3) Story
Getting to the meat of the meal, now. Story is the big deal. Games have become pretty much accepted as culturally and historically significant, so they’ve had to up their game from just “make that pixel shape go over there.” Now they have to be multi-layered, emotionally resonant pieces of art with compelling stories and interesting characters. They have to be interactive HBO shows.
You think Grand Theft Auto is pretty much the king of this, right? Its edgy and provocative characters swell and break in a sea of social commentary, forcing the player to make difficult and memorable choices? Well, actually… not so much.
Let’s consider the three main characters and how opaquely generic they are: Trevor, the nasty man who is nasty (but maybe he’s just misunderstood!), Michael, the fat ex-gangster who effectively decides to do “one last job,” and Franklin, a black hood-rat who’s trying to leave “that life” behind. The only thing missing from this bag of clichés is some airhead blond girl who’s desperate to be famous for no reason and a disenchanted wife who’s banging a tennis coach. *coughs*
That said, they’re exceedingly well acted, and one great piece of characterization is that Franklin has a dog.
Far Cry 4‘s story doesn’t exist, according to its developers. They are just leaving it to you to “create your own story,” or something or other. What they really mean is that you can roam the map and do sidequests co-operatively. This is actually very excellent, and more fun than basically everything else that exists. You can’t do any main story missions with a buddy though, but all that turns out to be is a series of pick-a-path style of moral dilemmas that other games have been feeding us for years now – with a couple of endings available depending on your choices.
The main cast of characters are at least semi-interesting, but like Far Cry 3‘s Vaas Montenegro before them, they’re woefully underused. One thing that sees a good amount of use, however, are dogs.
