Windows Farcry 3 - your tips/tricks, findings and thoughts

First thing I did was go hunting for extra backpack, wallet, extra gun spaces.
Next buy silenced sniper rifle.
Next buy RPG
Boom boom BOOM BOOM job done on camp 1500XP kthxbye.

Now I've cleared the first island and have done every hunter, knifey, ! side quest and have maxed out every extra. I've just finished the

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'Crysis meets Uncharted as Jason becomes Nathan Drake' mission. We all know Kevin took some bum loving.

My chosen spec

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Silenced Sniper Rifle
Shredder (crazy good: decent range, silenced, tons of bullets, fast reload, near zero recoil)
Grenade Launcher (replaced the RPG, still kind of prefer the RPG though)
Either Special Edn Shotgun or Magnum with Redsight (prefer the Magnum really)

But now I've just got the Special Edn AWM I might just forgo the silenced sniper rifle because this thing can kill anything, 1 hit, at even further distance. One thing I do feel Ubi missed is the Fallout 3 option of exploding body parts. I mean, with all the swearing and sexual innuendo it's an adult game already, so why can't someone take an AWM to the leg or chest and watch it explode?

Having said that, it's hardly going for realism given the MASSIVE biodiversity on this island and the fact I've already killed an army's worth of pirates. Not sure whether Jason should worry about the ICC or PETA more tbh.

EDIT: You cannot get to the southern island without the game letting you. I tried twice already and got turned back by out of bounds notices.

PLEASE PUT ALL STORY STUFF IN SPOILER TAGS. DON'T SPOIL IT FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN'T YET FINISHED!

I also agree with the copious use of on-rails ********. I don't mind it in the side-quests because otherwise the game would be too easy, but in mission no thanks. The only thing that keeps me going on the missions is the fantastic animation and voice acting. The rest can sod off. Ubi could just make a game that's simply "here's 3 massive islands, go kill all the pirates, drug lords and thugs". Sell me new islands as DLC, add 10 more hours and new weapons. I'm OK with that.

What settings are people playing on?

GTX 580, i5-2500K, 16GB mem, M4GZ:

Ultra, HDAO, 0AA, 1 frame buffer.

No choppiness, but it's the first game I've thought I really need a 120Hz monitor or the motion blur is a bit much. In fact, I'm seriously thinking of the upgrade since I already use a 24" TN Samsung.

Late evening edit: I'm thoroughly pissed off with quick-timed, on rails ********. Kill the story Ubi, it's totally pants. Repeating the

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bloody fire faced/exploding people section over and over yawnyawnyawn stupid bow give me my rifle

 

OK... so I did

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kill Vaas

. I really don't like those dream/high moments...
Now I'm on southern island

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trying to blend in to those privateers of Hoyt

That name always makes me laugh
I like using my bow. Always use those "Rambo" explosive arrows on those heavy armoured twats

 

I've been sneaking into camp, putting C4 on explosive things and then retreating to a safe distance. I then shoot the animal cage (if there is one) with my arrow and let the animal take care of most of the pirates. Then it is C4 time

 

its too easy, even on warrior.

 

It is, It's not as much fun as Crysis but the story line is much better. It would be ****ing amazing if they had used the Overlay and controls from Crysis1 and stuck with the new world and story line.

 

hoodoo voodoo crap vs science fiction with nano technology and sleeping aliens

nahh

 

I felt it was more of a drug trip than hoodoo.

 

I hated how the Crysis story line changed from sneaky stealth through a partly believable story to ALIENS EVERYWHERE! FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE FIRE!

Lame.

 

This is true. Except for the scripted crappppp rawrrrageee

 

Picked this game up after listening to both TotalBiscuit and Campster say how terrible the campaign was, so I went into the game with the intention of absolutely ignoring the storyline. This ended up in me having nearly 20 skill points to spend, but nothing to spend them on, an entirely cleared out main island, everything in my inventory crafted, and served to ruin the main quest line even more so. The dissonance between just how much of a walking badass I was (I'd already killed several thousand people, yet my character was freaking out about holding a gun - wait, what?), how easy the missions where compared to what I had just been doing (taking the

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Medusa

was massively easier than any of the couple dozen outposts I'd just cleared), and how annoying the lack of open-world combat within the missions was all served to really rustle my jimmies. If I go far enough from the objective to scout something I fail the mission?

But my biggest gripe would be that old chestnut: immersion. As has been said by other people: the lack of immersion in FC3 - as that provided in Far Cry 2 - really does have a negative effect on this game. Everything you do is in first person, and your body seems to move very naturally, so why does the game feel the need to force me to use the quick travel feature in one of the first missions?! Why did I fail that mission because I chose to drive a car rather than use quick travel? It actually took longer to open my map, select the travel point, and let the game load than it would have taken just to hop in the car I used to get there and drive back! Then there is the ever-present "quest reminders" in the upper left that keep making themselves known during very intense drug-sequences! Look, game, I know you are expecting me to drink Varsol when I'm not actively playing you, but at the very least give me an option to turn off quest reminders! I really only need them on screen once, at the start of the mission. If I want to remind myself of what I'm doing I can always open up a quest menu - if you had one. Why you no have one?

The first seventeen hours of this game, grinding outposts, radio towers, hunting quests, assassinations, were the single best hours I've spent gaming this year. The past few hours I've spent on missions have pissed me off so much I'm unsure I want to continue, as it isn't the game I wanted to buy. I might even consider just loading up a new save to start from scratch again and have fun with the game once more!

 

My loadout is the Shredder, Bow (with explosive arrows), AK47 (because there's always plenty of ammo for it off pirates and enemies + very accurate) and the grenade launcher.

Regarding one of the missions (a few in) after you get to the southern islands....

Spoiler

I really like the mission on the southern island (a few missions in) where you have to creep past everybody without doing any takedowns or being detected to get one of their uniforms. Very good fun and a nice change from the usual routine. - I also like how your now able to blend in as the enemies too! awesome.

 

@Malvolio - ditto. I did everything I could on the main Island before I did any missions and now I have to grind the stupid missions before I can be allowed to get to the South Island. The contrast between the open world sections and the restrictive nature of the missions is just too great. They need to look at the Fallout 3 and Skyrim series to see how to balance open world and story missions properly.

This had potential to be a great game but it is hamstrung by the story.

 

You can only blame yourself for completely ignoring the story and then complaining when you can't progress because you haven't done any of it. Would have been much easier to do the occasional story mission along-side all the other things you wanted to do. Surely you could have guessed that at some point it would be necessary to actually do the campaign.

I actually thought the campaign was implemented well, yes some of it was a bit linear and the QTE's etc can be annoying, but the characters and environments you visit made up for that and made them one of the most enjoyable parts of the game for me.

 

How is it a bad thing that I wanted to actually play an open world game when I bought an open world game? As Jedra said, TES (Skyrim and such) as well as Fallout 3/NV did the open world thing right: you're never stopped from having fun in the open world or restricted from progressing because you chose to ignore the bad parts of the game (or just the bits that don't fit with your RP/objectives). If, in Skyrim, I want to level to Ultra Badass prestige and explore every last dungeon I'm never told at any point "No! Grind the story we've set out for you first!", rather the game just lets you go about doing what you want to do. If you want to argue that certain parts of the main campaign are integral to the character progression skillset, then the simple solution is to branch that part off into a side-quest (just got done with

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Citra

and cannot see why the expansion of my skillset needed to be part of the story, and specifically part of that one quest). At the moment it is just an unnecessary wall to progression. This is absolutely part of the COD'ification of games (which I stress is not necessarily a bad thing, but this implementation of restrictive storyline, progression, and inability to use the open world during quests is bad and damaging to the game itself - and the specific use of COD as a pejorative is simply due to it's ubiquity).

Again: this is an open world game that is trying it's best during the story to not be an open world game, and for those of us that enjoy open world games this feels a little jarring.

 

Fair point, but it's still disjointed. Why allow me to build up an arsenal of weapons and then, in the campaign, not let me use them? The campaign seems to assume that you are going to play it first which is fair enough but is at odds with giving me the world to wander.

 

All I'm saying is that you should have seen it coming. Of course eventually you were going to run out of the 'fun bits' and have to "grind" the campaign. Would have made it a lot easier on yourself to just do the occasional campaign quest alongside doing the free roam. It's quite clear what stage you should be at with map completion and the campaign because it takes you all around the first island so you can complete areas as you go. There wouldn't be a grind if you did it that way. It even says after some missions, "Go to blablabla or explore the island".

 

Maybe, but it will be a sad day in gaming for me if I always expect the linear approach. I am the kind of player that if they point my avatar in a certain direction, the first thing I do when I get control is try and go in the opposite direction!

The thing with this game is that I actually did not expect to be allowed to free roam so much at the start. So, when I inevitably ignored the request to go and find the first mission I was quite surprised to find I could go where I wanted. At that point I was lost in the game, doing what I love doing in games, which is 'whatever I want'!!

My point about this is that if they are going to design a game with free roam like this then they need to ensure that the campaign fits in with this ability. It's what makes me believe that the development was split, with one group doing the campaign and another group doing the free roam. Then, at the end the campaign was just dropped in. It feels like two different games. I do take your point that if I followed the missions, it would move me round the island and I could pick up side missions along the way, but someone made the design decision to allow me out of that linear track. If they make that design decision then it needs to be done so it doesn't break the flow of the campaign.

Take Fallout 3 - as soon as you leave the vault you can do what you want, and pretty much go where you want. Yes, there are some areas that are locked until you complete a story arc, but it is subtly done. And, when I do drop out of free roam and pick up a mission, I am able to use whatever method at my disposal and any weapons I have to complete it. Of course it kills the difficulty balance a little but it's pretty seamless between missions and free roam and the story missions still fit regardless of how much of the world you have already discovered.

I kind of get the impression with Far Cry 3 that someone in a suit at some point in the design said 'but we need a spectacular campaign and some set pieces to draw in the big FPS market consumers'.

It's probably me just trying to play cricket with a golf club, but they did lead me to believe that cricket was the game we were playing.

 

No, no I disagree.

As stated Skyrim and Fallout don't MAKE me do storyline, they just make some areas so progressively harder that you just cannot visit them. FC3 is unbalanced. Pimp weapons are too easy early on and if it really wanted to push the linear story aspect it should say "now do the story" "now free explore" "now do the story", because like Mol said - I killed an army's worth of guys then suddenly I'm afraid of killing someone and get knocked out with one hit to the head? At no point is it telling me I had to do the story so I kept on free-roaming. I couldn't guess how much 'spare' story I'd need to leave because I was worried about being put on the southern island and not being able to unlock parts of the first one. Now I have (what feels like) a ton of story to do and it's like I'm using 'square 1 Jason' again.

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FFS JUST SHOOT BUCK. He's given you the key JUST SHOOT HIM. I AM CARRYING FOUR GUNS.

Hey, you know what you crazy Voodoo lady, I'm not gonna drink that. I'm gonna get in a boat and go to the south island where I'm gonna Rambo my way through a lot more guys.

It's like the two aspects were designed by two different teams then just put together. Fallout and Skyrim do it much better. And honestly I said it above, if Ubi just wants to keep making free-roaming islands as DLC with new weapons and bigger, harder camps. Sure, I'll buy that.

 

The thought struck me after my last post here, and I think it's a good one: Would Far Cry 3 have been a better game if it didn't have a traditional series of quests?

Nix the main story, nix the sidequests, give me a massive open world with a checklist of things needed to upgrade (skins, relics, letters, ect), and task me with ridding the place of the piratical infestation by whatever means necessary. The set-pieces are already in place, and if they'd made the island two or three times the size it is with a bit more variety and difficulty in the outposts, with maybe one "end-game" base (just have some convoluted reasoning that you have to take out the other posts to attempt it, or something - with the caveat being that if you are an impossibly talented player that you may be able to just attack it directly), with these changes I honestly think it would have been a better game. Open world to the N'th degree.

 

I for one think this is an excellent idea, however not everyone would feel that way, and would berate Ubi for makeing a "directionless experience". Some people need that do this, do that in thier games.

Having thought about it though, I can't see it being too hard to put an option into the game to select that as an extra option. Maybe something you unlock afterwards. Make it Co-Op to throw in extra fun.

hmm, now I just got an idea: What if players are given the whole area to free-roam (North and south islands) a load out of weapons and told: "Here's your stuff, jump out of the plane when you want to. Now here's the fun part: Alone you must consolidate your control on an area (take over an outpost, base, switch a radio tower to your signal). This will attract
"help" (freelance, mercs, pirates, what you want to call them). From there you invade your opposition's positions taking over, or forging treaties.

Basically think of this a FPS version of Risk!
/2cents

*runs off to see if Far Cry 3 is moddable*

EDIT: Queue Dr. Evil laugh
Mod Thread on Ubi Forums