Monday 13 November 2017

Game completed: Far Cry Primal

I got this game for Christmas last year and only got around to playing it now. I've only played Far Cry 3 before so I wasn't sure quite what to expect with Primal, but it was amazing, and until I've played the rest of the series Primal is now my favourite of the two.

When I started it up for the first time, my initial reaction was "Don't say they're gonna speak English." And they didn't. And I was happy. I'm not sure if they're using an actual modern-day language, but if they don't I'm pretty sure they used Native American and African tribal languages as an inspiration. However, I soon started to figure out what certain words meant since they said them all the time, i.e. I'm pretty sure wah'pahti means hello.

The first thing I did was to not crouch when the game told me to and was promptly killed by a mammoth.

The general mechanics were pretty much the same as in Far Cry 3; take over outposts and bonfires to free an area from the invading tribes, hunt rare animals, complete quests, and fetch all the collectibles. What I actually preferred about this game was that you didn't have to scavenge for ammo, you just crafted more, and with the abundance of crafting nodes it was never an issue to run out of ammo.

For taking over outposts I soon discovered my preferred way of doing it sneakily. Hide behind a rock or in the bushes not too far from the outpost. Send out my owl to scout the area and tag all the enemies, and then have the owl tell my tamed lion or sabretooth which enemy to attack. All the while my owl dropped bombs on the enemies my great big cat wasn't attacking, and when there was only one single enemy left in the area have my owl attack that last one to finally free the outpost. Takkar never had to do anything; the animals did everything for him.

The NPCs all had interesting stories. Sayla was suffering from PTSD from seeing her entire village be slaughtered by Neanderthals (Udam) and she kept killing them whenever she got a chance and collected their ears in an attempt to silent the cries she could hear all the time. Karoosh was on a personal mission to avenge the death of his son by the hand of a Neanderthal. Tensay, the shaman, had been kidnapped and burned by the sun-loving Izila tribe and their leader Batari and wanted vengeance on her. Jayma was the veteran huntress, the master huntress, and all she was focused on was continuing her legacy, so when Takkar completes the master hunt mission she gves she leaves the village to die in the wild with the animals she had hunted all her life. Wogah was completely out of his mind. He built traps for the Neanderthals to trap and kill them for taking his arm. And then there was Urki. Urki was crazy, and if there ever was a stone age redneck - he's it.

So to completely root out the invading tribes Takkar starts taking over outposts and bonfires. Then I chose to go to the Udam fortress. I started my attack and then soon realised I had run out of both arrows and wood. So I ran all the way back down from the hill it was on, with the enemies chasing me and started picking up wood for dear life. When my pack was full and I had a full quiver of arrows I started up the hill again and took over the fortress. Then I defeated and captured their commander, Dah. With Dah in the village I learned some Udam tricks. Dah eventually told the story of how the Udam were dying out due to what he called skull-fire. He got Takkar to perform a lobotomy on him, and in the end, after the Udam were defeated, asked Takkar to kill him. The whole story with the Neanderthals made me sad. For most of the story they were presented as heartless monsters. Then came my final fight with Ull, their leader, and when I defeated him he crawled to where the tribe's children were and offered them to Takkar, saying that his tribe, Udam, were weak and dying and asked Takkar and the Wenja to take care of the children.

It was the same way with the Izila, capture outposts and bonfires, and then attack the fortress and capture their commander, Roshani. The Izila were more advanced than the Wenja, in the sense that they had figured out farming, and to get away from living caged up like an animal Roshani gave up the location of their seeds and showed the Wenja how to farm. As time passed, Roshani lost more and more of the blue Izila warpaint and started dressing like a Wenja. In the end, when asked if he wanted to leave he said that he was a Wenja now. The final fight against Batari was really cool, much more so than my fight against Ull. First of all, to breach the final area where Batari hid I had to ride a mammoth to break through the gates. Then I went all over the area saving enslaved Wenja who helped in the attack on Batari's temple. The fight against Ull had mostly been me kiting around him to stay out of reach from his melee attacks while sniping him with my bow. Batari used a bow herself, two arrows for each shot, and she kept calling in reinforcements. So for this fight my tactics became hiding behind a rock, peeping over every now and again to shoot her with double arrows of my own, while my sabretooth handled the reinforcements (mostly).When Batari was defeated Takkar carried her into the flames and let her burn - just as Tensay had asked him to do.

With both invading tribes defeated the end credits started rolling, and after the end credits came a small scene with the Udam girl training to be a Beast Master like Takkar and taming a bear.

I wasn't sure whether the game would have a hard ending (like Dragon Age Origins) or would allow me to continue exploring afterwards, so I had completely 100% completed the map before my final fight against Batari, but after the small scene with the Udam girl I could once again play as Takkar. I still opted to not complete the pre-order DLC The Legend of the Mammoth. I had done the first quest of it and it was so very very very bad that I decided to just not do it. I read up on it, and from what I read of the story and the quests, I'm very happy I decided to skip it.

Far Cry Primal was great and I'm a little sad it's over.

Oh and because of the language I had this song on my brain for the entirety of the time I played it xD

No comments:

Post a Comment

What's the first thought in your head after reading this? Let me know!