Waypoints

Far Cry 2's Incendiary Nonsensibility

Maybe it's because in Far Cry 2's Africa, vehicles are pretty much disposable. Food, fuel, medication, and weapons seem to be fairly precious commodities, but automobiles and crummy airboats are scattered all over the place. Nobody actually owns these vehicles, and none of them require keys. They're just parked around for the common good. There's a huge Jeep surplus (apparently they can't explode them fast enough).

Most of the rides I find are pretty beat up, and it doesn't take more than a few stray bullets before steam begins pour out of their engines. I'm a gifted mechanic, though. In fact, I can fix any engine with a few quick twists of one single bolt.

I can't help but think that the local population would be less impoverished if they'd sell the uncut diamonds I've been finding all over the place. They're in out-of-the-way places throughout the region, tucked into metal briefcases that inexplicably chime when I'm nearby. Some are especially hard to reach, including a few that I can't get to without a hang glider. As it happens, hang gliding seems popular around here. I've found several gliders conveniently abandoned on ledges in picturesque locations.

There's nothing quite like hang gliding over a cliff, through a lush canyon and past a pounding waterfall, to land on the shore of a lily pad-rimmed lake. Discovering the region's water features, especially its massive waterfalls, has often been breathtaking. Far Cry 2's Africa might be one of the most gorgeous places I've ever visited. With just about every equatorial ecosystem imaginable packed into less than 20 free-roamable square miles, it's dazzling. Sunlit savannahs, dense and steamy jungles, windswept dunes-they're all spectacular.

I've loved the stealthy ambushes, the in-your-face arsons, and the grand detonations, but the quieter moments of my Far Cry 2 experiences have been just as stunning. Like surprising a herd of impala on a moonlit prairie and seeing them flee before my headlights. Or walking through an unpopulated patch of forest, watching morning rays of light dance through the canopy while the sun slowly creeps above the horizon.

It's a lovely place, but it's the stage for an especially nasty story, where the backdrop involves a lot of people suffering and dying for dubious political causes. Despite the many freedoms and privileges Far Cry 2's expansive world provides, I often feel like a pawn in a much larger, more uncertain game. The deeper I venture into the wildness of the environment, the more Conrad-esque the tale becomes.

And yet I'm still a superhero, gifted by improbably good fortune and supernatural resistance to injury. I have all the vehicles, diamonds, weaponry, and magical medicinal supplies a mercenary could want. In this exotic place, divorced from reality, nothing stands in my way, or in the way of the story that propels me forward.

And that's the beauty of Far Cry 2. The endless, silly contrivances I enjoy aren't lazy, senseless additions to the world. They're the means by which I maintain momentum and avoid distraction as I charge into the madness. I'm swept forward by the unlikely confluence of stark reality and impossible empowerment, toward a dark denouement as sudden and final as a trip over the brink of one the region's waterfalls.

Adam LaMosca is writer and researcher in Portland, Oregon. You can find him on Twitter or at lowspec.com.