Jeg-har-lige-gennemført... tråden

Regardless, Jason starts off as a whiny, incapable rich kid who got in too deep. His brother, a real bro, actually says "This is what they teach us in the military bro." as one of his first, and only, lines. I wonder if Jason and his brothers and friends, were thought up so that some target audience that's not me, could identify with the main character and his friends. I sort of feel like that's the answer, but I never identified or emphasized with Jason throughout the game. Regardless, the game quickly goes down the racist rabbithole, both in the sense of terrible Alice In Wonderland quotes, littered across the game for no discernible reason, or a reason that may have been cut some time during development, but also in the sense of the enemies being "dark skinned pirate dudes with bad accents on a tropical island who smoke meth and kill people for fun." In contrast to the all-white cast of young, adorable, heroic American tourists.

Along with that heroism, Jason also quickly develops into a genocidal mass murderer, because of his sweet tatau, given to him by Dennis, a friendly US Marine who is apparently also a mechanic from Liberia, who can't really ever get his story straight. Ultimately, it's unimportant, because Dennis is quickly discarded as a character with any real connection to the story.

Everyone with a skin colour other than brite-white is portrayed in some sort of horrible fashion, in that they're either uncivilized, poor, barbaric, drug abusers or all of them. It's pretty gross. The exception, naturally, is Citra, the young uncivilized and barbaric drug abusing leader of the local fucking tribespeople. However, not wanting to alienate the players, her dark skin colour is offset by her looking more or less like a white person in the middle of a bunch of tattooed Samoan dudes. She is also given blue eyes, to ensure that the player feels comfortable and white throughout. It's a bit gross, too.

Anyway, as things start popping off, and you get your sick tatau (urgh) you are tasked with finding your friends, enlisting the help of some weird drug abusing white guy who is of almost no consequence to the entire story. With regards to the other white people in this story, they're all mercenaries, but unlike the local pirates, they aren't stupid, or drug abusers. They act more professional, are tougher to kill, and looting them grants you luxuries such as "Toothpaste" or "Chocolate bar" rather than "Meth pipe" or "Cocaine packet." Again... it's... sort of icky. Your friends are total dudebros that you do not care for, and as you assemble them in a cave without access to food or clean water, they sort of just start smoking cigarettes and fixing an old boat to "get off the island." - which makes perfect sense, considering you have a fucking phone, a black credit card and a tablet computer. You have every fucking reason, opportunity and ability to call for help or get off that island. But no, the tatau wants you to stay and murder the locals.

As the story progresses, and as Vaas is killed in a sort of drug-induced cutscene press-X-to-win kinda deal, you're left wondering if that's really it, or if you just had a dream. You sort of hope his death was just a dream, because it was a pretty unimpressive way to go. Unfortunately, it's real. You're left to deal with some guy named Buck, who wants you to go on a weird Tomb Raider-y mission to find a secret Chinese compass infused with WWII magic, which is weird, because the island was apparently under Japanese control - regardless, it is eventually revealed to you that Buck is some sort of weird rapist, who raped your friend, and confronts you with his pants down, and an explicit desire to rape you as well. It's... yeah.

Regarding that point, saving your friends, you have no incentive to save them, as I said before. None. Furthermore, saving your friends releases these dumbfoundingly horrible sequences with dubstep and poorly written-and-executed wisecracks that go against the whole tone of the game. First your friends are all like "Oh, bro, this is some terrible shit, I'm going to break down crying!" - the next, they're all cracking wise and murdering people while fistbumping and highfiving. Then when you end the mission, they're all sad and scared again.

Ultimately, the final boss, the mercenary leader, is finally presented for you to kill in another press-X-to-win cutscene. The boss, a guy in a nice ladies blazer, gold chain and Hawaiian shirt, is sort of presented here and there, and you aren't really given much information about him, nor reason to feel anything but indifference about him. Maybe disgust, by virtue of him being so poorly written. The thing connecting you to him is eventually also some... CIA-guy in a suit someone took a piss on, with awful wispy facial hair and dumb lines. That guy was awful. Anyway, it ends up in a poker game, where you, and some German dude named Sam who has an iron cross tattooed on his chest (what the fuck) who is either delusional or a Marine, or both, play for about 500 dollars. Because poker. With a fucking mercenary warlord and two other random dudes. Similar to every other character in the game, the German dude isn't given a lot of context or meaning, and is just there to poorly read German lines and shout "BLITZKRIEG!" every once in a while. Again... urgh.

Anyway, the goal of the poker game is eventually to do as the game prompts, which is simply "PRESS Q TO BET LIFE" - doing so a few times means you get a finger cut off, and... then you enter another press-X-to-win cutscene where you kill the mercenary captain. This prompts you to become a warrior of the previously mentioned tribe, get a final tatau, do some drugs and choose between slitting the fucking throat of your girlfriend with an ancient Chinese knife that maybe is from World War II but maybe not and maybe it's Japanese but nobody really knows except Buck who was a rapist that you killed for being rapey and sending you on dumb quests and oh god, and just, uh, reuiniting with your friends, while the tribe just whines at you and says "Please don't go, Jason! :("

Oh, and uh, the ending where you slit the throat of your girlfriend, you are granted a dumb and toe-curlingly bad and awkward first person sex scene, after which you are promptly killed.

Whatever ending you choose, you are simply dropped back into the island with a small notification box that says "CONTINUE EXPLORING ISLAND?" with the only real option being "Yes."

-

What does all this have to do with... well, with anything? What's the deal with the Rorschach stuff, the weird dreams, the drugs, the implication that you are Vaas, and in reverse? The only way that story could have made any sense, was if the ending revealed that you're some sort of coma patient on tainted drugs in the Matrix.

Unfortunately, you get the weird first person sex scene instead.

I had some fun with that game, but the story and context was just... man. They shouldn't have done that.