Lonely Gaming through Far Cry 3

No, still no time at all to beat Final Fantasy X. Yes, still aware it was a brilliant move to commit to that when I'm this busy.

Anyway, so, lonely gaming.

I want you to understand that I'm very much a solitary person. I can work with others, and I can do things with others. I enjoy the company of others, and am capable of feeling lonely. But I don't feel the constant need to be around others, and the times I want to be alone far outnumber the times I want to be around people. As such, I am a very single-player focused person. Out of my current top ten favourite games of all time, nine are single-player experiences. Out of those nine, five deal with loneliness in a major way, either thematically through the story, or through long spans of time spent alone during gameplay.

The concept of loneliness in gaming is one that I believe could be explored to a far deeper level than film can, and approaching it through a different point of view than literature does. In film, one is limited by length. You can't have hours upon hours of loneliness, and just claiming someone is lonely doesn't work unless your theme is focused on this sole idea, which means dialogue has to be nearly non-existent. In a novel, you're very much attached to the character's point of view and actions. The character is the one undergoing loneliness, and how this changes him is inextricably bound to the character himself. What's different in a game is that you neither have to be solely based on exploring loneliness, nor are you bound to the character. Games make you deal with loneliness yourself. Admittedly, it's a much smaller scale than that in film or novel, but you're the one being experimented with here.

Far Cry 3, to me, is a great example. Now, everyone who's played it knows it takes a Heart of Darkness approach on a surface level, though it really has less in common with that novel than it'd like. You're stranded on an island full almost exclusively of pirates and animals trying to kill you, have fun finding your friends. Or die. Probably die.

It is a very lonely game, particularly if you play it without using fast travel, which is what I did (My opinions on fast travel will likely be the subject of another set of ramblings soon enough). Most of your time is spent traveling around the island on a variety of vehicles. Since most of your travel is done through areas liberated from the pirates, you'll very rarely encounter enemies along the way.

This is a tremendously lonely experience. Rook Island is a difficult area to traverse, with mountains, rivers, and many other obstacles blocking your way, not to speak of the easily angered animals. You feel like you're alone, struggling against something bigger than you.

It's surprising the amount of attachment Far Cry 3 inspires for you in small things because of this. I steadfastly refused to change my pistol through the entire game, despite much better ones being available later on. I also would go exceedingly far out of my way to pick up one particular car at one particular base.

The reason for this was, I formed attachments. The pistol, a slight upgrade on the default, granted me a very useful base takeover early on, and I'd had some success getting over painful terrain on the car. Both the items had success in them, and I wanted them to keep around. I got incredibly attached to them.

Another piece of emergent behaviour were the podcasts. In Far Cry 3, most cars have a radio that you can change through various channels of generic music. I ended up playing podcasts when in cars, pretending these were Rook Island's radio talk shows. This made a huge difference to my play experience. I ended up becoming more and more unwilling to leave cars alone, even going so far as prolonging journeys by not getting out and finding a car-friendly way around the newest obstacle. This was, admittedly, more based on my enjoyment of the podcasts than any sort of loneliness in-game, but was a accurate mechanical roleplay of how the character would act in that situation.

I expect I'll have more games to explore loneliness in soon. Right now, I have a delicious dinner to attend to. Next time, I'll write about something else, probably gaming related, and probably not Final Fantasy X yet.