Though
this may surprise the people who read my articles, I play more than
just RPGs. Surprisingly enough, the last two games I have beaten have
something in common. They attempt to teach similar aesops through
their stories. However, one performs this task very well. The other
fails so miserably that the writing can only be called marginally
better than a David Cage game. These two games are Wolfenstein: The
New Order and Far Cry 3. This week, I plan to compare the two in
order to help explain how one failed and the other succeeded. The
reason is that I strongly feel that they were both making an attempt
at the same thing. That is, they wanted to mock the kinds of
protagonists we see in the shooters that are released year after
year.
To that
end, they have a similar tone in terms of gameplay style. Both
Wolfenstein and Far Cry 3 have a very arcade-like style to the way
they play. By this, I mean that they can throw many enemies at the
player and feel reasonably confident that the player has the ability
to take them all out. Missions, especially towards the end of the
game, tend to have enemies swarm the player in waves. Typically,
these enemies die very quickly, but there are a few enemy types that
require more skill to take down. Furthermore, because health and ammo
do not fully-regenerate, there is an element of resource management
required. Players must mind either their total health and/or the
number of healing items they have, on top of their body armor and the
number of bullets left in their inventory. Excessive use of these
resources will make future battles more difficult. Combined, these
elements give off a sense of power, but require tactics in order
maintain their advantage.
On top
of that, both games have sections with stealth elements. In these
areas, the objective is to eliminate the opposition before they have
the chance to raise the alarm and call for reinforcements. Players
can just charge-in guns blazing, but they are better off if they take
the time to stay undetected. Various tools in their arsenal can
assist them by giving them silent attack options. Minor RPG elements
are also included. With them, players can develop their character's
skills and physical abilities in order to perform better. They can
customize their character in order to best suit their playstyle, be
it stealthy assassin, commando, or somewhere in between. With this,
both games offer a sense that the protagonist is slowly developing
over the course of the game, yet never lacks in skill.
Even in
terms of story, there are many similarities. Both games have the
player go against foes that are irredeemably evil. Wolfenstein: The
New Order, as one might expect, has Nazis as the primary opponent.
Far Cry 3 pits the player against kidnappers, slave traders, and drug
dealers. In this way, they do not focus on the effects of violence on
the enemy you are fighting. Rather, the focus in more towards the
protagonist and how they change as a result of being thrown into the
violence, becoming an active participant in it. Wolfenstein shows how
years of fighting Nazis have affected BJ Blazkowicz's mental health.
Meanwhile, Far Cry 3 demonstrates Jason Brody's decent into a spiral
of death and violence after being kidnapped and ransomed by Vaas and
his pirate crew. Though Far Cry 3 also uses the progression system to
better demonstrate the transition, both games take close looks at
their player characters.
However,
there are crucial differences in these stories. The compound effect
of all of these differences helps to explain how one game succeeded
while the other game failed. The first difference is in the
likability of the protagonist and his supporting cast. In
Wolfenstein: The New Order, BJ Blazkowicz is shown in a pretty
positive light. Throughout the course of the game, he often goes out
of his way to assist the people he fights along-side, and not just in
terms of completing missions for them. He is also frequently seen
talking with other US Army and Resistance fighters, helping them cope
with the realities of the world they live in. For example, early in
the game, a younger recruit is visibly shaken by the war with the
Nazis. BJ approaches him with tips on how to calm oneself down after
going through traumatic events. We are also given reason to care
about the supporting cast. Each character has their own quirks,
personality, and reasons for fighting the Nazis. While some
occasionally slip into jerkwad territory, they always have a reason
to do so. The character Fergus, to demonstrate the point, gets a
little angst when he realizes that he is an old man and is not able
to fight as well as he did way back when, feeling like he is holding
the team back. Overall, the characters are very well written.
The same
cannot be said for Far Cry 3. In that game, almost every character
that is on the protagonist's side, including Jason Brody himself, is
insufferable. The game opens with them holding several wild parties
and imbibing massive quantities of alcohol, using their rich parents'
money. Then, they complain about their love lives and other such
nonsense. All of them are the exact same character, just with
different faces and genders. Even when Brody changes over the course
of the game, he simply becomes another flavor of jerkwad. He
transforms from a stupid, rich, white boy into a stupid, rich white
boy with drug-induced delusions of being some great warrior. If
anything, he becomes even more irritating as the game goes on. Unlike
in Wolfenstein, the cast of characters is completely unlikable, which
makes it hard to care about them when they go through their ordeals
and change as a result.
Another
major difference is the time-table for the ordeals in each game. In
Wolfenstein, BJ fights against the Nazis for decades. At the end of
the game, he reaches a point where he realizes that he has been
fighting Nazis for so long, over half of his lifetime, that he can no
longer do anything else. As a result, he is okay with sacrificing
himself to save the world from their evil. Since he cannot live in
the world he helped to save, it is preferable to end it all when he
is no longer required to fight. It is a distinctly dark moment, but
an important one. Most video game shooter protagonists can experience
much horror and return to civilization at the end of the day as if
nothing happened. Wolfenstein decided to instead play their
protagonist completely straight by having him struggle for decades
and realize that he cannot do the same.
Far Cry
3, meanwhile, takes place over the span of at most one or two months.
Because of this significantly shorter time-frame, Jason Brody's
“growth” from a novice into a full-fledged fighter is much less
believable. Vaas, the game's (technically) secondary antagonist,
makes a remark that best underscores this point. Paraphrased: “You
think that you get a couple of tattoos and a few guns and suddenly
you're a 'warrior', white boy!?” Though said by a character who is
certifiably insane, this statement is no less true. No matter how
much training and conditioning one undergoes in a month, they cannot
make such a dramatic change like that. Those fundamental changes take
years. The events of Far Cry 3 would be traumatic. However, they
would not just turn some nobody into a cold-blooded murderer, at
least not so quickly. As a result, any commentary Far Cry 3 is
attempting to make on video game protagonists feels meaningless.
Ultimately,
though Far Cry 3 is obviously the more well-known and popular of the
two, it fails on a much more fundamental level than Wolfenstein: The
New Order. Wolfenstein is more successful at subverting its mechanics and teaching the aesop at the center of both games. Even in a general sense, Far Cry 3 is terrible in terms of
its storytelling. Having said that, both games are still really fun
to play. The stand-alone Blood Dragon DLC for Far Cry 3 better
demonstrates this by re-contextualizing the mechanics with a story
that takes itself significantly less seriously. It is so much better
than I would easily recommend it over the original game. From what I
can gather, the writers of Far Cry 4 also learned a lot for the
failures of the previous game in the franchise. Wolfenstein is also
worth taking a look at, if you can find it at a discounted price.
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