John Seed and Other Complaints

[jakran]

Couple things before I start, firstly, SPOILERS. There will be SPOILERS in this post. You have been warned. Second, this post will be long. Third, despite all of what I'm about to say, overall I'm having fun with this game. I really am, but here we go:

From the cutscene where he was introduced, I knew I didn't like John Seed. Which I suppose I wasn't meant to, he's meant to be an unsympathetic character. He looked slimy from the start, and that impression turned out to be quite accurate. He also really frickin liked the sound of his own voice, going on and on about the power of yes. And boy did I get plenty of chances to hear him speak. From the radio broadcasts to the interminable capture sequesnces where all I wanted to do was get at him so I could SHUT HIM UP. Yet through it all, I knew in the back of my mind that it was going to be so great when I finally caught up to him and could do just that.

Then the final confrontation comes, and its...a dogfight. In planes. More on that later, but suffice to say I needed a little help from Nick Rye on that one. His plane goes down, but he's still limping away! Great, I finally get to gun him down...until Nick strafes him while I'm still floating down in my parachute and he falls over. Thanks Nick.

That was frustrating, but then it got worse: I was ready to just loot his corpse and move on, but no, despite being in a plane crash and riddled with bullets, John is somehow still alive, and still ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ talking. I waited for the prompt. The one that would allow me to shove my gun in his mouth and put an end to his ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for good. But nope, nothing like that, just John rambling on for another good minute before choking on his own blood and expiring.
I was livid. I felt so cheated. I must have emptied a hundred rounds into his corpse, and I don't use automatic weapons. All I wanted to do was make him shut up in the actual game, but no, cutscene death. ♥♥♥♥.

In the extremely unlikely event anyone from the dev team reads this, you guys need to learn how cutscenes should be used. In movies, the best lesson a director can learn is "Show, don't tell." The lesson for video games should be: "Don't show, let the player do." You did an amazing job making me hate John Seed. Now let me end him myself.

Other things:
1. I didn't include this in the main complaint because its more specific to me, but I'm certain I'm not the only one: This is not a flight sim, its Far Cry. Plane controls are awful, and game devs who have mandatory plane piloting sequences in story missions should be tried at The Hague for crimes against humanity. Helicopters are fine. Hang gliders are fine. Wingsuits are fine, if hazardous to your health. Planes are not fine. I don't mean this to be specific to this game. Planes in any game suck. Having to fight John in a plane (or in my case, swerving wildly and every once in a while getting a glimpse of Nick doing it for me) only made the whole John thing even more frustrating. Planes in video games suck.
1a. Having to have an NPC fight a boss (a boss I really wanted to kill myself) for me sucked. Also, as a reminder, planes in video games suck.

2. The turkeys. I saw a screen shot indicating that turkeys had been nerfed. Not enough. I would rather fight literally any other animal in the game than a turkey. I've 1-shot every other animal in the game (except moose, haven't seen one of those yet) with my .50 cal. The turkey laughed at the mere fleshwound (despite having been shot in the head) and proceeded to scratch me to death. I hit one with an ATV, and then had to shoot it five more times with my rifle. Are the turkeys meant to be a joke? Cuz that's the only way they make sense.

3. Companions in general. I get that some people like companions in their single-player games, although I will never understand why. What is so compelling about an NPC who makes the same (annoying after the first time) comments every few seconds, virtually always fails at anything even approaching competence in fighting the enemy, and inevitably gets shot in the back of the head because in my line of the fire is just THE BEST place to stand? Now normally, I'd just do what I do in other games and ignore them once I finish their intro mission, but no, there are perk points locked up behind their aforementioned complete lack of combat skills. So now I get the joy of lugging them around, not killing enemies I could kill myself, in the (often vain) hope that my companion will do it and IIIIIIINNNCH ever so closer to the blessed occasion when I get the perk points and dismiss them forever. And then watch them get shot instead and have to rescue them. Again.

4. The weapon selection. Disappointing. Previous games had a much more options. Multiple versions of the same gun with the same stats and no special abilites don't count as different guns, they might as well just be more skins. Not much to say other than that, I'd just like some more variety in the way I kill people.

So yeah, just had to get that off my chest. Ultimately, I'm sure no one from Ubisoft will ever see this or address the issues, but at least someone will scroll down to see how long the post is and say "♥♥♥♥ that, I'm not reading it." If you did actually read this far, thanks for letting me vent, I feel a little better. And like I said above, overall I am having a lot of fun with the exploring, hunting, fishing, the prepper stashes and just general Far Cry goodness. Just had to say something.

TL;DR: I want to kill bosses in the actual game, not watch them die in cutscenes.

[3tall]

The John Seed dogfight really annoyed me. Eventually I just exitted the plane, sky dived down to the town. Across from the gun shop is a house with 50 cal on iitt. It seems that he has trouble strafing me when im using a mounted weapon but I had no trouble taking him down after a couple passes.

[J4n1]

The writers really loved their monologues.
Every villain had them, each more boring and generic than the last, and none of them you could just shoot in the face to make them shut up.

[Hugh_Mung_Bean]

ok bro some tips: strafe runs are done by the npc pilots for a reason, its easy to achieve. Fair play with the dog fight, thats pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥ but it only took one restart for me to get a good angle and stay behind him, wrecking his plane in 2 bursts. The planes could definitely be easier, but once you get good at managing speed and getting into proper strafes, they're pretty cool too.

for the companions perks, literally just run around areas where there are a few enemies and command them to attack each individual enemy. usually within one or two encounters you can get the perk points.

I personally haven't had any turkeys that werent dropped with a few rifle shots, and to me it sounds like its a hitbox issue so probably aim center of mass rather than for the head.

and lastly, yea the weapons kinda erk me too. Multiple reskinnings, each needing to have the attachments bought seperately for them, waste of time to farm cash to get them all. I've found myself using basically just 1 of each thing (last AK, MP5, Spaz, .50 semi auto sniper, M60, recurve bow, 1911 pistol, last khaumbat chopper) and buying almost no other weapons because they don't really change anything.