Headscratchers / Far Cry 4

Eagles and other predators

• Exactly how does a 1-1.6 kg black eagle fly while carrying an animal more than 100x it's mass, such as a pig?
  • Either A) they didn't place a flag that eagles can't attack animals that are too large, B) Hoyt Volker was working with Min when he lost a lot of steroids in the wilds of Kyrat, or C) the eagle is actually an Assassin sent to murder an undercover Templar agent... who is a pig.
  • Even black eagles of that weight can have a wingspan of 1.5m and generate lift well in excess of their own body weight. Presumably the devs drew inspiration from larger eagle species of up to five times the mass, who are known in real life for preying on animals up to and including small deer. A 100-kg mammal is still an unreasonable stretch, however.
  • Given that one of the Survival missions has the Golden Path comment on tigers being relentless and not giving up chase (there's serveral tigers attack the group of Golden Path members, and they just charge at them without acting like actual tigers), it could be handwaved (like above) that the drugs farmed might have affected the wildlife.
    • Kyrat is also is just as much an Eldritch Location.
    • Maybe it's a West African Eagle.

Do Kyrati speak English?

• Is 'Kyrati' always spoken? Okay, yes, the main page does say that most people are actually a local dialect, either Kyrati, Nepalese, Tibetan or something along those lines... But due to how the Translation Convention is handled, we only know of only one person who only speaks English, Hurk. But... are we sure about that? What about Sabal, Amita and, most importantly, Pagan Min? Are they talking in English to each other / Ajay? What about Pagan, who speaks in an English accent? Does he carry this over when he speaks in Kyrati?
  • It's actually quite possible that they are speaking English. English, surprisingly enough, is spoken a lot in India and Pakistan, and reasonably commonly used in Nepal; it's not inconceivable that everyone actually is speaking English, and Hurk was just so much of a dumbass that he didn't understand the Kyrati accent. He did, afterall, disparage the Golden Path... while being a member of the Golden Path. Note that the Kyrati Films Racing questgiver also speaks with an English accent, btw.
  • That makes a lot of sense, especially since the game notes that Ajay is completely ignorant of Kyrat. Why would his mom teach him the language?
    • Tying into the above, it's also quite possible that Ajay refused to learn Hindi (they speak Hindi in that part of the world) because he was growing up in America and wanted to fit in. Remember, for all that he's native to Kyrat, culturally speaking, Ajay is effectively an American, and he's just as much of an outsider to Kyrat as Jason was to the Rook Islands. Also, we hear untranslated Hindi on several occasions: when Rabi Ray Rana is speaking to Chotu, and in Kalinag's segments.
  • There's no reason at all why Pagan's accent wouldn't carry over to Kyrati/Hindi.
    • The game confirms the characters are speaking English as Rabi Ray Rana breaks into an unintelligible language when working at his station during the first propaganda mission. This isn't quite as unbelievable as you may think as places with many regional dialects often use English as a kind of real-life D&D common. The fact the land was occupied by the British in the 19th century makes this a Justified Trope.

Ishwari as a spy

• How did Ishwari not get herself captured/executed doing the spy thing? In other words... are we seriously supposed to believe that the wife of the leader of the Golden Path just rocked up to the palace and Pagan let her in without even blinking? Or did Pagan really not know who his enemy was, back then?
  • Pagan Min is running a mostly foreign mercenary organization occupying a hostile nation. His intelligence services are probably not the best in the world. I don't think it would be that difficult for her to get close to him in disguise, especially if they already have agents in the palace.
    • Of course, Pagan Min knew Ishwari by her real name. It's possible he thought he was taking his enemy's wife as his own since she was an important religious figure and hostage.

Ajay's Age

• The game says that Lakhsmana was born in 1988, but it also says Ajay was born in the same year. What's up with that?
  • Writers Cant Do Math, I suspect. From the journals, its clear that Ajay was born sometime before Lakhsmana but during the middle of the civil war.
  • Pregnancy only lasts nine months. It's possible for a woman to get pregnant again as little as a month after giving birth. If Ajay was born in January or February it was quite possible for Ishwari to have had Lakshmana on the way and born before the end of the year.
  • Mohan was using a Nepali calendar to date his entry. A more detailed explanation can be found here. Basically the date 1988 in Mohan's calendar is actually 1987 in Gregorian reckoning.

Shangri-La

• Having grown up in a mountain village in the middle of nowhere in Asia, I can attest that this is quite possible.

• How did the thangka cause Ajay and Robert Barclay to hallucinate the exact same hallucination? How did it make them hallucinate at all?
  • Since it ostensibly takes place in the Assassin's Creed universe, we can chalk up anything weird to First Civilization artifacts. If you prefer the universes to be separate then the Kyrati religion is real, or there's a lot of power of suggestion going on.
    • Robbie and Yogi's mission has a letter which says Kyrat is covered in a highly-hallucinogenic fungus. Given the Shangri-La story is, apparently, a very famous Kyrati epic—it's possible its just a common vision like Jerusalem Syndrome.

Pagan Min and Durgesh

• If Pagan wanted to talk to you again, why did he lock you up in Durgesh instead of bringing you straight back to his palace?
  • "You've been a naughty little shit." — Durgesh was probably the Pagan equivalent of being grounded for killing Pagan's guys.
    • Who unlocked Ajay's prison door?
    • Why did Ajay even obey the soldier? EVERYONE in the room heard THE KING saying he wants Ajay alive. Heck, why is he even in this situation in the first place? Why didn't he repeat that neat little trick (FREE WILLIS mission) with Willis Huntley and blow up his plane before he can even leave the ground? No one would miss Huntley. He's not a beloved, charismatic fan-favorite villain like Vaas or even Pagan.
    • Later on in the PAYBACK mission, why didn't Ajay not plunge his kukri knife into Yuma Lau's solar plexus just as she blew mysterious powder into his face? He had more than enough time to react. She didn't even run away.

Messenger Paradox

• The only way you keep finding the Barclay's correspondence is through the bags of dead messengers. So how are they continuing to correspond with each other? Do they send multiple messengers everyday and hope one of them gets thru?
  • Probably. Given how dangerous Kyrat is, it seems prudent to send multiple copies just in case.
    • Except the last one, which was never sent.
• Forget the messengers - how did Barclay even get and send mail after he's declared a deserter and a traitor in short order? At this point I'm leaning towards the correspondence being fabricated by him in his madness, but that doesn't explain the courier skeletons.

Bhadra's Age

• Bhadra appears to be 12-14 during the the events of the game, but when Ajay asks her if she knows what his father's funeral was like, she says she was "...too young." But Mohan Ghale died in 1990, 24 years before the events of the game. While you could argue Bhadra is older than she looks, there's no way she could be 24 years old, only a year younger than Amita, and only two years younger than Ajay.
  • Ajay is asking a stupid question she's humoring. Presumably, Ajay didn't really think it through with all the crap going on.
    • Really, is this the kind of tone you use when you're humoring someone or being sarcastic?
  • She probably means she was too young to even be alive to witness his funeral (btw that clip was the first I've seen of Far Cry 4, so I could be wrong, but judging from her appearance, that's the most logical thing I thought of.)
    • Except that's not what a person would say, they would say something like "It happened before I was born." Saying you were "...too young." implies you were alive when it happened.
    • They're speaking English to Ajay so she's probably translating as best she can.

"Like A Normal Person"

• Why does everyone seem to act like sitting in one place for 13 minutes while waiting for Pagan is "How a normal person would act in this situation instead of what a video game character would do"? The entire time, you hear the screams of a man Pagan is torturing. Just to get to this point, you witnessed his men open fire on a bus full of innocent people (including you), then you witnessed him himself stab one of his own men to death brutally, and he is basically holding you there at gun point. I am not sure how a "normal person" would act in this situation, but I am pretty sure they wouldn't wait patiently eating crab tempura as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
  • Personally, I'm pretty sure a normal person would not want to give the bad guys reason to add another prisoner to the torture list.
    • Running away from a homicidal maniac is hard enough, doing it on the other side of the world when you have no passport, know nobody, are in a country that's full of deadly wildlife where the guys in charge are the ones you want to run away from and have no idea what will happen even if you do have the guts to do a runner... yeah, I dunno about normal people, but I'd sure as hell sit there for thirteen minutes because the last thing I'd want to do is piss off the guy who put me in that position in the first place.
    • Plus, Ajay was extremely lucky that he happened to have a rescue party — he had no way of knowing he'd get out alive. Darpan had texted for help, but Ajay didn't know if that help would come, when it would come, or what form it would take — and he had to decide whether or not to risk taking the opportunity he had in front of him not knowing whether it would ever come again. He'd have had to think about what he would do if the help didn't turn up at all or turned out to be no good. Hike through the Himalayas without food or water, without a way of defending himself against the wildlife or the Royal Army, walk right into India and hope the authorities don't notice — or worse, handing him right back to Pagan — then swim back to the States and hope they'd take his word that no, really, he's a citizen, please let him back in?
    • That's what someone in Ajay's position would have to think about. He lost his passport during the bus attack. A white man would have far less issue in the same circumstances, but Ajay is a person of colour and the way people would respond to that complicates things. He's quite clearly Kyrati, there's no reason why the Indian border control wouldn't roll their eyes at a passportless Kyrati claiming he's American (they probably get that all the time, and just because Ishwari succeeded in getting out doesn't guarantee Ajay would), and there's no guarantee they'd take his accent as solid enough evidence to help him, if they even cared enough. If he smuggled himself in, then he'd have to worry about getting to the Embassy when he presumably can't speak the native languages, and possibly without any money on his person. If he has a phone, is it charged up, and does he have the Embassy number in it, does he have reception? How long will his phone charge last him? What if Pagan called his buddies in India to make sure Ajay got intercepted again?
    • TL;DR — a normal person would, presuming they don't panic and blindly run/stay rooted to the spot, have to be thinking about all of the above. A normal person would also remember that if they fail, chances are, Darpan's gonna have a cell buddy, and do they want to risk that?
  • As far as you know, you already *are* on his prisoner torture list, considering how you go there and what little explanation you got. What worse could they do to you than they (presumably, Ajay couldn't see the secret ending coming) already plan to? Getting back to America isn't a priority, getting away from the madman torturing someone blatantly in the basement is. The animals may be scary, but if he knows about them, that just means he knows there are plenty of jungles to hide from the maniac torturing people twenty feet away from him. It would probably be a long term goal to get back (even if he lost his passport, he presumably knows his social security number and other forms of identification he could use to get out, not to mention records of him going into the country that would help him out), but a "normal person" wouldn't be thinking "Jesus, this guy is crazy. Oh well, let's sit down and rationally think how to get back home", the closest you would expect was "JESUS THIS GUY IS CRAZY. How am I going to survive this?". You don't have to know how to get back to America, just how to get away from Pagan. Even if there is no way you could get back home, that really isn't top priority right now. In the worst case scenario, he could apply as a refugee to India- the country is in a legitimate civil war, and he could always get the "I'm really an American citizen" thing straightened out when people aren't shooting at him.
    • It's easy to say that when you're looking at it from the other side of a screen, but most people, if thrown in that situation, would really just freeze up. People aren't used to violence actually happening around them, and if it does happen, their mindset would be something along the lines of "Don't provoke him, just do what he says and you'll make it out alive." Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't, but that is a normal human reaction, especially if you're not a soldier or any sort of badass.

Golden Path Uniforms

• Why does the Golden Path wears such conspicuous blue and yellow uniforms? would not it be more reasonable for them to wear camo?
  • The Royal Army wear red. I guess soldiers over in Kyrat prefer style over camo.
    • It kinda makes sense for the Royal Army to wear red since Pagan Min is a insane Fashion-Victim Villain, wich is not the case with the Golden Path leaders also the Golden Path are guerillas so it seems counterituitive for them to wear conspicuous clothes.

Kyrat Fashion Week, lightly singed

• I understand Mr. Chiffon would prefer Ajay come back in one piece, and animals needing to be shot with arrows to preserve their hides is more a gameplay mechanic than a part of the world. I get him telling Ajay to use an assault rifle or shotgun on large, dangerous prey, and the bullets holes might lend authenticity to the accessories. But...did he seriously expect usable material to come out of dynamite fishing for Devil Fish, when the corpse might well be blown to pieces? Or elephant leather that's been set on fire?