Endgame question - spoiler sanitized

[mandru]

I'm at the Fuel Depot mission with Sam and in watching walk through videos to prepare for the attack have come to the realization that it is exactly the opposite of any type of game play that I might find enjoyable.  Being so close to the end of the game I scanned ahead through the last couple mission's walk through videos up to the "final choice" and can find absolutely nothing from this point on that interests me and less than zero reason to care about completing the game.

So here's my spoiler free question.  Does only one of the two endgame choices allow after game play to continue on the islands once that selection has been made?

Either way I'm pretty disappointed with UBI at how they've decided to script this game ending and what I have been seeing as a rating of 8 on a scale of 1 - 10 for FC3 has been critically reduced.

[PZ]

Either allows game play to continue after the main mission line is done (no matter which choice you make)  All you need do is let the credit roll Assassin's Creed style, and then you are good to go roaming the islands doing what you will.

Spoiler

The missions you are on now are not too bad, and believe it or not, there are actually open world aspects that you might explore.  For instance, the game would have you go in through the front door in one of the industrial buildings, but instead you can go around back, climb up to the second floor and attack from there - quite easy I might add, even on the console.

[Jim di Griz]

As PZ says, you can go ahead and do free roam or whatever you fancy after the game has been completed. The warning you get after Sam says 'There is no going back from here' or something similar, states that it will be possible to resume free roam after the end.

Now I haven't played both scenarios out but I'm guessing the pop up message will have taken either option into consideration.

It really isn't that much different from FC2 though, at least that's how I see the idea of rationalising the story and free roam afterwards. There are two distinct choices, one of which you theoretically shouldn't be able to come back from but still allows you to free roam with all weapons.

As you've been looking at walkthroughs, I'm sure the following won't constitute as a spoiler, but I'll hide in for those who have no idea what lies ahead:

Spoiler

The Compound is still occupied afterwards, though there are less privateers and they are still miffed at you - so there is always a good scap to be had there. Dr Earnhardt's place is a lot messier  ;) but still functional.

[mandru]

I really am trying to avoid rant here sticking to objective review as much as I can.

I know that when Sam says "There is no going back" that is the time where you have to make a personal save point if you wish to play out both endings. It's that or play the whole game over to get to the choice point again.

Other than the fact that the Fuel Depot mission is the embodiment of how I don't play by it's very nature of being a (1)fast and frantic (2)timed run and gun (3)escort mission as well as being (4)after the save point so that you have to repeat it (1 through 3) if you've made the personal save point and wish to play the second option out.  I'm counting 4 strikes there and that's not including my continuing opinion that the vehicles in FC3 which play a necessary role in the Fuel Depot mission handle like Mario Karts on the races involving ice tracks.

With this many hours into the game money is moot.  I've bought everything in the game.  I have to step outside a fast travel point, fire a single round, reload and then go back inside to the vending machine buying an ammo top off to force a game save when I want to quit.  Why couldn't improved vehicle physics have been a purchasable commodity in game?  The buggy is the only ride for land travel that approaches realistic physics somewhat.

Spoiler

OK, it's not really a spoiler.  Just the disgruntled musings of someone seriously debating with them self as to whether it really worth trudging through the last of this.  Even the option of making a few middle ground save points so that I don't have to go all the way back to the tedious "scratching survival out of the dirt" start has been stolen from me by UBI stripping a lot of the replay value out of the game.  It's like a mouth full of cold ashes.

I've not even mentioned the inherent nastiness of the the pending choice where in you lose either way with all of your efforts, all of your accomplishments and everything being reset to zero as if you'd never even bothered.  A vacuum has been created in the power structure of corruption for the islands but that void has many willing and eager participants on deck and ready to jump right in to fill it.  There has got to be more to a game than just charging in and shooting stuff up and I'm feeling that as undeniably pretty of a package as FC3 represents That is what it has all come down to.

One of the last Chapter title cards that I ran into quoted from Alice in Wonderland.  At least I believe that was the source material because most of the other Chapter quotes originate from there but it was not a credited quote.

"Everything has a moral.  You Just have to find it."

From what I can see jealousy consumed into impotency Dennis (does he even have a trigger finger?) in the archetype model of Judas jumps out performing the only significant act of his life and plays the mythic role of the True Warrior Hero by stopping the Invincible Demon in the sweet smelling garden.  Yup!  There it is.  Moral found.  ????

FC2 at least left the player a sense of accomplishment and a choice where either option of the final decision (though skewed through some weird liberal desire to see all violent people horribly maimed and destroyed by way of non-realistic either-or pretzel logic) still met the greater good.

[Art Blade]

I don't think that I've ever played a shooter that made sense. Some games that nearly did were no real shooters (hitman series). Actually, I think that I've never seen a game that made any "real life" type of sense. All of them were games. However, it is nice if you get a game that allows you to believe in the world you're playing in and if events seem somewhat believable in a sense of immersion. I am thinking of an old Sci-Fi adventure, the Wing Commander series. Man, didn't we who liked that type of game love it :) What I try is to get most out of a game, if it has aspects that keep me busy, which these days are open world nature games, as long as I can have fun. And that, despite all its flaws, FC3 delivers to me. :)

[PZ]

I remember as a child reading works of authors like Franklin Dixon, Jules Verne, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the like.  My imagination as a child conjured up the wonderful worlds these books conjured in my mind's eye. I guess that games like FC3 are to me like reading a book; I need to use lots of imagination to place myself within the game's environment.  I also need to be able to experiment open world style rather than being led by the nose down invisible corridors.

[Jim di Griz]

I actually liked both endings in FC2 and 3. In the latter Jason realised that he is now changed and would not feel happy in 'polite society' or the normailty of home - not uncommon in vets from Vietnam who just went into the woods after trying to readjust.

Compared to most other games, the endings are rawer than the sanitised storylines of others are allowed to portray. I think Resistance 2 is the only other that had an unexpectedly bleak ending. Ubisoft Being a Canadian company, I really shouldn't be surprised though, as the Canadians seem to have a very liberal outlook from my experience.

[fragger]

The story in FC3 doesn't engage me at all. I've found the best approach (for myself) is to tolerate the story and its associated missions as a kind of necessary evil to be gotten out of the way bit by bit in order to get at the real fun, which is rambling around the open-world environment doing the secondary stuff and generally raising Cain.

I totally get what mandru is saying. I think the premise had potential but was undermined by a lack of involvement and plausibility, and by leaving the player with a kind of empty feeling regardless of which final choice is made. I find Jason's friends to be an obnoxious and dopey lot who I don't give a tinker's cuss about, and events like Jason addressing the Rakyat after his tryst with Citra (which he apparently did right in front of them all) are just plain cringe-inducing. There are too many overly-verbose cut scenes, too many head-trips (WHAT was with that final Vaas encounter?) both endings are kind of hollow and after the game was over I felt not so much that I'd wasted my time as that the time I'd invested in the game should have shown a better return. I felt kind of gypped.

For me too, missions like the Fuel Depot one represent everything I don't like in a shooter, which is why I played Modern Warfare 2 a grand total of once.

Outside the story I like the game a lot, but as I've said elsewhere it feels like a compromise. When all is said and done, the company that created FC3 is a business, and developing a game is an expensive exercise for which those who put up the dough are going to want to see a profit. Which, as in the movie business, means bums on seats, and trying to cater to as many different tastes as possible. The devs knew that they couldn't appeal to everyone 100%, but still I think they did a pretty good job of trying. Open-world game aficionados like us would dislike the linear parts of FC3 and the devs knew it, and the CoD-type gaming crowd would dislike the open-world aspects and the devs knew that too. So they compromised as best they could.

But speaking purely subjectively, I don't like the story at all - or rather, I don't like what they did with it.

[PZ]

... Which, as in the movie business, means bums on seats, and trying to cater to as many different tastes as possible...

Absolutely; those developer prostitutes will cater even to transients!