History Main / FarCry

After publisher Ubisoft and developer Crytek parted ways, Crytek went on to create ''{{Crysis}}'', while Ubisoft retained the name rights and went on to develop ''Far Cry 2'', a sequel InNameOnly 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. The game lacks the mutants and sci-fi aspects of the original ''Far Cry'', instead opting for a darker, morally ambiguous story inspired by the Joseph Conrad novel ''The HeartOfDarkness'' (not to mention Frederick Forsyth's ''The Day of the Jackal''). ''Far Cry 2'' features a completely WideOpenSandbox game structure. There are no levels, and the game takes place in a 20 square mile area that the player can explore freely, traveling on foot, via vehicles, or by riding buses from station to station.

Far Cry 3 has just been announced and is in development.

* InNameOnly: Besides the name, and the expanded concept of a wide-open game world, ''Far Cry 2'' really has nothing to do with the original ''Far Cry''.

* WorstAid: ''Far Cry 2'' 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, all without even bandaging the wound up and immediately getting back into the fight. You even spit out a tooth in one. If your health is at least two bars, healing involves simply injecting yourself with a shot of morphine. If a buddy is critically injured, you can heal them simply by injecting them as well. Otherwise, the only options are comforting them in their passing or blowing their brains out to hasten it.

* DidNotDoTheResearch: You're supposed to pull the pin out of a grenade before you throw it, [=FC2=] team.
** As mentioned below, the developers failed to realize that the G3 uses full-powered 7.62x51mm ammo, and therefore should be very powerful and have quite a bit of recoil. [[SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness Instead, it is the first rifle you get and one of the weakest.]] The AK-47, which uses weaker intermediate rounds, has a lot more recoil and is more powerful.
** Also, the ejection ports for some of the weapons are on the wrong side.

There was also a [[TheMovie movie]] made of ''Far Cry'' made by... UweBoll. Most notable in that Stuttering Craig and Handsome Tom of ''ScrewAttack'' are in it ([[spoiler: Though not in the main, cut feature]]), and so are [[InglouriousBasterds Hugo Stiglitz]] and [[NoReservations Anthony Bourdain]], oddly enough.

There was also a [[TheMovie movie]] made of ''Far Cry'' made by... [[UweBoll take a wild guess]]. Most notable in that Stuttering Craig and Handsome Tom of ''ScrewAttack'' are in it ([[spoiler: Though not in the main, cut feature]]), and so are [[InglouriousBasterds Hugo Stiglitz]] and [[NoReservations Anthony Bourdain]], oddly enough.

* TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilised: Both the UFLL and APR.

* 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.

* 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.

* WeHaveReserves: The APR and UFLL have an unholy number of {{mook}}s available to man those vital checkpoints in the middle of nowhere or drive endlessly in circles.

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Early previews talked about an entirely open-ended game where the only goal was to find The Jackal; how the player went about it would have been entirely up to them, as would who they made enemies of and who they chose to associate with. This was discarded in favour of an essentially linear plot with optional side-quests, and EverythingTryingToKillYou.
** The number of animal types seems to have also been severely decreased from early previews; back then, there was talk of large, dangerous animals like elephants, rhinos and hippos, as well as predators like lions and crocodiles. UK magazine ''PC Gamer'' reported on a rumour that the predators would be added in a major patch or paid DLC, but this has never materialised, and given the length of time that has passed, probably never will.
* WideOpenSandBox: Half the map is open for you to explore from the get-go.

* BannedInChina: Banned in Germany, in fact; a major objection was that corpses are still physics-enabled objects, offending Germany's many zombies. This explains why ''Crysis'' has enemy ragdoll physics disable themselves almost immediately on death and why ''Far Cry 2's'' animals behave like they're filled with helium.
** Kinda ironic, considering that it was made by a German developer. However, a censored (but still quite bloody) version is sold freely in Germany.

The original ''Far Cry'' was a PC game that was perhaps the first of the "next-gen" first-person shooter games exemplified by the likes of ''HalfLife 2, {{Doom}} 3'', and ''[[FirstEncounterAssaultRecon F.E.A.R]]''. It was released a few months before ''Doom 3'' and ''Half Life 2'' by the then-unknown developers Crytek, for whom it was their debut title.

* AnticlimaxBoss: In the PC version, the final opponent is [[spoiler: Doyle]], a weak scientist armed with a P90 and hiding in a control room. He goes down in one shot. Then again, at the ''beginning'' of the final level, you fight BigBad ClimaxBoss [[spoiler: Mutated Krieger]], who puts up a much bigger fight.
** ...And he's not much of a threat either, if you fight him by getting in close like you fought all the other giant trigens.
** Alternatively, you can just [[GroinAttack shoot him in the crotch]], as he takes massive damage if hit there (who doesn't?) and goes down after only a handful of bullets.

* HarderThanHard - Realistic difficulty. Made easier if you know how to take cover and dodge shots efficiently, and know the enemy locations, but good luck if you can't find any armor... highest levels are straight up NintendoHard.
* HopelessBossFight - Your first encounter with BigBad Semeru in ''Instincts: Evolution''. You can't kill him, and the fight ends as soon as he lands a hit on you.

* {{Narm}}: Jack. Daaaaar, Doy-ul?
* NeverFoundTheBody: Lampshaded by Val in ''Instincts'' after Doyle disappears following a huge helicopter crash. Sure enough, he turns up again at the end just fine. Averted in ''Evolution'', where [[spoiler: you find his corpse at the end.]]
* NoGearLevel: One of the final levels has Dr. Krieger taking away all your guns and dropping you into a jungle full of battling Trigens and mercenaries.
** He does give you ONE weapon... An assault rifle with ten rounds in it, just enough to kill the first trigen you see. After that, it is a NoGearLevel.
* TheStarscream: [[spoiler: Doyle again]]. In the ''Instincts'' storyline, Crowe turns against Krieger about 3/4ths of the way through the game and tries to take over the operation himself.

* ShootTheShaggyDog: In ''Evolution'', after going through one of the game's most annoying difficult fights in order to protect a badly injured Doyle from attacking rebels, you go off to look for an escape vehicle, and when you get back Doyle has apparently crawled off, leaving a trail of blood for you to follow. After following his trail for 2 entire levels, [[spoiler: you come across his corpse, and realize that an indeterminate amount of the trail was just the BigBad leaving a trail of clues by dragging his corpse along, all just to dick with you.]]

* TheAllSeeingAI: Long grass and cover often doesn't seem to have quite the same effect on their line of sight that it does on yours.

* AMillionIsAStatistic: Discussed by the Jackal:
---> The Jackal: The death of a 23 year old from Iwoa 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.

* EtTuBrute: 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.]]

* KillEmAll: 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."]]

* 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's though.

** Hector Voorhees and especially Nick Greaves both come across as noticeably saner and more self-aware than their propaganda-spewing, AxeCrazy 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.

* 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]]. [[spoiler: Your mercenary buddies actually survive, but you never meet them again until the end of the game. When they try to kill you]].

* ShurFineGuns: 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.
* ShroudedInMyth: As your reputation level grows, your character eventually gains this status among the enemy {{Mook}}s. 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!".

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: 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.
** When they see you they suddenly shift gears to catch up; [[SecretAIMoves something you can't do]].

* WarringWithoutWeapons: One of the final levels has Dr. Krieger taking away all your guns and dropping you into a jungle full of battling Trigens and mercenaries.
** He does give you ONE weapon... An assault rifle with ten rounds in it, just enough to kill the first trigen you see. After that, you're WarringWithoutWeapons.

* OrIsIt: There is no confirmation that the Jackal actually goes through with [[spoiler:killing himself at the end of the game. If the player opts to blow up the valley, the Jackal may just throw away the gun after delivering the diamonds. If the player opts to deliver the diamonds, the Jackal may set up a remote wiring system to blow the valley from a safe distance.]] Who knows?
** [[spoiler:For that matter, there's no proof you did either.]]

** And machine guns do ''not'' catch fire when they overheat.
*** Yes they do. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGAwrmOapb4]] However it was after 1500+ rounds fired.

* JackAttack

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* TheAllSeeingAI: Notably averted; enemies can't see you if you hide in foliage, and a large part of the game involves jungle warfare using the plants to conceal your position from the enemy.
** [[DemonicSpiders Trigens]], on the other hand...

* DemonicSpiders: The monkey Trigens. Since the shotgun has little to no stopping power against them, if they start their leaping attack and aren't dead by the time they reach you, you can wave goodbye to half your health.
** You can kill them in one (or two) precise shot(s) of '''automatic''' shotgun even on highest difficulty, at least in first game. Nothing is as satisfying as killing one in the air and hearing his dead body falling on the ground behind you.
** In ''Instincts'', there are Kamikaze Trigens, who run at you screaming at the top of their lungs and blow up in your face, killing you.

* PortingDisaster: ''Vengeance'' is widely agreed to be one of these. Ironically for a Wii port, the motion controls are actually regarded to be very good by most players, but everything else...TheyJustDidntCare.

* ScrappyLevel: When you get booted out of a helicopter, with an almost empty gun, into a jungle chock full of Trigens. With one charging at you right at the beginning.

* VideoGameMoviesSuck: Especially when combined with UweBoll

* AccidentalInnuendo: "I'll need to hold your equipment, bro."

* DemonicSpiders: Mortar operators in Act 2.

* {{Fanon}}: Probably the most common attempt to tie the two games together is to claim The Jackal is actually Jack Carver. It doesn't really work out since The Jackal is able to say words without adding "daaaaaar" to the front of them.
* FridgeLogic: The diamonds are referred to as being "rough" diamonds, and while they certainly have the foggy, milky appearance of an unpolished stone, their shape still resembles one of the typical diamond cuts (sort of like a [[SonicTheHedgehog chaos emerald]], you know). CoconutEffect, most likely.
** Also, your character seems to have an unlimited supply of matches with which to cauterize wounds, but when you're out of Molotovs and flamethrower gas, can you use those matches to start fires? Of course not!
* GoddamnedBats: The enemy jeeps spawned at checkpoints are relentless and fighting them quickly gets tedious.
** Hell, the checkpoints themselves.
* GoodBadBugs: It's rather amusing watching a bison walk head-first into an open car door and spontaneously drop dead.
** If you crouch into a shallow part of a lake and slowly lose health, using the HealThyself button produces amusing results, such as your character setting a broken arm in three places to '''pulling rebar out of his torso'''. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enb0zWbYUik Observe!]]

* OlderThanTheyThink: The "revolutionary" WideOpenSandbox gameworld of ''Far Cry 2'' was actually done a couple years earlier in ''Boiling Point: Road to Hell'', a revolutionary game done in by a buggy pre-patch release and its non-big-name publisher/developer and their lack of publicity. There's also ''{{STALKER}}: Shadow of Chernobyl''.

* PortingDisaster: The PC version started out locked to the same "fake" widescreen mode as the console versions (ie, cutting the top and bottom off a 4:3 image to make a 16:10 image instead of extending the field of view left and right). This was eventually patched due to complaints that players with multiple monitors were dealing with a field of view so vertically compressed they couldn't see anything.

* ScrappyMechanic: The Malaria mechanic forces the player to occasionally undertake a FetchQuest to get pills. Also, the respawning checkpoints.

* TearJerker: ''"You are terminal... same as I am"''. Also, the ending, though it might also count as CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming.

** If you crouch into a shallow part of a lake and slowly lose health, using the HealThyself button produces... [[UnderStatement amusing results]], such as your character setting a broken arm in three places to '''pulling rebar out of his torso'''. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enb0zWbYUik Observe!]]

** If you crouch into a shallow part of a lake and slowly lose health, using the HealThyself button produces... [[UnderStatement amusing results]], such as your character setting a broken arm in three places to '''pulling rebar out of his torso'''. [[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enb0zWbYUik Observe!]]

** If you crouch into a shallow part of a lake and slowly lose health, using the HealThyself button produces... [[UnderStatement amusing results]], such as your character setting a broken arm in three places to '''pulling rebar out of his torso'''.

* OrIsIt: There is no confirmation that the Jackel actually goes through with [[spoiler:killing himself at the end of the game. If the player opts to blow up the valley, the Jackel may just throw away the gun after delivering the diamonds. If the player opts to deliver the diamonds, the Jackel may set up a remote wiring system to blow the valley from a safe distance.]] Who knows?

There was also a [[TheMovie movie]] made of ''Far Cry'' made by... [[UweBoll take a wild guess]]. Most notable in that Stuttering Craig and Handsome Tom of ''ScrewAttack'' are in it ([[spoiler: Though not in the [[MissedMomentOfAwesome main, cut feature]]]]), and so are [[InglouriousBasterds Hugo Stiglitz]] and [[NoReservations Anthony Bourdain]], oddly enough.

* {{BlackHelicopter}}s: Well, Ospreys.

* RaceLift: Mainly as a result of the ''Instincts'' characters being extremely different from their ''Far Cry'' counterparts. Most notably, in ''Far Cry'' Roland Doyle is a black scientist who [[spoiler: ultimately betrays you and becomes the final enemy]], while in ''Instincts'' David Doyle is a white guy who kinda looks like Bruce Campbell and sort of becomes your [[VitriolicBestBuds Vitriolic Best Bud]]. Also, Valerie Constantine is changed to Valerie Cortez in ''Instincts''.

* PortingDisaster: ''Vengeance'' is widely agreed to be one of these. Ironically for a Wii port, the motion controls are actually regarded to be very good by most players, but everything else... EpicFail.

->'''Vaas''': Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?

** ...And he's not much of a threat either, if you fight him by getting in close like you fought all the other giant trigens.

* LeastCommonSkinTone: Averted. You're just as likely to be attacked in the jungle by white Afrikaners as you are by black Africans.