Ends and Beginnings That Are Also Ends
Next week I’ll be covering Tokyo Game Show, so I need to
remember how to write words about games. That’s why I’m blogging every day for
the next week, after which my TGS coverage will begin.
**Far Cry 5 Spoilers Within**
It turns out that Joseph was telling the truth. We were
teetering on the edge of destruction, at the mercy of a wrathful God, and
Joseph was in on it. Divine forces were whispering in his ear, giving him a
godly heads-up about our impending doom. Far Cry
5’s Hope County is gone, consumed by a nuclear fire, presumably along with a significant
portion of the US.
All my slaughtering was for nothing. The countless times
I interrupted roadside executions, freed locals, cleared bases, located
collectibles and culled cultists – it was all for naught. My friends are
vaporized, and my dog is gone. My yellow helicopter is scrap metal, and my guns
are fucked.
My Far Cry 5 ending was desperately grim, but I kinda
liked it. It didn’t make the things I did during the game any less fun, and I appreciate
one final twist of the knife at the end of a long game. Clearly my struggle to
save Hope County was doomed from the outset, if you could call it a struggle. I
spent most of the game base jumping, skunk hunting and crashing light aircraft
into ponds, none of which was particularly constructive or helpful.
With our protagonist trapped in a bunker with a
top-knotted god-friend for the foreseeable future, it was time to move on to
something else. That something was Nier Automata, one of the most talked-about
games of last year.
I have successfully avoided Nier spoilers, yet I had some
idea of what to expect. For example, I knew that the story would unravel over
multiple playthroughs and various endings. I was well aware that it would do
things that would annoy me, but in other areas it would delight.
I started playing Nier Automata on Tuesday evening; I
stopped playing Nier Automata thirty minutes later.
I thoroughly enjoyed the prologue, in particular the
changing camera perspectives and industrial setting that reminded me of Metal
Gear Solid 2’s Big Shell, but I fell at the final hurdle. My inelegant button mashing
proved insufficient, and I copped it at the end-of-level boss. Fine, I thought,
I’ll pay more attention to the patterns and mechanics and beat it easily the
second time around. Let’s go, android lady!
But no. It turns out that my death was an ending of
sorts. The credits rolled and I was thrown back to the very beginning of the
game with fuck all to show for it. Thirty minutes of lost gameplay may not seem
like much to some, but that’s often a full evening session for poor old me. I
was royally fucked off and I took the hint that this might not be a game for
me. Maybe I’ll give it another try, or maybe I won’t.
Not that it matters anymore, as I’ve moved on to
Spider-Man. It’s quite good.
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