| 1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rsz_far_cry_2_-_cover_8306.png]] |
| 2 | |
| 3 | ->''"A living being seeks above all to discharge its strength. Life itself is will to power. Nothing else matters."'' |
| 4 | -->-- '''The Jackal''', quoting Creator/FriedrichNietzsche. |
| 5 | |
| 6 | After publisher Ubisoft and developer Crytek parted ways, Crytek kept their engine and went on to create ''VideoGame/{{Crysis}}'', while Ubisoft retained the name rights to ''Franchise/FarCry'' and went on to develop ''Far Cry 2'', a sequel in terms of a ThematicSeries that has the player take the role of one of a dozen mercenaries working in a war-torn African nation, playing both sides while hunting a notorious arms dealer known as the Jackal. |
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| 8 | The game lacks the mutants and sci-fi aspects of the original ''Far Cry'', instead opting for a darker, morally ambiguous and minimalist story inspired by Joseph Conrad's ''Literature/HeartOfDarkness'' and Frederick Forsyth's ''Literature/TheDayOfTheJackal'' and ''Literature/TheDogsOfWar''. ''Far Cry 2'' features a completely WideOpenSandbox game structure. There are no levels, and the game takes place in a 20 square mile area (or over 50 square kilometers) that the player can explore freely, traveling on foot, via vehicles, or by riding buses from station to station. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | The gameplay is downright sadistic, featuring several gameplay features that serve to heighten the tension of combat. Weapons break at absurdly high rates, forcing the player to switch out their guns and/or replace them frequently, and even before they break the weapons can sometimes jam in the middle of a firefight. Combat is fast, brutal, and difficult, with the enemies blending into the environment almost as well as you do and cover being able to be shot through depending on the thickness. Fire spreads dynamically and is a weapon in and of itself, capable of taking care of entire environments on its own. The player is also stricken with malaria, which cripples them in combat and requires the player to take pills to stave off the effects. Overall, the game is designed to avert AntiFrustrationFeatures, and while it can lead to a difficult and frustrating experience, the level of immersion presented by these mechanics is unrivaled. |
| 11 | ---- |
| 12 | !!''Far Cry 2'' shows examples of the following tropes: |
| 13 | * AKA47: Mostly averted with real weapon names, save the Desert Eagle ("Eagle .50"), Star Model-P ("Star .45"), and whatever the "Homeland 37" is (named as if it's an Ithaca 37 but missing that weapon's distinctive lack of a separate ejection port). However, the G3 and FAL are labelled as the ''wrong'' models ("[=G3KA4=]" and "FAL Paratrooper," versions which should have shorter barrels and, on the latter, a folding stock) and the AR-16 is basically a fictional AR-15 pattern rifle given the name of a highly obscure predecessor to the AR-18 to explain why it's sharing ammo with two battle rifles. |
| 14 | * TheAllSeeingAI: Once one bad guy has spotted the player, every goon in the area instantly knows exactly where he is and can fire with pinpoint accuracy even when the player is crouched in head-high grass he himself is unable to see through. Darkness also seems little hindrance. |
| 15 | * AllThereInTheManual: Unlike the rest of the series, ''Far Cry 2'' doesn't show proper mission names - only objectives. The official guide by Prima Games is the only way to find out that information... among other things. |
| 16 | * AmbiguousTimePeriod: While it can be assumed the plot takes place in the same year the game was released (2008), you never see any technology that wasn't around in the late '80s or '90s, and the ending seems to imply the game is a recollection of events and actually takes place at least a few years before the current date. If Longinus in ''VideoGame/FarCry4'' really is Prosper Kouassi from ''Far Cry 2'', that would support ''Far Cry 2'' being set significantly before 2008, as Longinus appears to be at least a couple of decades older than Kouassi was. It would also make sense given the game's events are loosely based on the Sierra Leone Civil War, which occurred mostly in TheNineties. However, several other details point out that the game can't possibly take place any earlier than 2008 - the Jackal tapes are quite clearly stated to have been recorded in 2008, the listed years of birth and ages for the playable characters line up with that year (e.g. Frank Bilders was born in 1972 and is 36 years old at the time of the game), and the licensed Jeep Liberty and Wrangler vehicles are of the 2007-2008 model years. |
| 17 | * AnnoyingVideogameHelper: Ironically, your buddies will actually make the game ''harder'' instead of easier with how the system is implemented. You cannot bring any of your buddies with you in free roam even if some of them are just freeloading at the bar doing nothing except giving you Buddy Missions (that they don't participate in and just simply point you to the target and expect you to do their jobs for them. Plus there's no reward at all). Your best buddy is only there to offer you 'subversion versions' of the faction missions, which actually makes them more complicated to complete and after you got it done, you have to come save their asses after they get in trouble ''every single time''. Sure, you get safehouse upgrades for doing them, but there's nothing that you can't find at weapon shops or checkpoints that you'll come across anyway. Your second best buddy is actually ''more useful'' than your best buddy since they actually will come to save your life once you're on the verge of death, though after that you have to 'reset' them to rescue-ready status at the safehouse every time, and since your second best buddy won't show up at the bar, you're locked out from doing their personal missions until they're promoted to your best buddy (or someone else becomes your second best buddy instead), which makes them useless. Oh, there's also this little fact that [[spoiler:they're all backstabbing bastards who try to kill you in the final mission, forcing you to put them down and thus make the entire thing pointless]]. Really, it's actually more beneficial for you in the long run if you [[spoiler:let your buddies die early on instead of letting them live and makes your game harder. The only reason you would try to keep them alive is solely for game immersion]]. |
| 18 | ** Your second-best buddy essentially serving as an extra life is a lot more useful on the console version, where you're unable to save the game at any point like on the PC version. |
| 19 | * AntiFrustrationFeatures: One of the very few deliberate ''aversions'', as detailed in the description. While some staples of the medium in general stick around like [[CriticalExistenceFailure being able to fight on as you're bleeding out at your last bit of health]], OneBulletClips, and [[WarpWhistle bus-based travel]], the game really ''does not like you'' - though the caveat is that enemies often suffer from most of the same problems you do (for example, their guns are as likely to jam as yours). |
| 20 | * AntiHero: Played with, as while your character never commits any super-dickery onscreen without your input, he is obviously using the war to his advantage, and does whatever the person paying him tells him to do. Although with your MoralityPet buddies' missions you can do things like stopping a human trafficking unit, stop a drug syndicate from selling drugs meant for children, and with the ending mission [[spoiler:sacrifice your life to save a group of refugees]]. It depends on which PlayerCharacter you select. Each of them has a background in crime and/or the military, with some being sketchier than others. The most morally suspect of the bunch is definitely [[FightingIrish Frank Bilders]], as he was a [[WesternTerrorists Provisional IRA]] hitman who had a penchant for [[KneeCapping kneecapping]] [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles loyalists and police informants]]. |
| 21 | * AntiVillain: |
| 22 | ** [[spoiler: The Jackal turns out to be a WellIntentionedExtremist in the end who only wants to end the war by wiping out what he calls "the cancer". The last few missions have you working for him.]] |
| 23 | ** Arguably, [[spoiler: your buddies in the final mission. Sure, they did betray you for their own selfish goals but they just want the same thing the refugees wanted: to escape the country with their lives. Staying there meant they'll eventually be hunted down by the UFLL and the APR. That, added to the fact that your buddies actually offered to let you come with them once you get the the diamonds, only for you to be forced into working for the Jackal and keeps getting more and more involved in the civil war which ends with their best buddy captured and tortured and other buddies becoming wanted men, means their desperation and their motivation to betray you is quite understandable. This is especially the case with your current best buddy in the Southern district, who's actually trying to talk the others down from killing you only for it to fail and he/she ends up getting killed along with others, implying that they might not actually want to betray you, only to give in to the peer pressure from the other buddies who ''did'' want to.]] |
| 24 | * ArbitraryWeaponRange: Once you light a fire, it will spread... up to a set distance. After which it will go out no matter what's around it. It's fairly obvious this is a gameplay conceit to avoid burning down half the map with a single Molotov, but it's still a little jarring seeing perfect circles of scorched earth surrounded by untouched tinder-dry grass. In a post-mortem developer interview, the developer responsible for the fire tech (who was given the task of implementing a basic fire system, expecting it to be a fairly routine job, then ended up getting obsessed with fire dynamics and spending the best part of a year on it) said that they had to put the arbitrary maximum range on it after starting a fire to test the technology out and watching it quickly spread and ''engulf the entire game world'', killing every man, woman and beast in it. |
| 25 | * ArmsDealer: The Jackal is [[InformedAbility supposed to be one]], the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Arms Dealer]] (which is [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep the only name]] you ever get for him) is one. |
| 26 | * ArtisticLicenseBiology: Malaria does not hit that hard and fast. For the player character to have reached the point where they are passing out, they would have had to contract it several days before the beginning of the game. Going from feeling fine to passing out in a few minutes is likewise nonsense. Or that you would need to keep popping medicine at the rate of breath mints to keep it at bay. |
| 27 | * AwesomeButImpractical: The [[GoldColoredSuperiority Gold]] AK-47s are a downplayed example. While the AK-47 is one of the better guns (decent accuracy and power with high durability) the Gold versions do the same exact thing but degrade slower at the cost of limited number (''8'' hidden across both maps, 4 on each). There's no reason to get them other than for [[BraggingRightsReward bragging rights]], unless you abuse a glitch that causes the gun to become fully restored to perfect condition under the right situation. |
| 28 | ** The USAS-12, the game's sole [[MoreDakka fully automatic shotgun]]. As you can imagine, it can absolutely devastate the battlefield. That is, if you get the gun to work, as the gun is ''extremely'' [[BreakableWeapons unreliable.]] How unreliable? There's a chance it will jam after going through '''''one single magazine.''''' |
| 29 | * TheBackwardsR: The crate that the [=DLC=] weapons appear in has this trope stamped all over it. Averted, funny enough, with the other crates in the room, which have ''actual'' Russian words on them. |
| 30 | * BadassIsraeli: One of the player characters, Paul Ferenc, is from Israel. He served in the Israeli military before going AWOL and becoming a mercenary. The trope is somewhat zig-zagged since, even though he is clearly a badass just like your other merc buddies, by all accounts he spent most of his [=IDF=] service doing clerical work and was also high during much of it. |
| 31 | * BagOfSharing: Once bought, the storage crates allow a weapon to be placed in any of them and retrieved from any ''other'' one. They're at every Safe House and Arms Dealer. |
| 32 | * BecomingTheMask: In the "Infamy" Jackal tape, he talks about how to break a man's will and spirit. He warns if you lose yourself in the carnage you become sloppy and make unnecessary risks and could die from them. |
| 33 | * {{BFG}}: All but one weapon in the heavy weapon slot (the Dart Rifle) qualify, as do the mounted M2 heavy machine guns and the Mark 19 automatic grenade launchers. |
| 34 | ** Whenever Xianyong Bai rescues you, he always covers you with a machine gun. |
| 35 | * BigBad: The Jackal, an arms dealer selling weapons to both warring factions, APR and UFLL, who you were sent to kill. [[spoiler: Subverted as he turns out to be one of the good guys ([[WellIntentionedExtremist if you can call it that]]), and by the end of the game you work with him to combat the factions, led by Nick Greaves and Hector Voorhees (or their replacements, if you managed to kill them first) respectively, which team up by the game's climax and intend to commit genocide on the civilians.]] |
| 36 | * BilingualBonus: Enemy mercenaries are sometimes heard to shout in Afrikaans and Xhosa. Knowing either of these languages can give you a tactical bonus. Most of it (as with the English voice files) is just empty threats, but enemy soldiers also sometimes loudly lament the fact that their gun is jammed, or that they need to reload. While they're busy broadcasting their problems to the world in general, you know you can safely hop around the corner for a spell and shoot them in the head. |
| 37 | * BlingBlingBang: You can find golden AK-47s throughout the game. For some reasons, they are more durable than the normal, non-shiny ones. Possibly because nobody in universe knows how to maintain a firearm. |
| 38 | * BodyHorror: Traversing the location where the faction leader is residing during the end of Act 2 is not a pretty sight, ''to put it very lightly''. |
| 39 | ** Lots of examples from the WorstAid also qualify. |
| 40 | * BolivianArmyEnding: See below. |
| 41 | * BoringButPractical: While there's a large selection of weaponry, the cross-country drives tend to militate against specialist hardware; gravitating towards the M79 grenade launcher (for vehicles and groups of mercs at mid-range), SVD sniper rifle (for long-range and counter-sniping), and LPO-50 flamethrower (for close-range and burning ''everything'') lets the player deal with almost any potential threat, but leaves all the shinier hardware back at base as these weapons have plentiful durability. |
| 42 | ** The AK-47 might not have the flashier optical sights like some of the other rifles, but fittingly, it has the highest endurance of any weapon, especially the [[GoldColoredSuperiority Gold versions]] that are somehow even more durable at the expense of their limited numbers (only '''8''' split between two maps) and out-of-the-way resting places. |
| 43 | ** Similarly, the Star .45 is the most balanced of the sidearms, being not as accurate as the Makarov or as powerful as the Desert Eagle, but has higher durability than both. |
| 44 | * BreakingSpeech: The Jackal does this every. Single. TIME. The two of you meet, but it fails horribly as he talks about the horrors of war, ''while continually arming both sides in the war'', so any guilt you would get from it is torn away when you realize it's like Hitler talking how bad anti-Semitism is... except it ''works'' plot-wise. The Jackal states that the war is horrible, yet it still is preferable to having one side winning and performing genocide unhindered by external pressure. The player character starts as someone's agent sent to kill the Jackal, [[spoiler:but in the end helps the Jackal to cripple both militant sides and save a large group of refugees.]] |
| 45 | * BreakableWeapons: |
| 46 | ** Weapons have a chance of jamming, or even exploding in your hand, after prolonged use. Poor-condition weapons taken from killed enemy soldiers are most prone to these problems, whereas new guns taken from the armories (next to weapon shops) are much more reliable. A lack of means to repair weapons means prolonged firefights and tactical choice of weaponry go hand in hand. |
| 47 | ** This reaches ridiculous level, as the weapons get visibly degraded after firing several magazines worth of ammo and break after shooting several more. Even the AK and FAL rifles, which are famed for their robust design. Just to put things in perspective, most weapons of this kind are able to shoot tens of thousand times before they start to malfunction; the in-game ones are so fragile that the USAS-12 ''visibly'' corrodes with every single shell you put through it, and the Dart Rifle will blow up on you after only '''twenty-five shots'''. Bonus points for the protagonists being military (or ex-military) who should know how to maintain their guns. |
| 48 | *** For what it's worth, it's stated that the guns the protagonists have access to (most of which are the Jackal's merchandise) weren't in the best shape before they ended up in Africa. Even in "perfect" condition, a lot of them are visibly weathered and scratched-up. The Jackal mentions during one of the tapes that he buys lots of old, cast-off equipment from European armies, so all the weaponry you get your hands on is heavily-used. |
| 49 | * BriefcaseFullOfMoney: Briefcases full of '''diamonds''' actually, which are the currency of the game due to the worthlessness of paper money within its setting. This leads to the humorous animation of the player character walking up to a briefcase, popping it open to retrieve a small gem about the size of a quarter from the interior, and then leaving the opened case behind as they walk off to find another. |
| 50 | * ButThouMust: |
| 51 | ** It's impossible, despite claims in some reviews, to pick a side; once you've done all one faction's missions in an area, the plot is on hold until you've done the other faction's. [[spoiler:It's also impossible to carry out your initial mission and kill The Jackal; you're forced to join up with him]]. |
| 52 | ** Every single faction-affiliated character [[spoiler:''must die''. One of these characters gets murdered by Jackal offscreen, but you have to kill off the rest. Doesn't matter in which order you can do it, though]]. |
| 53 | * ButtMonkey: Your character will not catch a break the moment they land, starting with malaria to then get betrayed left and right. |
| 54 | * CarFu: A viable tactic for getting past checkpoints is to just run over the guards. However, the enemy can do this to you too -- [[SecretAIMoves and even use a sudden burst of speed as they close in on you, which only they can do]]. |
| 55 | * CheckpointStarvation: In the console versions of the game, you can only save your progress at safehouses and faction [=HQs=]. Most missions take place at least a 5 to 10 minute drive from the nearest safehouse, and many involve visiting multiple locations at completely different parts of the world map. As a result, dying in the middle of a mission can set you back a significant amount of progress. This is averted in the PC version, which lets you save at any point. |
| 56 | * ChildSoldiers: Never actually shown in the game for obvious reasons, but some of the Jackal's audio tapes make it clear that children are involved in the fighting. |
| 57 | * ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: ''Everybody'', including the PlayerCharacter. Reuben and the members of [[LaResistance the Underground]] are probably the only exceptions. |
| 58 | * ClosedCircle: In story, many of the mercenaries are trapped in the country after the diamonds dried up. The buddies' main motivation at the end game is to escape with the diamonds the player is using to bribe the border guards. |
| 59 | * CollectionSidequest: Collect diamonds from cases scattered around in order to spend them on weapons. There are also audio tapes to be found which give insight into the BigBad (which, in a well-known but still uncorrected bug, stop giving different messages after the second map). And promotional content gives predecessor tapes to collect. |
| 60 | * TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: |
| 61 | ** The AI vehicles go much faster than yours, making escape impossible on flat terrain. Thankfully, the AI can't drive worth a damn and will smash into a tree or cliff when you're in the jungle areas. |
| 62 | ** When they see you they suddenly shift gears to catch up; [[SecretAIMoves something you can't do]]. |
| 63 | * CoolOldGuy: Josip Idromeno may not be ''that'' old, but at age 48, he's the oldest protagonist in the game, as well as the whole series. Doesn't stop him from kicking ass. |
| 64 | * CoversAlwaysLie: The character who appears on the game's cover art and in promotional artwork doesn't really look like ''any'' of the selectable player characters. Supposedly he's Marty Alencar, one of the "default" characters, and the difference in appearance is due to changes in the character design between different phases of development (which is born out by early screenshots showing a player character that looks like Cover Guy). |
| 65 | * CriticalExistenceFailure: |
| 66 | ** Vehicles can be repaired from near-critical damage to full health infinitely. However, if they're damaged to the point there's fire coming from the engine, they're basically doomed. |
| 67 | ** If you look closely at the ratchet, you see the Not Exploding Bolt on the radiator isn't even being tightened or loosened. Merely jiggled a bit. |
| 68 | ** Near death? Pull the bullet from your gunshot wound, and a shot of syrette later, you'll come back to fighting condition. |
| 69 | ** All the weapons fall into this as they all explode in some way once they run out of durability. |
| 70 | ** If an animal gives the bumper of a car so much as a light tap they will collapse into a very dead heap. Hilariously, this can happen even without you intending to get in their way; they can simply turn right towards your car and wind up killing themselves accidentally. |
| 71 | * CutsceneIncompetence: The Jackal ''always'' gets the drop on you. In addition, the player character manages to contract malaria during the opening cinematic. And after you get malaria, the Jackal nurses you back to health. Yes. It is just as embarrassing as it sounds. Bonus points for the fact that several player characters come from the regions where malaria is a problem and would either be resistant to it or knew better than to not take any precautions. |
| 72 | ** It gets better; you actually pass out from malaria at the end of the five-minute taxi ride from the airport to the hotel in the opening cinematic. Your character somehow managed to contract malaria before his plane even landed in-country. Given that we aren't told ''where'' the player character is flying in from, it could be that they'd already been spending time in another part of Africa (where they might have received the mission in the first place) and they caught the disease beforehand. |
| 73 | * DarkerAndEdgier: The original ''Far Cry'' earned its M rating, but it was more of a straightforward action/sci-fi adventure with a one-man army taking on an entire island full of mercenaries, often cheesy dialogue and voice acting, and mutants created by a mad scientist. ''Far Cry 2'' on the other hand is much more serious and grim, with absolutely none of the sci-fi trappings. Instead, it gives us a grimy and morally grey look at a conflict in an especially war-torn part of Africa, with no real heroes and an oppressive, gritty atmosphere nearly everywhere you go. To varying degrees, this has set the tone for the rest of the series. |
| 74 | * DarkestAfrica: Leboa-Seko, the setting of the game is a war-torn hellhole filled with ruthless soldiers, backstabbing mercenaries, arms dealers on every other street corner, dense jungles filled with various hazards and dangers and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking malaria.]] |
| 75 | * DevelopersForesight: |
| 76 | ** At the end of Act 1 you have to choose between saving the people in the church and your buddies at Mike's bar, so there has to be at least one buddy alive so this choice can happen. This means that even if you got most of your buddies killed, the game will lock out the last buddy from offering subversion missions so they won't put themselves in harm's way. Also, the guard in front of each faction's building will offer a mission to rescue a buddy at least once to keep the numbers of your buddies up, which may be twice if you happen to be low on buddies. Furthermore, there has to be at least one buddy alive in Act 2. This buddy will be the one [[spoiler: who ended up in prison with you after the Jackal got the jump on you, tearing you a new one for not taking the diamonds to them to be used to flee the country before they're dragged away by guards. This means there will ''always'' be at least two buddies who will be alive no matter what so they can show up in the final mission to fight you for the diamond briefcase.]] |
| 77 | ** While all the buddies give you the same side objectives, all of them have different reasons for giving them with their reasons ranging from pragmatism to petty vengeance to just causing anarchy ForTheEvulz. [[spoiler:This also includes the final betrayal, with some doing it just to escape the country, refugees be damned, to others doing because they feel you are a loose end, to others hating your guts for leaving them for dead.]] |
| 78 | * DifficultButAwesome: If you know how to aim the mortar (hint: press reload to fire HE rounds), you can take down whole bases of heavily armed mercenaries without any resistance. |
| 79 | * DiscOneFinalDungeon: As the player reaches the end of the missions in the North, it seems the game is winding down to a conclusion where one faction emerges victorious. You then [[NiceJobBreakingItHero totally screw that up]] and are sent to the second map where the game more or less starts over. |
| 80 | * DiscOneNuke: The [[BlingBlingBang golden AK-47s]] can be acquired right after the beginning of the game. They will more than last you for the huge majority of the game due to being the least rust-prone out of any firearm. However, [[GuideDangIt they are scattered in very-easy-to-miss areas]] and finding one of them will require a lot of traveling through [[GoddamnBats enemy checkpoints]] just to get to that very place. You'll also need to shell out for a primary storage crate to put it away if you ever want to use anything else without losing it. |
| 81 | * DisconnectedSideArea: TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon is located in the bottom-right of the South map. It ''looks'' reachable down the river to the North, but the only actual way through is past a PointOfNoReturn in the next map section over. |
| 82 | * DoubleAgent: [[ButThouMust Regardless of choice]], you ultimately end up working for both the UFLL and APR, then later screwing either one of the other to temporarily weaken that side's power in exchange for the other's. |
| 83 | * DownerBeginning: The game begins with the player contracting malaria during the opening cutscene and waking up stranded in the middle of a war-torn town. [[FromBadToWorse Things very quickly go downhill from there.]] |
| 84 | * DownerEnding: At the end of the game, [[spoiler: the Jackal informs you that civilians are fleeing the country, with both factions pursuing them with the intention of committing genocide. He tells you that he needs to destroy the pass to block the army from pursuing the civilians, and bring diamonds to the border checkpoint to bribe the guards into letting the civilians pass. He offers you the choice of delivering the diamonds or setting off the dynamite, while he'll take the other task. If you set off the dynamite, you sacrifice yourself by detonating the bombs directly because the fuse is broken. If you deliver the diamonds, the Jackal makes you promise to put a bullet in your own head afterwards, in order to kill every cell of the cancer of war and prevent it from spreading to another country. The game ends before you kill yourself, so this ending could be a BolivianArmyEnding, although it is heavily implied during the endgame that your PC's malaria is getting progressively more fatal, as it goes from a level 1 (best) to 5 (the worst symptoms of it and on the verge of death). However, it might not be all that bad, because most of the surviving civilian population did manage to escape the war zone. The APR and UFLL are still locked in an endless, pointless war, but it's implied that their followers choose to live that way]]. |
| 85 | * DownloadableContent: The ''Fortunes Pack'' adds three new weapons (sawed-off shotgun, silenced shotgun, explosive crossbow) in a crate in the middle of the Arms Dealer's warehouse, and two new vehicles, the Unimog (a big truck that always has an M2) and quad bike, which respectively replace some of the trucks and cars. Handy when your starter RPG (if you even get it over the LPO) decides to explode in your face. Good luck taking on moving jeeps with hand grenades. |
| 86 | * DragonAscendant[=/=]TheStarscream: Nick Greaves and Hector Voorhees, the foreign mercenary commanders working for the APR and UFLL, end up taking control of the two factions after the top faction leaders - Oliver Tambossa and Addi Mbantuwe, respectively - are both killed at the end of Act 2. In turn, the faction Lieutenant who saved you at the beginning of the game, and his opposite number on the other side, hire you to kill Greaves and Voorhees so they can take their place as the top warlords. |
| 87 | ** ''Every single faction-affiliated character'' can become this during the Act 3. Not for long, though: every single one of these must be killed no matter what. |
| 88 | * TheDreaded: The PlayerCharacter essentially becomes this depending on their reputation. At reputation level 0, the player is completely unknown, while at level 4, mooks believe that the player is the devil incarnate, and at level 5 the mere sight of him is enough to send even brave men into panic because they know if he is around things will get messy. |
| 89 | * EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: ''Far Cry 2'' is a case of this specific to Ubisoft's continuation of the series, many of which are the result of the developers wanting to make an incredibly immersive game first and foremost. Among other things that were removed or changed in later games: |
| 90 | ** Weapons [[BreakableWeapons degrade, jam and eventually break with use]], requiring you to buy weapons to pick up fresh copies from the Arms Dealer or else risk low-reliability weapons taken from enemies. Fresh weapons can only be acquired from the Arms Dealer, who has two locations in the game world, while safehouses only allow you to reacquire weapons you've stashed in a weapon crate (provided you shell out the diamonds to buy a crate for a weapon from that slot), and the only "hidden" weapons are [[BlingBlingBang the golden AKs]], which are limited in number. |
| 91 | ** You have multiple options for protagonist, all of whom have prior military experience like Jack Carver did (later games would generally settle for twenty-something civilians dragged into things they're not prepared for) and [[HeroicMime none of whom speak as the protagonist]], even though the ones you don't pick all show up as [=NPCs=] who ''do'' talk. |
| 92 | ** Your character contracts malaria very early on, which comes out to you needing to take medication every couple of minutes and, after an early point, having to regularly detour to do an extra mission to get more. |
| 93 | ** The game has the open-world with conflict between two factions like many of the later games, but this one is by far the least clear on whether [[GreyAndGrayMorality either of them can be considered "good"]]; both sides open fire on you outside of explicit safe zones even if you're in the middle of a mission for them, but since you're playing as a mercenary, you can choose to do missions for either side, and the BigBad you're actually there for isn't affiliated with either. |
| 94 | ** One of the more infamous is that [[RespawningEnemies checkpoints repopulate after you pass a short distance from them]], with there being no way to make them stop doing so; there is a system for permanently taking over locations, but it only applies to the unlockable safehouses. |
| 95 | ** The map is completely revealed to you from the start rather than requiring you to unlock it piecemeal by climbing radio towers; instead, the towers present simply allow you to tap them to take bonus assassination missions. The only things you need to discover on your own are the locations of ammo and health caches within individual checkpoints, which is done simply by viewing the "center" of the checkpoint through your monocular. |
| 96 | ** Fast travel takes the form of finding one of the bus stations, five per half of the map, and riding them to one of the other four within that half. |
| 97 | ** The LimitedLoadout puts a heavier emphasis on weapon categories - specifically melee in slot 1 (your machete), secondaries in slot 2 (pistols, machine pistols, the smallest grenade launcher and the DLC SawedOffShotgun), primaries in slot 3 (submachine guns, assault rifles, larger shotguns, sniper rifles and a repeating grenade launcher) and special weapons in slot 4 (machine guns, [=RPGs=], a portable mortar and a flamethrower) - such that for instance you can't carry two assault rifles at the same time. ''Far Cry 3'' would streamline the system somewhat by shunting the machete off to only existing for QuickMelee and otherwise letting you put whatever weapons you want in any slot, with weapon categories only mattering for what [[UniversalAmmunition shares ammo]].[[note]]''VideoGame/FarCry4'', however, would bring back the concept of a dedicated "secondary" slot, with the second unlockable weapon slot being restricted to smaller weapons the game considers to be a secondary weapon, including - [[MythologyGag in direct reference to this game]] - a short-barreled grenade launcher and SawedOffShotgun.[[/note]] |
| 98 | ** There's no predatory fauna whatsoever, nor any incentive to hunt what little does exist in the game. |
| 99 | ** There's no bow and arrow, which would become a major component of stealth gameplay in the later games, although the DLC did include a crossbow with explosive bolts as a cheap and (relatively) stealthy alternative to the grenade launchers available in the base game. |
| 100 | ** On that note, the stealth system is much more transparent and difficult to work with, with no way to tag enemies (even the first game let you tag them on your minimap) and no detection meter to let you know when one is about to see you. |
| 101 | ** The RPGElements of the later games are nowhere to be found, with no experience points gained through killing enemies or completing missions and no inherent attributes for you to upgrade - at best, you can buy upgrades to your equipment to carry more ammo or let weapons degrade slower. |
| 102 | ** There's no in-game radar or minimap - rather, you have a separate physical map you have to put your gun away to pull out, though with the caveat that you can look over it on the move, including while you're driving, rather than having to pause the game completely whenever you want to look over it. |
| 103 | ** Finally, it's the only game in the series to not have some sort of companion release in the vein of the first game's console spinoffs or the [[MissionPackSequel stand-alone expansions]] of the later games - at best, it got a DLC pack that only added a few new weapons and vehicles. |
| 104 | * EasyLogistics: Damaged vehicle? Don't worry about taking it to a repair shop, just pop the hood and tighten the Not Exploding Bolt on the radiator. |
| 105 | * EmergencyWeapon: The machete, literally. Not really a "stealth weapon" or "one-hit kill weapon", though it can be used as either in the right circumstances. |
| 106 | * EnemyScan: The monocular magically fills in everything in "major" area if you spot one thing of that type; the types are vehicles, weapons (mounted guns and snipers), first aid and ammo. Spotting the main pickup in a checkpoint counts as "scouting" it. |
| 107 | * EqualOpportunityEvil: A fairly large portion of the enemy soldiers in the game are white foreign mercenaries (many of whom possess hilarious South African accents). One of the villainous Faction Lieutenants is even a [[EvilBrit Brit]] (Greaves). |
| 108 | * EtTuBrute: |
| 109 | ** The game's "final battle" is [[spoiler: a firefight against your mercenary buddies, who are trying to use blood diamonds to bribe their way out of the country. You want the diamonds as bribes to help save the civilian population from genocide]]. |
| 110 | ** Additionally, some of the optional buddy missions (especially those given by the 3 female mercs) given to you at Mike's Bar were actually fairly altruistic in motive (collecting evidence of war crimes, destroying weapon supplies, killing drug dealers marketing ''to children'', etc.), [[spoiler: so it's fairly jarring when at the end the majority of them turn out to be a bunch of selfish jerks]]. |
| 111 | * EverybodyDiesEnding: Combined with DownerEnding. The game ends with [[spoiler:everybody dead. The faction leaders, your mercenary buddies (you kill most of them), and presumably you and The Jackal as well]]. The final diary entry made by your character even reads [[spoiler: "It's done. Everybody's dead. Everybody."]] |
| 112 | * EveryCarIsAPinto: Apparently cars in this country are powered by blasting caps and dynamite. As an added bonus, one of the common cars ''is'' a Ford Pinto! |
| 113 | * EverythingTryingToKillYou: |
| 114 | ** Unlike ''VideoGame/{{STALKER}}'' or ''VideoGame/BoilingPointRoadToHell'', the game is a near-constant firefight as everyone in the game world will try to shoot you on sight. Only a few mission givers in no-weapon areas can be talked to. |
| 115 | ** Allied with one faction? Don't expect help. Or even neutrality: "your" side will try to kill you too. {{Handwave}}d in that you are on a 'secret mission' and that the soldiers are not aware you're working for them. Once you receive a mission from either of the factions, they warn you of this as you leave the room. |
| 116 | * EvilVersusEvil: The UFLL and APR, the game's two main factions, both claim to have the people's best interests at heart, but both are ultimately shown to be evil, led by greedy ambitious men and staffed with psychopathic killers and thugs. The player character himself also commits a number of morally questionable actions throughout the course of the game, notably shutting off fresh water supplies to a neighboring country, leading to the climactic "final battle" where they [[spoiler:kill almost all their mercenary buddies in a large firefight to steal blood diamonds needed as a bribe to save the lives of fleeing civilians]]. |
| 117 | * ExplodingBarrels: They might not have much else left in this country, but they seem to have a limitless supply of propane and gasoline. |
| 118 | * {{Expy}}: The Jackal is one of Kurtz, from ''Literature/HeartOfDarkness''. |
| 119 | ** An argument can be made, however, that the player character also plays the role of Kurtz, in the story. |
| 120 | * FetchQuest: A lot of the "subverted" missions boil down to going to a place, getting[=/=]destroying[=/=]otherwise triggering a thing, then doing whatever the mission was supposed to be. |
| 121 | * FightingIrish: One of the protagonists, Frank Bilders, is a [[WesternTerrorists former IRA man]] who had a penchant for {{Kneecapping}} people and [[LaserGuidedKarma had the same done to him]]. He's seen wearing a knee brace if he's an NPC, though for some reason, should the player choose to play as him, he doesn't wear one. |
| 122 | * ForeverWar: What the Jackal's plans boils down to: incite the UFLL and the APR into all-out war [[spoiler:while simultaneously conducting a mass exodus of all the civilians in the country]]. This gives the UFLL, the APR and any other scum of the world somewhere to fight to their heart's content [[spoiler:without actually hurting innocents]]. Even without his schemes the factions are pretty much in a stalemate and have so many mercenaries going around that wants to sabotage truces because then they will be unemployed and hunted down. |
| 123 | * FranchiseCodifier: While it still has its own quirks, this game sets the standard that later ''Far Cry'' games would follow. It introduces the sandbox gameplay and charismatic villains that would come to define the series. |
| 124 | * FromCamouflageToCriminal: Most of the available player characters have some kind of military background and given the types of things they do during the game, qualify as criminals. Several of the player characters have military service listed early in their dossier, followed by criminal activity later in their careers. The Jackal also most definitely fits the bill as he is a former U.S. Navy SEAL. |
| 125 | * GameMod: Numerous, but the most stable so far is [[https://www.moddb.com/mods/dylans-far-cry-2-realism-mod Dylan's Far Cry 2 Realism mod]], which fixes several [[ScrappyMechanic gameplay issues]] and streamline the gameplay. in short, it makes guns purchased more durable, gunfights quicker for both the player and the enemies, and the malaria frequency toned down. |
| 126 | * GameBreakingBug: The infamous Dogon Sediko Captive mission, where as the name implies, you rescue a captured buddy from Dogon Sediko. It goes down in two ways: one, you reach the building but cannot get in due to a programming error marking the door as locked, or two, you can go inside but the buddy never interacts with you. Both ways freeze the progress of the story, making the game {{Unwinnable}}. The worst part? Ubisoft knows of this bug and never made any effort to fix it. Fortunately, this can be fixed by turning the V-Sync on in the Display settings in order to reduce the chance of the bug to happen. |
| 127 | ** It's entirely possible that the game will forget that you've done a side-mission it wants you to go do, leaving you unable to progress any further in the game. It's also entirely possible that this will happen twenty or more hours in. |
| 128 | ** All versions of the game have the "Boots" glitch, where every Jackal tape found after the tape about the Jackal seeing a child soldier taking a dead soldier's boots will just play that one again and not count the player as finding a new tape. This might not be as bad as the progression-halting bugs, but it does prevent the player getting the achievement / trophy for finding all the Jackal tapes, at least in the PC release. The Xbox and [=PS3=] ports will still allow you to earn the achievement but the player will have to find the audio/transcripts of the tapes online if they want to know what the "missing" tapes contain. |
| 129 | * GameplayAndStorySegregation: In the final mission, [[spoiler:the Jackal plans to use a briefcase containing blood diamonds to bribe the border guards into letting the refugees crossing the border. Said briefcase is with another arms dealer. When you go to retrieve the briefcase, you find that your missing buddies planned to use those same diamonds to flee the country as well, and you must fight them for it. Somehow it didn't occur to the protagonist to use ''his own blood diamonds'' for either tasks, especially if he still has an ample number of them left in his inventory. No, you must [[ButThouMust absolutely, specifically require that particular briefcase from the arms dealer that the Jackal tasked you with, even if you have to kill your friends for it]]. It's especially jarring once you brought the briefcase to the Jackal and he opens it to reveal... about just over half a dozen diamonds in it, even fewer than the diamonds you typically get from each faction missions, making one question just why didn't the protagonist offer his own diamonds for the Jackal while he and his buddies could use the arms dealer's briefcase to escape the country instead of resorting to only the briefcase diamonds as the only choice?]] |
| 130 | * HandCannon: Slot 1 gets a Desert Eagle, M79 grenade launcher, and with the DLC also a sawed-off shotgun. |
| 131 | * HarderThanHard: Infamous difficulty. Enemies are much more accurate and do a lot more damage, to the point where even at full health you can only survive a couple more bullets than the basic Mooks can. Once alerted, enemies have instantaneous reflexes and aimbot-like accuracy. The maximum amount of ammo and syringes you can carry is also reduced by about half, and you receive much less health/ammo when you pick up items. If combined with the "no manual saves" feature, this is one of the most difficult FPS experiences in existence (or at least the most annoying), since it's very difficult to stay alive and dying can undo more than half an hour of progress each time. |
| 132 | * HealThyself: Injections from syrettes cure any wounds. Even if you run out of health, you get a second chance as long as you have a buddy standing by to revive you. This applies even if you deliberately blew yourself sky-high with a bomb or misjudge a jump. |
| 133 | * HyperactiveMetabolism: You can heal to full by drinking bottles of water found lying around enemy bases. |
| 134 | * HypocriticalHumor: From the "Gutshot" tape: |
| 135 | -->'''The Jackal:''' Funny how guys get shot because they're too afraid to die, and then they're lying there dying, and they're too afraid to live. Idiots... |
| 136 | * ImpressivePyrotechnics: In addition to explosive ammo piles and fuel tanks, dry grass catches on fire very easily. This can be exploited for useful diversions or simply clearing a whole checkpoint with a couple of well placed shots. KillItWithFire indeed. |
| 137 | * ImprovisedWeapon: Seemingly the only reason for the addition of the flare pistol to a game loaded to the brim with flammable materials, besides to call enemy reinforcements. Possibly meant to have more of a role had the game been shipped fully made. For a more straight-up usage of this trope, one of the weapons you can have in the first weapon slot is an IED. |
| 138 | * InfiniteSupplies: The Arms Dealer can furnish you with an infinite number of pristine weapons, despite the fact that everyone else in the country is carrying beat-up wrecks. |
| 139 | * InformedAbility: The Jackal is supposed to be an arms dealer, but he's never seen actually doing anything to that effect. |
| 140 | ** I think it’s fair to assume that the majority of his weapons dealing was done prior to the events of the story. Everyone is pretty much armed to the teeth by the time the game kicks off, so we can infer that he has already done quite a bit of business. |
| 141 | * InkSuitActor: The Jackal is modeled after his voice actor, Dwayne Hill. |
| 142 | * JustTrainWrong: The railway lines on the map appear to use broad gauge track, which was never seen in Africa outside of a couple of industrial railways, and feature steep gradients and tight bends only seen on urban tramways. The locomotives abandoned in the derelict railyards resemble the British Rail Class 25, but with the wrong track gauge and only one cab, whereas the real locomotive is double-ended. Credit where credit is due, the abandoned passenger carriages do closely resemble those of real-life African railways. |
| 143 | * KillItWithFire: Everyone who's playing the game turns into a pyromaniac pretty quickly. The game takes place in African savannah and jungles where highly flammable foliages are everywhere, and once fire starts, it spreads ''quickly''. Fire can be started by ExplodingBarrels, damaged oil/natural gas storages, molotov cocktails, flamethrowers, explosions, rocket backblasts, flares... Additionally, you can start fires to burn down enemies or distract them, allowing you to sneak in, escape, or gun down the panicking enemies. If you find yourself in the middle of a savannah far away from your objective, you'll find yourself throwing molotov cocktails around just for the hell of it. |
| 144 | * KleptomaniacHero: Nobody in the safe areas seems to care about you looting their medical cabinets or walking around with dozens of rough-cut diamonds which presumably belong to someone. They do care if you try to steal their diamonds, though. |
| 145 | * LaResistance: A non-violent example, and you have to help these people every now and then to obtain medicine to avert your illness. [[spoiler: It's revealed that the Jackal has been helping these people all along, by playing the warring sides against each other]]. |
| 146 | * TheLawOfConservationOfDetail: There are three levels of map; the overall map, the current grid map, and for some areas a special mini-map for that area. You can guarantee that if an area has such a map, it's because a mission is going to take place there at some point. |
| 147 | * LeaveBehindAPistol: [[spoiler:This is heavily implied to happen to whoever makes the diamond delivery during the ending, though the game cuts away before the player can see if the character actually went through with it.]] |
| 148 | -->[[spoiler:'''The Jackal''': "That gun in there is a good piece, never jams. One shot is all you'll need. You're a terminal case, same as me, but at least we can do something about it."]] |
| 149 | * ALighterShadeOfBlack: The three [=APR=] mercenary lieutenants (Greaves, Quiepo, and Purefoy) are noticeably friendlier and less abrasive that their [=UFLL=] counterparts (Voorhees, Kankaras, and Carbonelli). Ultimately all of them turn out to be just as ruthless and self-interested as the rest, however. |
| 150 | * LuckBasedMission: At one point in the beginning of Act 2 the player must ride a riverboat as it floats slowly across the middle of a lake while being fired on from all angles, having to swap between manning the turret to kill the attackers and tightening the Not Exploding Bolt while taking fire himself. On hard difficulty the outcome is completely determined by when the gunboats decide to turn up and how close to the riverboat they come. On Infamous difficulty this mission is widely believed to be impossible. It helps a bit if you know where the RPG and mortar users are, and that all the turrets on the boat are grenade launchers. |
| 151 | * MacheteMayhem: In a ContinuityNod to the original ''[[VideoGame/FarCry1 Far Cry]]'', the player gets a machete as their melee weapon. Essentially, it's become the signature weapon of the series. |
| 152 | * MadeOfExplodium: Most things not made of explodium are made of flame protardant burnium carbonate. The guns in particular: even the tranquilizer gun manages to go up in a huge fiery explosion in its failure animation. |
| 153 | * MercyKill: You can do this to your buddies, either by use of your pistol or overdosing them with syrettes if they've been wounded too many times. |
| 154 | * AMillionIsAStatistic: Discussed by the Jackal in one of his tapes: |
| 155 | --> '''The Jackal:''' The death of a 23 year old from Iowa gets more air time than the death of 50,000 people he gave his life to protect. Even if they did give a shit about things over here, their own media prevents them from taking any action. |
| 156 | * MissingBackblast: Averted with the Carl Gustav launcher, which can kill people close enough behind you with its backblast. Firing the weapon while next to or in a patch of grass will also cause a wildfire and can hurt you in the process. In the case of vehicles, the backblast may cause it to explode, which can probably kill you. Therefore, be careful when putting yourself into position with this weapon. Played straight with the RPG-7, however. |
| 157 | * MoneySink: After buying a weapon, there's still the accuracy upgrade, reliability upgrade and ammo upgrade, all of which cost extra. In some cases buying all of them is essential for the weapon to be halfway useful. |
| 158 | * MooksButNoBosses: Stat-wise, every enemy in the game is identical, even the assassination targets. The only exception are your merc buddies, who are on the level of EliteMooks. At no point is there anything resembling a "boss" enemy or even a CutsceneBoss. The only real enemy variety come in the form of perched snipers armed with sniper rifles or rpgs, and (later in the game) mortars. |
| 159 | * MoralMyopia: Lampshaded by Greaves, who said to Oliver Tambossa's face that propagandas are only called lies when they're from the UFLL. Also spoofed when Tambossa asks you to [[strike:steal]] liberate some [=TNTs=] in a UFLL base. |
| 160 | * MotiveDecay: Happens to the PlayerCharacter over the course of the game. You are initially tasked to take out the Jackal, but get caught up in the CivilWar while trying to obtain information from both factions. By the time the player catches up with the Jackal, [[spoiler:they decide to join forces in order to take out the leadership of the UFLL, the APR and the PrivateMilitaryContractors working for both of them and help civilians flee the country. Even before the final act the player character goes with their buddies' plan of stealing the diamonds for the peace treaty so they can leave the country]]. |
| 161 | * MotorMouth: Everyone in the game speaks rapidly and quietly. It's very difficult to make out what people are saying without subtitles sometimes. It makes for a decent but somewhat off-putting aversion of RealisticDictionIsUnrealistic. |
| 162 | * MultinationalTeam: The player's band of mercenary buddies is a wide assortment of various nationalities, from former US Special Forces to Middle-Eastern guns-for-hire. |
| 163 | * NeverFoundTheBody: [[spoiler:Happens to the Jackal in both endings. Though officials are certain he perished during the war they never managed to recover a body.]] |
| 164 | * NewEraSpeech: At the end of Act 1, after you assassinate one of the faction leaders, the opposing leader will take over the entire northern region and give one of these to his troops. |
| 165 | * NintendoHard: The game was designed to lack AntiFrustrationFeatures and will almost never give you a break. You're gonna have to be on your toes at all times if you want to beat the game. |
| 166 | * NonActionGuy: Reuben Oluwagembi, an African reporter who serves as the only really "good" main character in the game. |
| 167 | * NoSidepathsNoExplorationNoFreedom: A common criticism of the map design is the presence of a large number of impassible mountains, effectively turning the wide-open map into a series of fairly wide trails. |
| 168 | * NotSoDifferentRemark: |
| 169 | ** The Jackal delivers one of these to Reuben in one of the Jackal Tapes, saying that Reuben has all the skills to be an even better arms dealer than he is, and that the only reason he's a "good person" is because circumstances haven't forced him to be something else. |
| 170 | ** At one point, The Jackal tells the player that "[he] used to be you." Namely a mercenary doing anything just for a paycheck. |
| 171 | * OddballInTheSeries: Despite setting up the format that ''3'', ''4'' and ''5'' would follow, ''2'' is still a very unique ''Far Cry'' game. The immersion-enhancing mechanics like weapon inspection, weapon degrading, and malaria are not present in any other games in the ''Far Cry'' series. |
| 172 | ** This is also the only part of the series that is completely devoid of any fantastic or oniric elements. The first installment had science-fiction elements, the third had MaybeMagicMaybeMundane compass and a lot of MushroomSamba sequences, the fourth follows up on visions and adds Shangri-La dream missions and, well, Yetis. In addition, the local wildlife is generally not hostile to the player unlike in the succeeding games. |
| 173 | * OffscreenTeleportation: |
| 174 | ** All major characters get around this way; rather than traveling across the game world like the player, they just appear in safe houses or at objectives, most likely to stop the player killing them and sabotaging the plot. |
| 175 | ** The Arms Dealer gets around too. |
| 176 | * OneManArmy: The player, of course. Also, to a lesser extent, the player's mercenary buddies, who are quite capable of taking out a couple squads of enemy soldiers by themselves. Finally, the Jackal is also a OneManArmy, if the massive carnage and property destruction seen in the aftermath of his attacks is any indication. |
| 177 | * OnlyAFleshWound: The game averts InstantDeathBullet pretty hard. Just because the enemy you shot went down it doesn't mean he's ''dead''. Wounded enemies can either try to stand up and retreat to cover or lie down and beg to be rescued by their allies, but they still can and will shoot you with their sidearm if you give them the chance. Frustratingly, this usually happens if you try to stealthily take down an enemy with your machete; they will go down but you still have to finish them off. |
| 178 | * OnlySaneMan: |
| 179 | ** The Jackal, being an {{expy}} of Colonel Kurtz from ''Film/ApocalypseNow'', believes himself to be this. |
| 180 | ** Nick Greaves and (to a slightly lesser extent) Hector Voorhees both come across as noticeably saner and more self-aware than their propaganda-spewing, AxCrazy bosses. Like your own character, however, they've decided to just go along with the madness instead of doing anything about it so as to get paid and avoid getting purged by the locals. |
| 181 | * PatchworkMap: |
| 182 | ** Rivers... do not work that way. |
| 183 | ** The GPS pointer's ability to end up on top of the player character's thumb in certain locations means the patchwork is 3D! |
| 184 | * PermanentlyMissableContent: There are 2 buddies in the North region and 1 buddy in the South region that can be completely missed, and cannot be obtained after the end of Act I (the North) or the end of Act II (the South). |
| 185 | * PlayingBothSides: |
| 186 | ** The Jackal. One of his tapes explains this as simply being a business decision. [[spoiler:It turns out it isn't for money though; it's to stop the factions massacring the civilian population. Even if that makes very little sense]]. |
| 187 | ** The player does this to try and gain information on The Jackal, switching sides as soon as he feels that he's getting nowhere. |
| 188 | * PlotArmor: [[spoiler:The Jackal, the one person you're supposedly sent to kill]]. |
| 189 | * PlotlineDeath: Syrettes and bottled water can cure every ill ''except'' malaria. Or falling over three times if you're not the PC. |
| 190 | * PointOfNoReturn: There's one right at the game's finale - at the southeastern corner of the Southern map (the one where it leads to the aptly-named "Heart of Darkness" area and beyond). Annoyingly, the game only informs you that you're approaching it after you think you've already passed it, but there's a path back to the rest of the map. Even so, you're really, really far from the last arms dealer or safe-house at this point. |
| 191 | * PortTown: The capital of the Southern map is right next to a gigantic lake. |
| 192 | * ProductPlacement: Has a couple of Jeep vehicles from the time of release. When every other car is a fictional rusted pile of junk held together with sheet metal and wishes, it's a little jarring to find a fair number of real-life American 4x4s in war torn Africa, albeit in similarly beaten up states. |
| 193 | * PyrrhicVictory: In the end, you rid yourself of the leaders who ordered you to help them destroy each other and you rescue the civilian population from nationwide genocide, but [[spoiler:you and nearly every other character in the entire game dies in the process, Reuben's reports on the war are ignored, and there's no sign that the conflict will ever end]]. |
| 194 | * {{Railroading}}: You might appear to be making choices during the course of the plot, but none of them have any meaningful effect on the outcome. |
| 195 | * RealIsBrown: And ''how.'' With the exception of vegetation in various shades of green. |
| 196 | * RedemptionEqualsDeath: [[spoiler:Both the Jackal and the player character end up with this fate at the end.]] [[UncertainDoom Maybe.]] |
| 197 | * RegeneratingHealth: A unique example. Your health bar is divided into five segments. Regeneration is restricted to the current segment; to replenish lost segments, you must use a syringe or drink a bottle of water. If your health is reduced to one segment, you will slowly bleed out unless you perform a healing action. |
| 198 | * ReliablyUnreliableGuns: The guns wear out at an extremely exaggerated rate; you can actually ''see'' the USAS-12 becoming more corroded as it fires. And almost all of them will eventually explode or fall apart. |
| 199 | * TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized: Both the UFLL and APR. |
| 200 | * RightHandedLeftHandedGuns: Including a top-ejecting Desert Eagle that still has the barrel lock on the wrong side, a Springfield with a lefty bolt (the animation is about as awkward as you'd expect) and, just to get the other side of the equation, a right-ejecting PKM; the Ithaca 37 even has a left-side ejection port added on despite its real-world base being famous for not ''having'' an ejection port on the side (it ejects shells from the same port they're loaded through). |
| 201 | * RogueProtagonist: Though it is never confirmed, or acknowledged, in-game, the creative director, years after the release of the game, would [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udi7uVtPONk confirm]] that The Jackal, the BigBad of the game, was intended to be an older Jack Carver, the PlayerCharacter of the original ''Far Cry''. |
| 202 | * SadisticChoice: About halfway through the game, you're given the choice of either saving a church full of civilians or a bar full of your mercenary buddies. There's not enough time to come to the aid of both. [[spoiler: Although your choice is ultimately pointless because you end up overrun by enemy soldiers either way. Your mercenary buddies actually survive, but you never meet them again until the end of the game. When they try to kill you. Not completely pointless, as the people in the church (presumably) escape if you assist them]]. |
| 203 | * SawedOffShotgun: The DLC includes two: one traditional double-barreled one for the pistol slot, and one regular (though [[HollywoodSilencer silenced]]) pump-action with a cut-down stock and barrel for the primary slot. |
| 204 | * ScaryBlackMan: Averted in the case of main characters Quarbani Singh and Andre Hyppolite. As [=NPCs=], they politely give you side missions. [[spoiler:Can be played straight, however, if they will try to kill you in the final mission of the game]]. |
| 205 | ** Reuben Oluwagembi is in a constant state of ''Scared Black Man'', understandably. |
| 206 | * SceneryGorn: The more "civilized" areas of the map are mostly ruined buildings and bases populated almost entirely by soldiers that will shoot on sight anyone that walks by. Justified to an extent, due to the place undergoing a brutal civil war. |
| 207 | * SceneryPorn: Lush jungles, dry savannas teeming with zebras and antelopes, parched deserts and dilapidated shantytowns, all rendered in loving detail. |
| 208 | * ScenicTourLevel: The opening depicts your character's taxi ride into Pala, while the driver chats about the current state of the country. |
| 209 | * SemperFi: One of the player characters, Marty Alencar, is a former U.S. Marine. One of the available mercenary buddies Warren Clyde may also count, as he will occasionally greet you with the trope name. |
| 210 | * ShoutOut: |
| 211 | ** To ''Film/ApocalypseNow''. As well as The Jackal's mumbled rants being an obvious homage to Kurtz, the map for the lower-right corner of the second map contains, in clockwise order, the locations "Marina," "Landing Zone," "Swamp" and "Heart of Darkness," making it a map of the movie. |
| 212 | ** The Silenced Shotgun in the DLC seems to be a ShoutOut to ''Film/NoCountryForOldMen'' (where primary antagonist Anton Chigurh utilized a shortened and silenced semi-auto Remington at a few points), and the gold [=AKs=] to ''Film/LordOfWar'' (where André Baptiste, Jr carried a custom gold-plated, short-barreled AK). |
| 213 | ** Some of the content and the setting it takes place in are a nod to ''Film/BloodDiamond''. |
| 214 | * ShroudedInMyth: |
| 215 | ** As your reputation level grows, your character eventually gains this status among the enemy {{Mooks}}. Their in-game combat dialogue changes accordingly, from "Who's this asshole? Who cares, let's kill him." to "Oh God! It's ''him''! We're all gonna die!". |
| 216 | -->'''Description at Level 4:''' People believe I'm the Devil himself. Heard a rumor that I eat my victims and I prefer wounding rather than killing outright... just for the fun of it. |
| 217 | ** The Jackal, in his first interview tape with Reuben, suggests [[InvokedTrope intentionally building this image]], but [[HeWhoFightsMonsters warns against]] ''[[BecomingTheMask becoming]]'' the image. |
| 218 | * ShootTheShaggyDog: [[spoiler:Despite the actions of the PlayerCharacter and The Jackal, the conflict continues in spite of the remnants of the UFLL and the APR attempting to form a government and Reuben's story is ignored by the world press. Not to mention that the entire reason you're here in the first place is to kill the Jackal, only to end up working with him instead and having to kill ''all your buddies'' simply because they get in the way of you and the Jackal's plan. In the end, your target [[KarmaHoundini gets away scot free]].]] |
| 219 | * ASimplePlan: |
| 220 | ** When you're given a mission by one of the two major factions, one of your buddies will often phone you up and suggest additional objectives that will supposedly benefit one or both of you (as well as unlock upgrades for your safe houses). Complete these objectives, however, and [[FinaglesLaw your buddy's scheme will rapidly head south,]] [[TheLoad requiring you to come and rescue them.]] This happens ''every single time.'' |
| 221 | ** The game's plot basically amounts to this. The opening journal entry suggests that it's a simple enough job, until the player succumbs to malaria and has to go looking for information on The Jackal, getting dragged deeper and deeper into the conflict. |
| 222 | * SlaughterhouseFight: Not too far from the first town is a slaughterhouse filled with animal carcasses, meat hooks, bones... and hostile soldiers that shoot trespassers on sight. So the place is either being used by the factions to supply their fighters with food or people in Leboa-Seko just prefer their ham and bacon to be seasoned with gunpowder and a splash or two of human blood. |
| 223 | * SniperPistol: The handguns are surprisingly useful at long range, particularly the Makarov and its silenced [=6P9=] variant. Ghost-sniping (using the monocular or a sniper rifle scope to aim, then switching to a different weapon to shoot exactly where you aimed) works in this game as well. |
| 224 | * SociopathicHero: Both your character and buddies. [[spoiler: And The Jackal definitely fits the bill too]]. |
| 225 | * SophisticatedAsHell: The Jackal's all over this. He can go from quoting Nietzsche to swearing a blue streak in the same breath. |
| 226 | * SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness: Guns from the Arms Dealer gradually get better as the game goes on, though some wear out faster to balance this. |
| 227 | * StoryBranching: Generally speaking, the game's story can go one of two ways, depending on the faction affiliation of the lieutenant that saves you at the beginning of the game. |
| 228 | ** If you're saved by the [=APR=] lieutenants Arturo Quiepo or Walton Purefoy, at the end of Act 1 you'll assassinate [=APR=] second-in-command Prosper Kouassi at Goka Falls on behalf of the [=UFLL=], then you'll be saved by [=APR=] merc commander Nick Greaves in the desert after the [=UFLL=] betrays you, then kill [=UFLL=] second-in-command Dr. Leon Gakumba in retaliation, find [=APR=] leader Major Oliver Tambossa killed by the Jackal and later kill [=UFLL=] leader Addi Mbantuwe at the end of Act 2. |
| 229 | ** Conversely, if you're saved by the [=UFLL=] lieutenants Anto Kankaras or Joaquinn Carbonell, at the end of Act 1 you gotta kill [=UFLL=]'s second-in-command Leon Gakumba at Goka Falls on behalf of the [=APR=], then be saved by [=UFLL=] merc commander Hector Voorhees after [=APR=] betrays you, then kill [=APR=] second-in-command Prosper Kouassi in retaliation, find [=UFLL=] leader Addi Mbantuwe killed by the Jackal and later kill [=APR=] leader Major Oliver Tambossa at the end of Act 2. |
| 230 | ** Act 3 gets on this ''hard'', at least until the end. [[spoiler:You can kill faction characters in whichever order you want. Say, if you killed Greaves and Voorhees, you can set up any of the Lieutenants as supreme commanders of [=UFLL=] and [=APR=]. Although they still have to be killed by your hand in the finale.]] |
| 231 | *** PromptlessBranchingPoint: The identity of the lieutenant you're rescued by is determined by which quadrant of the town you escape from[=/=]are downed in: Quiepo is to the southwest, Kankaras to the northwest, Carbonell to the northeast, and Purefoy to the southeast. |
| 232 | * StoryToGameplayRatio: Unlike the first and [[VideoGame/FarCry3 third]] games, ''Far Cry 2'' has an extremely minimalist plot, with most of the focus being on exploring the open world and doing various side-quests for buddies, the church, the weapons dealer, and the mysterious voice. The faction missions advance the game's progress but largely have no connection to each other and are usually stand-alone, miscellaneous sabotage or assassination tasks. There is no real "main quest"; the search for the Jackal is hinted to be one, but this plot line only shows up a for a minute or so at the end of each act, and is ultimately subverted in the finale. This means there's no real over-arcing story, but allows for a ''very'' unscripted game experience with most of the narrative [[EmergentNarrative being created by the player]] through EmergentGameplay. |
| 233 | * StrawNihilist: The Jackal, whose philosophy on life is heavily influenced by Nietzsche. |
| 234 | * StuckItems: The machete in the melee slot, grenades, and Molotovs. |
| 235 | * SuicidalOverconfidence: Enemies will often drive their cars into you, even if they are in an unarmed car or jeep and you are driving a machine-gun armed truck which can perforate them in seconds. |
| 236 | * SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Try sticking into your arm a health syringe while driving. [[SchmuckBait Go ahead.]] |
| 237 | * SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: The Jackal looks ''a lot'' like Jack Carver, the protagonist of the original ''Far Cry'' game. |
| 238 | * TakingYouWithMe: Mortally wounded enemies will draw a pistol and keep shooting. |
| 239 | * TheEnemyWeaponsAreBetter: Mostly subverted. At high reputation enemies might have weapons not yet available to you but every enemy weapon is heavily degraded and prone to jamming and breaking. The weapons you buy and upgrade will last you longer, especially if they have high reliability and have a reliability upgrade just to make sure they won't break at the worst time. |
| 240 | * ThematicSeries: While not so much a thematic successor to the original PC ''Far Cry'', it is something of a thematic successor to ''Far Cry Instincts'' and especially ''Far Cry Evolution'' (both developed by Ubisoft instead of Crytek), with the overarching theme of third-world strife and suffering [[spoiler:and a returning protagonist who serves as the game's main villain]]. ''VideoGame/FarCry3'' and ''VideoGame/FarCry4'' continue this trend. All four games also seem to be about man's descent into savagery, ''Far Cry 1'' just takes it a lot more literally. |
| 241 | * TropeCodifier: While the PC-only ''VideoGame/BoilingPointRoadToHell'' and ''VideoGame/{{STALKER}}: Shadow of Chernobyl'' both came first, ''Far Cry 2'' was the first open-world sandbox first person shooter to have a console release and thus see widespread distribution. Thus, when most people think of the genre they think of ''Far Cry 2'' as the earliest example. |
| 242 | * TruceZone: The main cities. Also a case of DevelopersForesight; if you do start waving guns in people's faces, they stick their hands up and taunt/threaten/try to calm the player. Their buddies however, will all aim their guns at you. If you aim at a dude too long, all the buddies will open fire even if you haven't let off a shot. This can also happen if you sprint and bump into a dude enough times. |
| 243 | * {{Ubermensch}}: The Jackal quotes Creator/FriedrichNietzsche's ''The Will To Power'' in the game's opening sequence, forges his own path, defies both factions for the sake of the civilian populace, and in the end [[spoiler: convinces the player to join his side]] through the force of his personality and the rightness of his cause. Though the fact that [[{{Railroading}} the player has no choice]] is also a factor. |
| 244 | * UncertainDoom: [[spoiler:Happens to both the player character and the Jackal at the very end of the game, more so the person who handed off the briefcase full of diamonds at the checkpoint, though both endings cut away before the player actually dies and the end slide states that the Jackal's body was never recovered, leaving things in question.]] |
| 245 | * UnexpectedGameplayChange: The last part of the game plays out like a fast-paced run-and-gun shooter through a fairly linear path. Since the game mechanics are not designed for this and the enemies can take a lot of punishment, this caused some problems. |
| 246 | * UniversalAmmunition: Weapons of the same type, with some distinctions for which slot they go in, use the same ammo; this means any given pistol is chambered for .45 ACP, 9mm Makarov and .50 Action Express all at the same time (same goes for sniper rifles chambered for .30-06, [=7.62x54mm=]R and .50 BMG cartridges respectively). Gets particularly silly with the flare gun; the ammo pickup is shown as the same can of gasoline the flamethrower and Molotovs use. An attempt at justification was made with the automatic rifles, which are all 7.62mm ones (including use of the name of a highly-obscure 7.62mm predecessor to the AR-18 just for that sake), which just made it more apparent because the most common of the four uses an entirely ''different'' 7.62mm round than the other three. Conversely, it also means that some weapons which ''do'' share ammo in real life, like the M79 and M32 grenade launchers, or the sawed-off shotgun from the ''Fortune's Pack'' and any of the other shotguns, cannot share ammo in-game for no other reason than because the former is being used in place of a pistol and the latter is in place of a rifle. |
| 247 | * UniversalDriversLicense: Trucks, boats, cars... If you can get in, you can drive it. |
| 248 | ** Justified in that all characters are seasoned mercenaries and the vehicles available are limited to generic civilian cars (Jeeps mostly) and simple boats. |
| 249 | * UnusableEnemyEquipment: Averted but since the mercs keep such little care for their weapons you'll only be using them when your weapons eventually breakdown. They are so bad that they are liable to breakdown after a long fire fight. It's likely you'll only keep them until you can reach a weapons storehouse to get better guns. |
| 250 | * UselessItem: |
| 251 | ** The flare gun; sure, it can cause fires, but so can Molotovs, without wasting the pistol slot. It also doesn't produce a useful amount of light, even at night. The only better use it gets than the Molotovs is lighting up a checkpoint from long distance... which usually means saying goodbye to any supplies in it except for health. |
| 252 | ** There are several useless upgrades, as well, such as the repair upgrades for vehicles (there's replacements pretty much everywhere) and accuracy upgrades for weapons that don't need them at all, such as the Flamethrower (which already has perfect accuracy) and the laser-guided Carl-G. The only "use" for them is wasting your hard-earned diamonds. |
| 253 | * UselessUsefulStealth: "Conventional" stealth really isn't the best option; you need to pay a ton for a special stealth suit, the silenced weapons are puny and expensive (save the dart rifle, which just has a tiny ammo count and breaks after less than thirty shots), and sneaking around just means if you mess up (like missing a headshot by even an inch) you'll be surrounded rather than being able to make the enemies come to you. However, a more limited stealth approach of sneaking around the edges of a camp, in order to have the best position to begin an assault, is a very useful and viable tactic. |
| 254 | ** The game actually uses the same basic stealth system as the next two games, but because the mechanics are less obvious (IE, there are no detection indicators, nor are there HUD elements that tell you whether you're hidden or visible, etc.) it's not as clear what's going on. The only way to gauge the alertness of enemies is by watching their patrols, listening to their chatter, and paying attention to the ramping-up of the background music in anticipation of combat. Whether this adds to the challenge in a gratifying way or ends up being an annoyance depends on your personal preference. |
| 255 | ** As challenging and obtuse as stealth often is, it ''can'' be DifficultButAwesome if you have the patience for it. Once you're aware of how the stealth mechanics work[[note]]IE, standing in darkness/shadows lowers an enemy's detection range, enemies have a lower detection range at night, stormy weather causes more noise that makes enemies less likely to hear your footsteps, standing behind bushes/fauna is effectively the same as standing behind a solid object in that they break the line of sight between you and enemies, crouching in tall grass doesn't make you invisible but it makes it harder for enemies to spot you from a distance, etc.[[/note]] it becomes a perfectly viable gameplay strategy despite [[GuideDangIt the game not explaining it very well]]. Even without the camo suit (which makes it nearly impossible for enemies to spot you if you're stationary and crouching in tall grass unless they directly bump into you), entire camps can be cleared with the humble [=6P9=] if you meticulously go around nailing individual enemies in the head before retreating to the shadows. What makes it extra gratifying is that enemies who find corpses but aren't aware of your presence will start to panic because they think they're facing multiple assailants. |
| 256 | * VideoGameCaringPotential: Your dozen or so mercenary buddies are the only friendly faces in the whole country. They help you out in missions and arrive to save you if you're ever critically injured in a firefight. This gives you an incentive to keep them alive throughout the game. [[spoiler:[[FaceHeelTurn ...And then they all try to kill you]].]] |
| 257 | * VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Aside from the various uses of incendiary devices, you can shoot enemies in the foot or the gut with an SVD to draw their buddies out. |
| 258 | * VideogameFlamethrowersSuck: Not this game's [=LPO-50=]. The ammo capacity is ungodly, and thanks to the fire propagation feature, several short bursts can easily flatten an enemy base. It also has extreme accuracy and durability (even more with the upgrade); short bursts will make sure that the flamethrower will last you for hours before you have to replace it. |
| 259 | * VillainProtagonist: The main character of the game, in his obsessive pursuit of his target, will help the opposing armies destroy medicine, kill innocents, and eliminate water supplies. His buddies can get just as bad, as well, even if it's [[EvilVsEvil to combat equally bad people]]. Xianyong Bai, in particular, has a side-mission involving someone holding onto a massive stack of travel documents and passports because he's waiting for a reason to sell them - rather than recovering them yourself to pass out or even sell, he wants you to just burn them all so ''nobody'' can use them. |
| 260 | * VoiceWithAnInternetConnection: The assassination missions are given by tapping phone masts. It is never at all clear who the mission giver actually is. |
| 261 | * VoodooShark: A minor case with the weapon selection, where an attempt to justify UniversalAmmunition apparently resulted in them including an obscure 7.62mm predecessor to the AR-18 in the "assault rifles" category rather than any sort of M16, to justify why it can take ammo from dropped G3s and [=FALs=]. There are several problems with this, however: it ignores that the by far most common weapon in its class uses an entirely ''different'' 7.62mm round than the others; it's inconsistent with every other weapon class, where game mechanics mean weapons that shouldn't share ammo do (the handguns, which are apparently simultaneously chambered in .45 ACP, 9x18mm, and .50 AE) and other weapons that ''should'' share ammo don't (the secondary "Craftsman Shotgun" from the DLC has a separate ammo stash from the primary shotguns, despite them all taking 12-gauge shells); and it also means, in their attempt to avoid one unrealistic video-game trope, they ended up having to fall back on a different unrealistic video-game trope [[SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness to make the rifles in the second half an upgrade]], by having them [[ArbitraryGunPower arbitrarily do more damage]] despite firing the same ammo from similar-length barrels as the ones in the first half. |
| 262 | * WallOfWeapons: The Arms Dealer's storehouse, which gradually fills up as you purchase more weaponry. |
| 263 | * WarWasBeginning: During the opening scenes you are presented before the ceasefire ends and conflict flares up, with people attempting to get the hell out of dodge before the fighting starts and the country becomes locked down. |
| 264 | * WarpWhistle: For some reason, the bus services in the country are still running and let the player fast-travel to fixed map locations without having to fight anyone in the process. Why the checkpoints have orders to shoot you on sight unless you're on a bus is never particularly clear. It even seems like you're the bus service's only customer, as you never see buses while you're on foot. And the best thing is they're available any time of the day! |
| 265 | * WeHaveReserves: The APR and UFLL have an unholy number of {{mooks}} available to man those vital checkpoints in the middle of nowhere or drive endlessly in circles. |
| 266 | * WellIntentionedExtremist: The Jackal arms both sides so neither can completely wipe out the other, not only to maximize his own profits but because, unless he can get rid of all of the leadership at once, whoever wins will start oppressing and murdering civilians with impunity. |
| 267 | * WhatTheHellHero: If you accept to do a buddy's subversion mission then going back on it by accomplishing the faction mission the original way or failing them outright, your buddy will call you out on it and you will lose history points with that person. This can actually be a ''good'' thing, though, as it's the only way to decrease your history with the best buddy. That means if you don't like this particular merc as your best buddy, you can deliberately fail their missions to decrease your history with them and allowing your second best buddy to take over without having to kill your current best buddy off. |
| 268 | * WideOpenSandbox: Half the map is open for you to explore from the get-go, and once you get into the south you can return to the north. |
| 269 | * WorstAid: The game requires the player to perform quick "medical care" in the field when injured if his or her health drops to one bar. This generally involves resetting broken bones with your bare hands, pulling pieces of shrapnel and stray branches from your gut, and removing bullets with pliers (or ''ejecting them from your elbow joint by straightening your arm''), all without even bandaging the wound up and immediately getting back into the fight (to be fair, one animation has your character lighting a bundle of matches and then cauterizing the open wound). You even spit out a tooth in one. Hilariously, this also applies to the gradual damage you take while drowning, and you can heal yourself from the damage taken by drowning in the same way when standing in shallow enough water, leading to you [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enb0zWbYUik getting bullet wounds, broken limbs, and broken teeth]] by ''swimming''! |
| 270 | * YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: A constant threat that is put forward by your buddies is that if peace happens independent mercenaries like you needs to run away or they'll be pinned to a wall. |
| 271 | * YouNoTakeCandle: Xianyong Bai (Chinese) and Josip Idromeno (Albanian) both speak imperfect English. |
| 272 | * ZeroEffortBoss: Every single assassination target (including the faction leaders), will simply stand there with their hands in the air, telling you not to shoot them. Even if you shoot them in the leg to aggro them, they're no tougher than a standard merc, and are armed only with pistols to boot. |
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