Chaos

Like usual I haven't updated this blog in ages and so I'm starting this post talking about how I haven't updated. And now I'm talking about how I usually talk about it, which sadly isn't the first time it's happened. Before things more recursively meta let's just get to the point.

I had no idea in mind when I started this, no well thought out thesis about why something sucks and how everyone should listen to me. No this post is just going to be another one where I have several topics with no coherent train of thought between them. They're just stuff that I've been thinking about (and hopefully someone else wants to hear about).

(Like last time, some of you may have already heard me prattle on about these already)

First off: Just Cause 2, in particular the end.

JC2 is a sandbox, third person shooter with vehicles. If that sounds familiar to you it's because it's one of the most frequently used combination of genres in games at the moment. It's like unnecessary sequels for films in that they are both ridiculously common and hopefully in a decade we'll all shake our heads and laugh at how things were.

But I digress. You play as Rico Rodriguez, an unstoppable god-like action hero who works for the CIA the Agency. Rico is sent into the fictional Asian island nation of Panau which is run by an oppressive regime, to locate your fellow operative/mentor Tom Sheldon who has gone dark and possibly rogue. To track him down you must generate chaos to weaken the governments hold and win the trust of various terrorist factions.

Pictured: espionage

A couple story missions in and you find Sheldon who tells you that he had to go as deep undercover as possible as things are serious; you're just told to keep doing what your doing (fun enjoyable sandbox-based destruction).

Fast forward to the end and it's time to take down the dictator Panay and hopefully replace him with a US-friendly puppet. You seemingly take down Panay and then it turns out that it was all about oil. That's right oil (admittedly it's a lot of oil). Without Panay suddenly Russia, Japan and China are all making their move to try to get control before the US.

And then Panay (whose somehow still alive) launches a nuke at each of the four countries. For the last mission you must grapple onto and disable the nukes. For the last one Rico reprograms it (apparently that's possible) and sends it crashing into Panau's oilfield, destroying it so now one gets it. Rico, Sheldon and associates sit back content that there won't be a world war and I bang my head on the desk at the stupid third act.

There are several things that really irk me, and hopefully you too. The developers had all the pieces to make a coherent, adequately logic end story and then they sudden;y drank paint thinner and put it together wrong.
You'd think that since Sheldon had to go dark for big important information gathering it would be because he was trying to track down where the nukes were. That's reasonable, nuclear weapons are high stakes and anyone would be secretive about them. But no, he was just trying to track down Panay or something, and the nukes caught him and EVERYONE ELSE by surprise.

And then there's Rico taking out the oilfield. This pisses me off on every level, to the extent that if we added another level I would pissed off on that too. But enough tortured metaphors, there's a bad climax to criticise.
Firstly there's the obvious safety concern. Nuking an offshore oilfield (one with more oil than the rest of the world combined!) is not going to end well. Rico and co end the game sitting on a boat with their backs to a huge mushroom cloud, discussing what to do now. They figure that the Agency will be rather mad that Rico destroyed more than 50% of the world's oil but they've got this nice tropical paradise to retire to or something. Except that they don't as any of the following might now befall Panau: nuclear fallout, tidal waves, poisoned water, oil fires, economic depression, collapse of government and order.

About the only disaster that won't befall Panau

And then there's Rico's reasoning. Sure any of the four countries involved getting control of all that oil would shift the balance of power and could quite possibly result in war. But Rico isn't allowed to gain any good karma points from this. You see when generating chaos not everything you do is destroying military bases and propaganda, this also things like water towers and transformers for tiny little villages. So Rico isn't allowed to do anything redeeming. He's a horrible person with the facade of a good guy. I suppose in retrospect his final act is perfectly in character, causing destruction for a weakly justified goal.

So remember way back at the start when I said I'd cover several things. Yeah well...I'm not.