Sorry to rain on the parade so early, but...

[fragger]

 :-X

[fragger]

Just so we're clear, the following are observations, not gripes. Well maybe the first one is... :-D

The main missions don't get any less linear as the game goes on, I'm sorry to report ::)

I've now cleared all outposts, there are still some "Hunter" and "Wanted Dead" missions left (at this stage of the game the Hunter missions just give you money when you do them, there is no more crafting of pouches, etc. That all ends in the north), a smattering of supply drop races and some one-off civvy missions (the blue exclamation point ones). Other than that I still have about seven mains left to play.

As with FC2, once you go to the south you can revisit the north anytime, by fast travelling or by just taking a boat across. You can probably hang glide across the narrowest parts of the intervening water, haven't tried that yet, but you can see the north island from the south one and vice-versa. I still can't get over the extent of the map! It's a big map, like a small country's.

I'm finding that money is certainly no object, the problem is not a shortage but too much. Even with the highest wallet capacity of $10,000 I keep maxing it out and sometimes I can't sell anything at the vending machine/arms dealer. Having also done all the tower missions I can't even spend money on weapons. About the only thing I ever need to buy is ammo after a fight. Otherwise I've bought everything there is to buy, including all the maps, and I still end up with ten grand in my wallet. I wish I had that problem in reality :-()

I don't know why they made the loot sack so big either once it's been upgraded all the way as you just don't need all that room later in the game (96 items?) Once your skills are up you don't really need plants for anything anymore (I haven't collected a single plant for ages), you don't need any more animal skins by the time you're about halfway through, and you don't need all that crap that you get from looted bodies to make money - there's like ten million crates scattered around the islands and they always have money in them. Not to mention the cash that's just lying around to be picked up, poker games (if you win), prize money from contests and money from Hunter and Wanted missions. At this point in the game I could ditch the loot sack altogether, just don't need it anymore.

At this point I'm curious as to what will happen after the story is done and what the free-roam will entail. Doesn't look like there'll be much to do at this point. I should have left the outposts alone.

[Binnatics]

I've been quite entertained reading through your collection of complaints Fragger, and I do agree with every single one of them.
The story is crap. Simply put. And the way mercs act is crap too. Here, at FC3 section, we won't start topics about what mercs are saying and such. They just keep commenting the environment showing their brilliant minds: "Sand and water... sand and water... That's mud" :o Excellent thinking there :-X

Some other things I don't like is the ease of staying undetected. What were they thinking? That we are children playing with walkie talkies not knowing that enemies have ears????  I think, that what we used our creativity for in FC2, is now made available for the rest. By linear gameplay. Anyone performed a "death from below" already? It took me quite some creativity to set up a trap to even create the opportunity, lol And that while this 'perk' was supposed to make the game more diverse. My a$$!!
And then these relics, lost letters and memory cards... I like when collecting stuff results in some effort. Nope, after collecting 60 relics you get the last achievement. The rest is pure fetishism. Imagine that I just found out that there's a freaking 'missable' relic. And it's NOT on the map!! >:(( All these maps I bought show all relics except number one which is blody missable. Available in the cave where you bring your friends to. omfg :(
You guess right: I have all except that single missable bloody shitty tiny freaking relic. Not that I expect it to deliver me anything else then a louzy 250XP, which I really need right now (NOT)
With the XP it's the same as Fragger described according money. It's worthless after half the game.

Btw, the game mechanics according looting and weapon swapping is also far from satisfying. This all together makes this a marvellous game which remains as a beautiful friendly island full of worthless crap. I suspect we won't find golden AK's. And I think we'll need a special guide to direct eachother to the places where there ARE still killables available.

But it is indeed beautiful. And it is nice we have wildlife. And I do enjoy lot of the sidequests. It just wears off pretty fast :-\\

[Art Blade]

very good rant, Binnatics  :-() agree with you in many details, same as with fragger :)

Now check this out.

Reading all this reminded me of how I felt about FC2. Funny as it may seem, regarding my massively popular and huge "funny tricks and tips" post about FC2, I didn't like the game without cheating the living daylights out of it. It started with those fecking degrading weapons and ended with the inability to go stealth with a camo suit and those mortar guys do me in just thinking about it. I never liked the idea of working for all kinds of factions and helping the underground just to find myself to be the only guy everyone hated -- including my own "best" buddies who betrayed me in the end. Nevertheless, I kept playing it by my own rules.. I stopped the weather cycle so the sun would always shine, treated myself to unlimited ammo and non-degrading weapons and of course enjoyed the ignore_player and god mode cheat or the combination of both. And most of all I hated the near-linear end game starting with the escape from the prison towards the heart of the jungle crap. What kept me playing it on end was anything but the missions.

Now with FC3, funny as it may seem, regarding the fact that I was the first and only one who disliked the game before its actual release -- need a quote here --

Looks as if they were trying to hammer a set of different old games and movies into one new big chaos. Lara Croft meets Indiana Jones, some old FarCry1, revived a bit of JustCause2 and threw in tad of Jurassic Park, a dash of The Island with Blood Diamonds and a spoonful of Kane&Lynch. Maybe I missed some but hell, isn't that enough already.

The more I see, the more I wonder if I really want to play this.

-- and thinking that I even (without wanting to) caused one of the most pre-release committed members to leave this site for good just because of my opinion..

Why are you not excited ?

..and failing to reply within three days..

It's OK to ignore my question Mr.Hammer  :-X I probably will leave this site.

.. I was the first (after Binnatics) of us to actually get and play this game and I haven't yet felt the need of modding or cheating.

Kind of weird how things go sometimes, isn't it  :-() I am a defender of the Open World Game idea and really don't like linear games but for some reason I haven't yet been too put off by the linear missions of FC3. I said it earlier in this topic, I break the linearity by doing something else in the FC3 world before doing another chunk of main missions. During the linear missions I find the environments and locations most interesting and I somehow understand why they scripted big parts of those. Then again, I don't understand why they couldn't instead come up with the open world type of missions known from FC2.

Well. I find it funny in a way that some of you guys who were almost religious about FC3 before its release are now almost the incarnation of inquisition, by comparison, while I went almost the other way round  :-D

I can't predict what will happen next but I do hope that FC3 will keep us busy this way or another for a long time. I hope that once we've all completed our first playthrough and know what to expect, the next playthrough(s) will produce some variations and discoveries to share and enjoy together.

I'm about to kill Vaas now (for the first time) and I'm curious if or how much the following missions will P*** me off 

[Art Blade]

Oh, I forgot to mention how much I HATED malaria attacks in FC2  :-()

[PZ]

I'm working my way through the Chinese temple and the mines area.  This is one of the more linear of the main missions, and it feels almost like Uncharted 3 in it's game play.  I don't dislike it though, because I liked the Uncharted games.  I guess that it is more that I'm disappointed that the missions were not more open world.  However, I chose my weapons well before I entered this mission - the M700 sniper, the MP5, and the flamethrower as my preferred weapons.  I took out enemy snipers with the M700, used the MP5 on the Molotov chargers, and my flamethrower on the big fat heavily armored guy.

If one likes the Uncharted style games, and play the main missions like that, I guess it is OK.

What I appreciate most is the beauty of the world, and it's size for exploration purposes.  I also like the vehicles now, except for the Stryus.  I really like the weapons and that you can add attachments, and the fact that you can carry up to 4 weapons.  All in all, FC2 also had things that I did not care for, so my experience with FC3 is shaping up to be similar.  I'm hoping that I will develop the same kind of fondness for FC3 that I had for FC2, but it will likely be in a different way.  The bottom line for me is that I like many more characteristics in FC3 that allows me to overlook the linear main missions.  I'm looking forward to purchasing the PC version, and then to begin modding to see how that will go.  >:D

[Binnatics]

I should also state that I do like the game, and that it is very, yes VERY beautiful. I also like playing it, but I am a bit disappointed in the things that I mentioned. I will continue until I complete the story and see what will be left of the world afterwards. I think I need 7 more missions or something ;)

[Art Blade]

I know that I don't need pirates to kill to like the game, means I can see myself driving, climbing, walking, flying and diving without them and still enjoying the MASSIVE map and its details. And the occasional jump when those unpredictable animals managed yet again to surprise me when I least expect it  :-() I'd like to walk around the island and enjoy myself. From what I've seen so far, there seem to be some few pirates who come from the gods know where and play danger seeker on wheels, as well as one or two locations appear to stay in pirates' hands despite having liberated the area. I don't know if that will still be like that after the final mission but seriously, a game that stays open world without any bad boys? Even Ubi can't be that dull, can they?  ^-^

[PZ]

... Even Ubi can't be that dull, can they?  ^-^

I don't know if I'd take that bet  ????

I too have seen roving patrols in fully green liberated areas.  In fact, I was in search of a vehicle coming out of a safe house so I headed toward the icon on the map.  As I approached, it was from a high vantage point - rock overhang.  Looking down I saw two pirate patrols parked while the men lounged around.  I threw down a grenade and took out all four.  Not long after that a machine gun patrol arrived, saw me and started blazing - dispatched those as wall but before I could descend to take my pick of vehicles, yet another patrol arrived.  In the end, I had a used car lot of 6 vehicles to choose from as I made my way toward the next main mission marker.

[durian]

Phew. I've just finished the game. Man, the last boss fight was so lame: it's just long QTE's. The story is not good, cliched and uncompelling. I find it hard to believe a normal guy like Jason became a badass, a killing machine so fast after getting in the islands. Now that I'm finished I'll explore and take out the outposts as well as hunting and collecting relics to buy signature weapons. So far I've unlocked 2 sig weapons: the Bull and AMR which I bought as I love sniping.

I will shoot everyone at each outposts without being worry about them not respawning since I have a manual save which is at 40% complete and there are a lot of unclearad outposts left.

[PZ]

Did you use a specific weapon on the boss, or do you recommend one?

[durian]

I was forced to use a weapon to fight against him. So no choice here.
You have to press the right buttons about 10 times :o And it's easy to fail since you have to press quickly.

[PZ]

I was forced to use a weapon to fight against him. So no choice here.
You have to press the right buttons about 10 times :o And it's easy to fail since you have to press quickly.

Dang, I don't like those button mashing missions.

[fragger]

Me either :(

Interesting melange of opinions about the game so far. I respect everybody's points of view, and I would certainly never leave in a huff if folks disagreed with me :-() I wouldn't expect everyone to in the first place. What I love about the posting membership here is how we can voice our opinions without getting personally castigated for it. If there were any that got huffy and left, well I think we're better off without them ;)

The old adage is certainly true that you can't please everyone. Thinking on it some more, I'm not sure if one can really compare this game to FC2, in a lot of ways it's as different to FC2 as FC2 was to FC1. I guess I was hoping for the same kind of open-ended approach to main missions that FC2 provided. I never modded FC2, never even used a single cheat, and I loved it that way for three years. Even after all that time I was still experimenting with missions. Like Art I never really liked the endgame and I would usually quit and start a new game when I got to that point. FC3's story missions offer almost zero scope for experimentation, and I sorely miss that. I can never think, "Hey! Here's an idea I can try out next time around!" because the opportunities don't exist for that, and there's no time anyway for experimenting because you're so often racing against it. The nearest FC3 gets to having truly open-ended missions is in the outpost liberation and Wanted Dead ones, and I can see them becoming a tad stale after a while.

But I do, I really do, love this game world, it's fantastic :-X It seems kind of a shame to let it go to waste :-() I will play with it some more and try to find more things to like about it. And I will do another playthrough, only this time I'm going to try a different approach - do all the "preparation" missions to get the carrying capacity up as much as possible, find enough relics to unlock my favourite sig weapons, do all the towers - everything except the outposts and a few other things. Then, once I've got myself kitted out, take on the main missions one after another until they're out of the way, and I should then end up with a world similar to FC2's - explore and admire the scenery, find and collect stuff (some of those relics are a challenge to locate and get to) and still have plenty of fighting to do along the way.

In the meantime, I still have about half a dozen main missions to do. So stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature will hard-favour'd rage - and batter that bloody story into submission :-()

[durian]

In one of the last story missions where you have to infiltrate a large compound and destroy something, you can approach it in many ways just as you did in FC2. I think it's probably the best story mission in the whole game.

I sniped some guys first: heavy, snipers and then went in all gunz blazing  ;D

[fragger]

Cool! That's more like it :-X 8)

[PZ]

That's good news durian  :-X

Sounds like you have a good plan for a second go through fragger.  Because FC3 in a way is more like AC3 than it is like FC2 I wonder if the developers plan to release any mission DLC in the future like they do for the AC series.

I've often wondered why they never released any kind of mission pack for FC2, particularly since they did not do anything for a single player map/mission generator.

[fragger]

You just reminded me PZ, my FC3 Insane Edition came with a ULC pack! I forgot all about it. Includes:

Monkey Business - 4 missions;
The Lost Expeditions - 2 missions with "40 additional minutes of gameplay", whatever that means;
The Warrior Pack - 2 new tatts and a fancy dagger;
The Hunter Pack - 1 M700 hunting rifle with choice of 3 skins;
The Predator Pack - 4 rare predators - Black Panther, White Tiger, Red Vulture, and a Thylacine.

That last is interesting, The Thylacine is also known as the Tasmanian Tiger. Of course it's not a tiger at all, or even any sort of a cat - it's a marsupial which looks like an unlikely cross between a dog and a kangaroo with a striped coat. In reality it was thought to have been hunted to extinction by the end of the nineteenth century, but some claim to have seen them both in Tasmania and on mainland Oz in more recent times. As the colloquial name suggests, they were native to Tasmania. What they're doing in the game's Rook Islands is anyone's guess, but it's plausible that some could have been captured and transported as curiosities, then escaped into the jungle. If there's any truth to the rumour that they've been seen on the mainland here, it's possible that they got there in just this manner. Sorry to digress...

Anyway, after this 'thru I'll give those extras a go :-X Those listed above are the SP add-ons, there was some multiplayer stuff too, like a Type 10 WW2-era Jap Flare Gun in The Lost Missions and "Early access to the tattoo editor". Not a lot there.

[PZ]

... 2 missions with "40 additional minutes of gameplay", whatever that means

It cracks me up when they assign a specific time in minutes to game play in an open world game.  At least they didn't say 42.39 minutes of extra play, but you'd better run fast...

[Art Blade]

first off, during a mission I found a map in the game lying on some table and it got there in preparation of leaving the island. It shows the Falkland Islands.. "East Falkland"

[smg id=4980 type=link align=center width=500 caption="FC3 0003 East Falkland"]

[Art Blade]

And secondly, the mission that we know from the previews/teasers when Jason takes off in a helo and gets shot down.. pretty much leaves it to you how you want to do it, open end/world style. Nice :) You start without weapons but can find everything from an SMG over sniper rifle and shotgun to an RPG..  :-D


Not so funny, however, something that is on topic here, was the part when you first take off to the southern island. On screen it reads "use CTRL to open parachute" and I tapped CTRL.. then I hammered it.. then the right control, the left control.. crash. Restart (airborne, at least) and do that thing again. And again. I couldn't for the life of me get the chute to bloody open (funny side note: On descending from +100m which gave me an achievement despite doing a historical face plant on the beach, I heard my character go, "that was AWEsome!!" before he died.  ??? ) The idiots had apparently not taken into consideration that I could have had the silly idea of making use of the key remap function or they got it completely wrong for other reasons. Several sky-dives and face plants later, I found out that it was the key bound to "change seats" - C.  :D At least I had the pleasure of doing some crazy stunts and die rather spectacularly over and over again. I found out that my F key (use/interact) opens and closes the wingsuit as often as you want during free fall.

[Art Blade]

sorry to put tips here.. but it was derived from a rant.  :-()

[fragger]

That remapped key thing caught me out there too :-() It was like the panicked keyboard-pounding equivalent of desperately trying to find the ripcord :o I also flew a bit too far and got the "Warning: You are leaving the mission area" or whatever that message says.

Funny thing - after you do that mission, every time you fall, like off a cliff or a tower, the message appears briefly telling you to hit [whatever key it is] to deploy your wingsuit. Which just made me think - I wonder if you can actually base jump in this game? Gonna try that later when I find a nice high cliff.

Re: the map, nice find Art :-X

At the bottom of the map it says "[something] Ocean", I can't quite make it out. If it says "Pacific", then these Falklands are in the wrong ocean :-()

Here's the real East Falkland from Google Earth:

[smg id=4981 align=center width=600]

Doesn't look like the map in your picture, unless what's on the map is one tiny coastal island somewhere.

[Art Blade]

I checked my original screenshot, "South Atlantic Ocean"

[fragger]

Well, the ocean's right then... Maybe the Falklands is where someone in the game is thinking of going to.