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

[Art Blade]

its the young folks you stranded with, they want to leave.

[fragger]

I see.

The designers must have stuck just any old map in and hoped nobody would notice :-() The game is definitely set in the Pacific. The Falklands are largely cold and bleak and the Pacific is mentioned in the game a number of times - besides, no Japs were in the south-western Atlantic during the war and the current inhabitants are Pacific Islanders (with Maori accents :-()) I can't imagine Jason's friends would be planning to sail a clapped-out old boat to a relatively inhospitable island group on the other side of the world. Australia, New Zealand or Indonesia would be way closer. Heck, even California would be closer.

Odd.

[PZ]

...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...

priceless!

[PZ]

... I will play with it some more and try to find more things to like about it...

One thing about a second play through.  I've been reading that a few fellows have had a problem on the second play through at the drug field mission.  Evidently the game is not tracking the number of fields properly thereby preventing advance.  I also experienced a strange occurrence on that particular mission, even though it was my first play through.

[DKM2]

I can't imagine Jason's friends would be planning to sail a clapped-out old boat to a relatively inhospitable island group on the other side of the world.

They are from southern California, what'a expect.   

[fragger]

Well, I finished. The last four missions are like the endgame in FC2, it tells you at the start of the fourth-last one that if you proceed you will be locked in until the end of the game, no more exploration or anything until you've finished. I agree with others in that the ending is pretty lame, and is proceeded by a lot of the usual MW-style scripted corridor stuff with the obligatory race against time thrown in, followed by one last tripping scene and a choice between one of two courses of action at the end, similar to the choice of dynamite or battery in FC2. I picked one option there, dunno what happens if you pick the other as I couldn't save there. Here's the way I went - THIS REALLY IS A SPOILER THAT WILL REVEAL THE OUTCOME OF THE GAME, so I suggest you don't look if you don't want to know what goes on at the end:

Spoiler

Citri has captured your friends and apparently wants you to kill them for her. You get the choice to either save them or join her. I chose to save them. I don't know what happens if you choose the other, but it looks like you might actually kill your friends for her. There very well might be a twist of some sort there, however - there was with the choice I made.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'll save you one piece of frustration for when you get near the end. This is another genuine spoiler but it won't give away the game's ending like the previous one does. It will give you a bit of a leg-up though to help finish one of the final missions more quickly, but it does reveal some of the plot, so don't look if you really want to experience the entire story for yourself. I know most of you guys aren't rapt in these scripted missions any more than I am, so if you don't mind some of the story being revealed, it will help:

Spoiler

You do kill Hoyt, but then you have to race to the airport to rescue your brother Riley (yes, he's still alive). When you get there, you'll find him in the terminal building. Find the old DC3 (the twin-engine plane on the runway, in the photo below). The terminal building would be off to the right in this picture, fronting towards you.
[smg id=4973 align=center width=600]
Otherwise you have to run around the airport trying to find which of the numerous buildings Riley is in (there's no guiding dot) and there's a whole bunch of guys chasing you and shooting at you the whole time, and possibly a chopper as well, and if you don't know where Riley is you'll have a devil of a time staying alive. I say possibly a chopper because the first time I played this mish the bloody thing killed me, but when I reloaded it wasn't there. Also watch out for the RPG guy in the tower opposite the terminal, in one corner of the airport - snipe him early if you can.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once you do finish and sit through or skip over the credits, you then get the option to keep exploring or quit. Of course I chose to keep exploring, and as I feared, all the outposts that were liberated remain that way - nobody left to fight. Nice one Ubi - not.

I should have left a few outposts unliberated so I could see what happens with them - do they stay occupied or not. I didn't think to do that so I won't know until the end of the next game. Maybe those of you who haven't finished yet should leave an outpost or two in enemy hands to see what happens with them afterwards.

To sum up: I love the great-looking open-world environment and all the side missions. I don't like the story missions at all. I've tried to put up with them and look on the bright side of them, but I have to be honest and say that I really don't like them. It won't stop me playing at least one more time, but I know I'm not going to like those missions any more the second time around. The story is not half bad, just the way it's put across that grates on me. There are a few too many lengthy cut scenes too.

All things considered I don't hate this game, but I don't love it. In fact I'm going to give it a rest before I jump back into it. I'm all scripted and mashed out for now.

[PZ]

That's a shame about the scripted ending.  I too did not like the ending in FC2 - seemed almost like the developers did not have time to do a proper open world ending.

The thing I dislike most about the linear, timed endings is that they appear to be designed more for the gamer to repeatedly play the same segment until they stumble upon the correct solution.  There is no thought, no planning, no preparation - just do the same segment repeatedly until with each repetition you gain a little more footing.  The only thing I dislike more are the timed events in which you cannot pass until you luck out on the exact path the developers intended.

[Art Blade]

agree fully, PZ, I have the same thoughts about that.

fragger, thanks for the 2nd spoiler  :-X (I skipped the first).

I'll try to leave at least one outpost in pirates' hands so we can see what will happen, but I have a feeling someone else will beat me to it as I've played for about 100 hours and only just now (err, last night) reached the southern island. I spend a lot of time on distractions  :-D

[PZ]

...I've played for about 100 hours and only just now (err, last night) reached the southern island. I spend a lot of time on distractions  :-D

Wow - lots of hours, and I expect to do the same.  The "distractions" are what I love about the game, and the main missions have not delivered what I had hoped.

I'm still on north island and have just finished the mission where I rescued Keith.

[fragger]

You're welcome Art :) And to anyone else who may find it useful. I think you would guess about what happens with that first-mentioned character anyway, and it wasn't like I gave the game's ending away there. I think it should save you a bit of grief :-()

With the first spoiler, do look once you've finished the game and see if you chose differently than I did, and if so, I'd like to know what happened as a result.

Yes, there are a lot of distractions 8) And an amazing array of things and places to find.

[durian]

As for the first spoiler, I made the same choice as you did fragger. It's difficult to pick the other.

[DKM2]

I can't believe I'm so far behind you guys, I've only cleared two map sections so far.
At this rate I might get to the end by spring

[Art Blade]

DKM2, you still have aaaaaaall the fun ahead of you :)  :-X What I liked was that I was almost afraid of what would happen if I did this or that, suspecting enemies behind every corner and bush I saw.. the thrill has been nice regarding the unknown parts :-X

As to fragger's first spoiler which I read by now knowing what Binnatics chose, and knowing what all of you chose so far, I will choose the other path and let you know  :-()

[durian]

You read the first spoiler ?  :o After betaing the game, I watched the other ending on Youtube  :-()

I'm now going back to north island to explore, do outposts, side quest, hunting rare animals... I think I will spend hundreds of hours in this game  :)

[fragger]

Actually, I just watched the other ending on You Tube as well. That's kinda sick... I guess you deserve that if you choose that :-\\

[DKM2]

Thanks Art, but I really can't get very far without crashing, so I save manually alot,
and it wastes alot of time. Damn thing even crashed in the pause screen (esc)
I've tried just about everything, my system temps are better than fine and I can run every other game I have just fine.
Only thing left to try is try is dx9 instead of dx11.

I have heard there's another patch tomorrow (12/13/12) 1.03 maybe that'll help.

[Art Blade]

Try F9 for quicksave (overrides "save1") and F11 for a quickload.

Indeed, maybe dx9 helps. I run it on dx9 myself (because I don't have a dx11 card), all settings on high except shadows which I set to low. No crashes so far. It's the same old right I bought four years ago only to be able to play FC2.. which in a way is cool as I'm playing the sequel on the same rig  :)

[PZ]

Only thing left to try is try is dx9 instead of dx11.

That sounds like a fine plan  :-X

[DKM2]

That sounds like a fine plan  :-X

Nope, didn't w@&k.
HOWEVER,, somebody posted a link to the 1.03 update on the ubisoft site a little early, and its feeling fine so far, took out two outposts in a row without a glitch.

[PZ]

Excellent!  hope the good fortune continues  ;)

[fragger]

I've found that if I try to sell individual items to a safehouse vending machine one after another, without using quick sell and without disengaging from the machine, the program will hang after about the fifth or sixth item sold. Does it every time... I was trying to get rid of a whole lot of leaves that I didn't need and quick sell doesn't cover these, so I had to sell them individually. The only way to w@&k around it was to sell four leaves, disengage from the machine, re-engage, sell four more, etc.

I've had the odd hang at other times too. But at times I can go for hours and hours without a problem.

[Art Blade]

the recent 1.03 patch didn't change or added a single option to the game's HUD or gameplay at all. At least the release note was just worth no more than three lines but the patch came raining down on me with juicy 350.5MB. What on earth is in it?! ???

[Binnatics]

I chose the same ending as the rest. And I was as disappointed at the result (stay exploring) as the rest of you. I gave the map editor a try, and I must say it's kind of cool. Although strictly multi-player it allows you to add AI components such as wildlife and foes. To certain limits of course. It's also possible to have different types of water levels and you can create waterfalls. And there's some sort of tool to create caves without the creativity art and I developed to do so, with rocks etc ;)
So great MP designer :-X
What I hoped for was being able to create small SP tasks or better; coop adventures. Nothing like that :'(

I started a second playthrough yesterday and did it (of course) on hard. 'Warrior' it's called I guess. That deserves a thumps up. Vecause I was already fed up with the ease of staying undiscovered in the game. Now on hard, it's really a challenge to remain undetected. The guards on an outpost are really sharp and do look around ;)

Will keep you posted :)

[Art Blade]

good to know (for some  ^-^ at least ) but I keep resetting the difficulty to easy as the game for some reason puts it back to medium, happened twice now.

About the ending, having read all your comments and the first of fragger's spoiler, I decided to watch a YT vid with both endings because I want to decide what might be best with regards to the fact that I cannot create a savegame backup to resort to in case I completely screw up. The first ending which none of you chose seems to be a bad choice when it comes to the "afterlife" (after the last mission). I will therefore, like you lot, choose the second option, too.

What I learned from all these posts is that leaving some outposts intact will help the later open end game to prevent it from becoming overly boring. Having liberated all outposts in the northern parts, I've now liberated only one outpost in the South which I really wanted to have to myself: the one in the westernmost part of the map on the southern island, there the northernmost outpost. It's called Lonely Shore Way, near Charlie Camp. I will, if possible, leave all other outposts untouched so I'll have some action (reinforcements..) without going to liberate them on purpose. I don't need any of these for anything because all available perks are now unlocked and I can't spend any more skill points plus I have all available weapons unlocked and in my possession. Right now I'm kind of idling in the game but will do the last remaining missions probably this weekend. :)

[PZ]

 :-X

I've left quite a few (most) of the outposts in north island intact for later fun  ^-^