I just couldn't take it anymore.

I was about 15 hours into Far Cry 3, and the next mission involved sitting down to play a game of poker with the game's main villian, Hoyt.  

It was sure to lead to an intense prison breakout of his heavily armed fortress, which would have been a lot of fun, but it didn't matter.

I just couldn't handle another 7 minute monologue about the nature of good and evil, or the true nature of fear or whatever I would surely be forced to watch.

Far Cry 3 is a good game.  It's one of my recent favorite games, but enough was enough.

The Good Moments

After about 6 hours into the game, I felt like I had really gotten into a groove.  I had earned the ability to carry 4 different weapons at once, had mastered the game's convoluted inventory system, and felt I understood the ins and outs of what would, and what wouldn't get an enemy's attention.  

It's at this point, when I would slowly stalk upon an enemy compound, use my binocs to tag enemies (giving me the ability to see their silohettes through walls), fire off a few sniper rounds at the sharpshooters, and then improvise my way through the compound's takeover.



These compound invasions weren't part of the main story, but were my favorite parts of the game.   I played on hard mode, with a standard loadout of assault rifle, sniper rifle, shotgun, grenade launcher, C4, grenades, and molotovs.  I typically would use all of these in the dismantling of a compound.  It was great.

Much of the story missions were a lot of fun too.  I particularly liked one near the end when I had to guard various sites from waves of enemies, as my NPC partner uploaded data or diffused bombs or something.  


The Bad Moments

Unfortunately, inbetween the story missions, most of which you must complete in order to access certain items or reach certain locations, are the 'cinematic' segments.  Here's where the boredom begins.

The problem isn't the acting (which is damn good for a videogame) or the lines themselves (nothing too cheesy), it's the writing structure.

Since you play the (mostly) silent protagonist, and the game never leaves the 1st person perspective, 99% of these moments are one character talking at you.   It's just monologue after monologue.

Vaas talks at you about the nature of insanity.  Citra talks at you about the definition of a true warrior.  Hoyt talks at you about keeping his people in line through fear.  Your girlfriend talks about how killing thousands of people is changing you.    



None of these are particularly interesting, nor nearly as deep as the game would like them to be.  This isn't Appocalypse Now nor Blade Runner.   My mind never approached being blown.  

They say that conflict is the nature of drama.  Good writers try to inject conflict between characters into every scene.  This is difficult when 99% of your scenes involve only a single character talking, but it's not impossible.  

Think about when Yoda is explaining to Luke the nature of the force, in Empire Strikes Back.  This is basically a monologue, but it's presented as more of an argument, with Luke complaining that he's not strong enough, and Yoda arguing that the force comes from within.



In Far Cry 3, there's hardly any conflict in the cinematics, and as such, very little drama.  It would be like watching the scene where Morpheus explains the nature of the Matrix to Neo, over and over, minus the awesome visuals.  

Actually, it's alot like The Matrix: Reloaded.   


Conclusion

So that's why I stopped playing Far Cry 3.  I just couldn't take watching another boring, unskippable, monlogue.  

As fun as the story missions often were (about 70% success rate in my opinion), it just wasn't worth it.

Though I will never finish the main story campaign, I did sieze all of the game's 30+ compounds, and played for at least 15 hours.  So definitely a worthy purchase.  

Maybe Ubisoft will release a patch that will get rid of the arbitrary upgrade locks.  Then new players could skip the story mode entirely.