Two”, but instead the game offers a fresh new area with new and different characters that happens to follow a lot of the same progression. There are still fun, self-contained outposts to attempt to conquer, there are still animal skins to collect in order to craft better holsters and wallets and other junk, and there are still an eternity’s worth of small side-quests to undertake and trinkets to seek out. That the story and characters fall flat is unfortunate, and had this not been the case Far Cry 4 really could have been something special, but even as it is there is still quite a lot of fun to be had traversing the various murder mountains that make up Kyrat, and even if the whole structure can start to lose it’s appeal if you do too much of the side content, the actual campaign is just about the right length to keep you engaged and moving forward. Finally, it will also never not be fun to lure tigers into an enemy camp and watch them do your work for you.
