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  1. #1

    [Spoilers] FC4 Storyline - Who is the Villain?

    In the wake of several poorly-received developments in the opening hours of this game, it has been thoroughly digressed upon that many elements fans were hoping for have either been done in a way that was not desired or excluded entirely; there is little more to say on that subject. The general response by official sources has been that such features were not the focus of the game, and that the development of the open world and the engaging story are what they opted to prioritize. So, in a passionate attempt to be of an open mind, I decided to focus on the story, and judge it on its own merits; most specifically, the opening combined with a facet of it that would be very much considered a spoiler, which can be viewed in its entirety below.
    Spoiler:  Show

    This is the alternate ending of the game, achieved by waiting in the dining room as Pagan tells you to do in the opening scenes.


    Now, naturally, this topic cannot be discussed without such 'spoiler-esque' elements in mention; therefore, in an effort to ensure that this topic has a healthy lifespan and does not find itself in a position to be removed, the remainder of the content in this post will be contained within the spoiler tab below. Be forewarned, very long post ahead.
    Spoiler:  Show

    A lot has already been said about this ending; that it's 'lazy' or 'pointless' or even that it shouldn't exist at all. That, however, is not what we're here to talk about. The intent of this thread is solely to focus on and analyze the story as shown through the opening scenes and the scenes which up to this particular ending - to flesh out the thoughts and reactions your character has, evaluate his actual knowledge, and draw a conclusion that should be brought to light. The gameplay, the merit of this ending, and other such matters are separate topics entirely, and discussion of such deserves a separate thread from this.

    And now that all the obligatory fluff is out of the way, let's dive right into the matter and take a closer look at the video you watched above.

    The story begins with your character, Ajay Ghale, lost in thought. He sees his mother's last words - her wish for her to be taken to Lakshmana, before he drifts back into the real world. In the back of a truck, he listens to a voicemail received from a travel agent, and the story begins to be told.

    There are several important things mentioned in this call, which are particularly relevant to the alternate ending; the first of which being his missing Kyrati citizenship. Without any other knowledge, it can be quite easily inferred that Ghale had once possessed a Kyrati citizenship, or at least believed he had, by the fact that he had told the travel authorities so. The fact that it is missing is exhibiting that someone had deleted it intentionally, or at least that it had been lost by unrelated means. This is more important later on, though.

    What is important now is why Ghale is in this particular van, going down a winding road towards this place called Kyrat. We know he has his mother's ashes, and we know he wants to spread them at Lakshmana, but we do not know why he is taking this questionable mode of transportation over any other available means. Then the person in the voicemail goes on to warn Ghale of the turmoil in the area, caused by the Golden Path; this is the first information given on the world you are about to embark upon, thus it is worth giving attention to. The person leaving this voicemail is clearly outside of the conflict in this area; in his job position he is working for the general country, not specifically Kyrat, as is made evident by the fact that he speaks of granting clearance to all of India, not just Kyrat in particular. This is important, because it removes him from a position of bias; he can only know what is observed of the region, and that observation is that the Golden Path are heavily disrupting and even negating the government's influence on the area. As Ajay Ghale, who knows neither side of this conflict as of yet, the only thing he is aware of is that the Golden Path are causing trouble for a government which he has no reason to distrust. Granted, he has no reason to care other than that it clearly forces him to get to his destination by less than convenient means, but it is still important to take this into account; Ghale's initial disposition should by all accounts be against the Golden Path, as nothing is explicitly said or done to indicate otherwise.

    The next scene is of the man across from Ghale requesting his passport. Your character turns abruptly, and hesitates for a small moment in handing the passport over. This is the first body language your character conveys outside of caressing the vase of his mother's ashes, and it is relevant in that it portrays to the viewer an uneasiness with the person speaking. It is not conveyed why this uneasiness exists, simply that it does; for whatever unknown reason, Ghale does not entirely understand or trust this person who is requesting his passport, so he is startled when he speaks, and is hesitant to meet his request. The man proceeds to slide a bill of what can only be assumed to be Kyrati money in, and instructs Ghale to relax and let him handle what is up ahead. Ghale give no sign of acknowledgement; rather, he takes his passport back and looks down at it, avoiding the other man's eye contact as soon as possible. This once again serves to further the unrest and wariness between your character and the man across the aisle from him, despite the man's seemingly helpful attitude. Even though he does not openly pose as a threat to him, Ghale makes efforts to avoid him, even looking out the window to take his mind off of the discomfort he is feeling. Whether he feels uneasy over other matters is irrelevant in this context; outlying factors aside, the man across the aisle is portrayed as someone who isn't trusted in Ghale's eyes.

    Then, of course, things get interesting; the van arrives at the checkpoint. The man behind Ghale hands him his passport, and he takes it along with his own and passes them to the woman in the front, presumably to give to the guards outside. A commotion can be heard, and when Ghale asks what is happening, the man across the aisle hushes him, which leaves Ghale to look out the window and see for himself. The guards can be seen arguing with the van's driver, who refuse to take the passports the driver offers. They look in the distance to see Pgan's chopper is on schedule and continue to delay the driver through conversation and inspection. When the guards begin to inspect the side of the van, Ghale turns to see two armed men jump out of the back of the van, and run straight down the road they came from. The action begins, and the guards open fire on the running men. They return fire, but do not return to Ghale at any point; they were either killed by the guards or fled the scene. From their attire, it can be seen that they were wearing a yellowish gold; if Ghale were to put two and two together, he would deduce that these men were not only of the Golden Path, but that they grossly failed in their goal to protect the van from the 'enemies' outside of it. This, once again, puts another negative impact on how Ghale would view them, but only if we assume he makes that conclusion.

    As the guards take their attention away from the two men who fled, the driver pulls out a pistol and shoots the guard commander in the shoulder, after which he is promptly gunned down. At this point, all hostile targets have been eliminated. One of the guards looks towards the van, then back to his commander, who gives the order to fire on it. What this exhibits is that these soldiers outside are not 'inherently evil'; they ask before shooting, and only fire at targets that pose a direct threat. Even their body language emphasizes this; before the armed men emerged from the back of the van, not one of the three soldiers held their weapon in a manner to suggest that they were in any hurry to use it; the guard with the detector holds his weapon loosely by the grip, and the other two hold theirs in equally non-threatening stances. The commander in the red hat is the only one who displays aggressive posture, and the only one to point the barrel of his weapon at anyone before the armed men appear from the van. This body language shows blatant passivity; despite their occupation, they do not bring their weapons to bear, or make themselves look threatening to the van passengers who they believe to be civilians.

    The commander, on the other hand, is an exception; he does not look for the helicopter, he does not express passive body language. He is the 'bad guy' of the scene, and he plays the role well. He is the one who antagonizes the driver, the one who points his gun at him before the men from the back of the van make their run. After all the armed enemies are dealt with, he is the one who orders his men to open fire on the van. He wants the bloodshed, which easily characterizes him as a villain. So, technically, we found one villain so far, and as we soon discover when the chopper lands, he serves Pagan Min. This sort of behavior is to be expected of a person who works under the story's touted big bad, as any villain would reward such carnage and elimination of his enemies.

    Yet, that is not what occurs. When Pagan arrives on the scene, he expresses extreme displeasure at what he is witnessing. He then proceeds to ask the commander for an explanation for this display which he did not order, and when the commander's explanation does not satisfy, he removes him forcefully. These scenes clearly exhibit Pagan's unhinged personality, yet nothing he has done so far is inherently 'villainous'; it is excessive and brutal, of course, to murder the man who disobeyed your orders, and it conveys that Pagan is certainly not a morally 'good' person. That being said, the man Pagan kills has been clearly exhibited as not only evil, but also an outlier; only the commander was aggressive and bloodthirsty, and only the commander was punished. The rest of Pagan's men are only guilty of not intervening when their commander was killed, which is morally questionable but still mostly understandable given their position, and made more understandable when you take into account that they were already following orders from the commander that they did not wholeheartedly support. So, what we have as of now is a dead and morally 'evil' commander, who was dispatched by his superior due to his 'evil' actions. As of this point, Pagan has only revealed himself to be a brutal leader, not intrinsically an evil one, by violently disapproving of the shootout that transpired.

    Now the commander lays on the ground, dead, and Pagan turns his attention to Ghale. He tells the corpse that he didn't fail entirely, as he looks at your character with no hint of malice on his visage, other than the commander's blood. Returning to the matter of body language, this clearly shows that, at least initially, he has no quarrel with Ghale, nor does he feel any desire to enact violence upon him. He speaks of recognizing Ghale's eyes, hinting that he's seen them before, and then tells him about a grand adventure before one of his men throws a bag over his head. Although the bag is clearly a somewhat hostile act, nothing else done toward you suggests any sort of malice; all Ghale currently knows about Pagan Min is that he murders those who disobey his orders and he knows who Ghale is, nothing more. He has every right to be afraid of Pagan, but there is nothing that makes him a 'villain', at least not yet.

    The rest of the opening is relatively uneventful in terms of what is relevant to the point we're building up to; Pagan plays with Ghale's mother's ashes, which incites a reaction from Ghale although one of Pagan's men stops him from acting further. Pagan attacks the man who had been sitting across from Ghale in the van, and reveals him to be a member of the Golden Path, calling him a terrorist and taunting him to show the hopelessness of the situation. After sending him out to be interrogated, Pagan implores Ghale to wait for his return, and begins a phone call before departing.

    Now, at this point, you know almost nothing more than you did before; Pagan is unsettling and brutal but has yet to do anything strictly 'evil', and the Golden Path are 'terrorists' which you know to be actively opposing the national government. You know Ghale didn't trust the man across from him in the van from the start, and now it turns out that man was a member of the aforementioned 'terrorists' you have no reason to desire involving yourself with. The game, at this point, puts the controls in your hands, and expects you to make what it believes to be the most rational choice; escaping the dining room and running off to join the Golden Path in their fight against Pagan and the government. However, from a storytelling standpoint, this is hardly the most rational choice; Ghale has no reason to trust the Golden Path, and his attempt to stop Pagan from disturbing the ashes clearly shows he is not afraid of the man, so fear fails to be an applicable motivator as well. Both Pagan and the Golden Path are established as unsavory options, the only difference is that Pagan seems to know Ghale, even though Ghale doesn't know Pagan. From Ghale's limited perspective, the most rational choice would be to wait for Pagan and attempt to get the answers to the questions he should logically have. Of course, if Pagan really is the villain, this option would surely result in Ghale's death, or torture, or some other terrible outcome.

    Yet, it doesn't.

    If you choose to make Ghale wait for Pagan, he apologizes once again for the inconvenience, and ushers Ghale to follow him. They take a helicopter out to a small building as Pagan explains the story of your character; at some point after you were born, your biological father sent his wife to be Pagan's prostitute, but she and Pagan ended up falling in love and eloping. They had a child together, and when your father found out, he became outraged, had the one-or-two-year-old girl killed, and forced your mother to take you and flee to the U.S. As he explains this, Pagan walks Ghale to the building, which turns out to be a crypt for the ashes of your sister, whose name was Lakshmana. As you realize this was where your mother wanted to be put to rest, you set her urn next to her daughter's, and leave with Pagan. The credits roll, and that's the end of it.

    Now, from a viewing perspective, we know enough about Pagan Min to see his motivations, his reasoning behind who he is and what he does. He fell in love with a girl, started a family, and then had it brutally and mercilessly shattered by the Golden Path - specifically, by a man who was supposed to care about the woman he loved, but didn't. It is hardly difficult to figure out that his eccentrically violent traits could have been brought on by such a traumatic event, and when you consider that the Golden Path actively condoned the murder of a small child, Pagan's hatred and even torture of their ranks is easily justifiable in comparison. These are people who we know fight against a government we know nothing negative about, who send their wives to be spies in their enemy's houses, and who are willing to commit infanticide for no reason other than righteous fury. Yet, if you leave the dining room, if you abandon Pagan when he asks you to wait, the game leads you to believe that the Golden Path are heroes and rebels, fighting against oppression and injustice.

    When a game wants you to think of yourself as a hero on the right side of a war, and right out of the gate it portrays that 'right' side as more morally corrupt and unjust than the 'wrong' side you're combating, something has gone critically wrong in either the story itself, or the way it is portrayed. Pagan Min is a great character, but is ultimately not a villain at all - if anything, he's the antihero for viciously fighting the people who took his chance at a family away from him. He's by no means morally sound, but he's still fighting a characteristically 'evil' force, which makes him look heroic in comparison. The alternate ending that so many people are loving to hate, as it turns out, is the most morally positive and logically sound choice Ghale can make, as the alternative is siding with the Golden Path and condoning their actions. Which leads us to the inevitable conclusion; the 'villain' is more of an antihero, the 'heroes' are the real villains, and the first option you are given holds the rest of the game out on the choice that makes less sense. Ultimately, the best story is only an easter egg, and the tragic outcome of you following in your child-murdering father's footsteps by joining the Path is the 'main' plotline you are expected to gladly follow - and this is the story that was so heavily prioritized upon. Make of that what you will.

    If the comprehensive version above is too long for your liking, the more tl;dr version can be read below. That being said, do try to make it through the long one if the short version disagrees too strongly with your opinions or doesn't address something you would ask, at least for clarification to use in your counterpoint if nothing else.
    Spoiler:  Show

    When you arrive in the game, the first thing you hear about the Golden Path is that they're bad news for the government. When you arrive at the checkpoint, the guards do not act aggressively towards then van you're in; only the Commander does. The commander is the one who orders his men to fire on the bus after all armed threats are dealt with, and his 'evil' actions are swiftly punished by Pagan, the 'villain' of the story. Instead of lauding such 'villainous' acts, Pagan punishes them, showing a clear displeasure with violence against those he did not wish it upon. After treating you with relative kindness and apologizing for the chaos around you before another one of his men tosses a bag over your head, he only proceeds to enact violence upon the van passenger who had been affiliated with the terrorists. If you choose the alternate ending by waiting for Pagan as he asked you, you proceed to discover that his unhinged nature stems from a member of the Golden Path - who was your biological father - who killed Pagan's daughter and forced his lover and child - who were your mother and you - to flee the country. His actions only serve to combat the Golden Path, not you, and he proves his good will by taking you to the place where your mother wished to rest; next to the ashes of her daughter. Despite his mental state, his actions fall much more easily under the morally positive side of the spectrum; he only kills and tortures those who have done morally 'evil' things, or those who serve such people. Even though the game paints him as the 'evil' one, nothing he does in these events supports that assumption. On the other hand, the Golden Path are fighting against the Indian national government, and condone the murdering of a 1-2-year-old child because she was the offspring of a Golden Path member's wife and Pagan Min.

    With that in mind, it is difficult to understand why your character - who had prior knowledge of the Golden Path's militaristic activities against the government - would be so eager to escape the dining room and join them in the fight against Pagan Min, who showed relative kindness to Ghale and - despite being a violent and mentally abnormal person - proved to be truly sincere in his care and concern for Ghale when allowed the opportunity. In the end, the only morally 'good' choice is the alternate ending, since any other option means siding with the Golden Path. The story wants you to make a choice that makes less sense than the alternative, and its contingency for you making the more sensible choice is an 'easter egg' that turns out to be a better story than the 'main' one. While there may be more important things to nitpick about with this game, the fact that the story begins by tacitly siding heroism with child murder and government uprising and siding villainy with avenging said murder and punishing undue violence is a rather glaring issue that should be taken note of.

    Now, with all that being said, what do you all think? Can the above statements be proven wrong, or is the conclusion drawn accurate?
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  2. #2
    Spoiler:  Show
    That is an extremely poor depiction of the opening scenes. You're assuming Ajay Ghale is a sociopath with psychic powers who enjoys watching his only friend so far get tortured at the dinner table, right after being kidnapped against their will. How is he going to know that his father was a monster? Why would you want to hang out with a monster like Pagan Min, who also murders anyone he pleases? Because the Crab Rangoon is just that good? Because he said 'please'?

    Why exactly is it okay for Pagan Min to murder and torture innocents? And why in God's name would you NOT want to get the the hell out of there? Does Ajay have access to the strategy guide?
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  3. #3
    Originally Posted by GreatBeyonder Go to original post
    Spoiler:  Show
    That is an extremely poor depiction of the opening scenes. You're assuming Ajay Ghale is a sociopath with psychic powers who enjoys watching his only friend so far get tortured at the dinner table, right after being kidnapped against their will. How is he going to know that his father was a monster? Why would you want to hang out with a monster like Pagan Min, who also murders anyone he pleases? Because the Crab Rangoon is just that good? Because he said 'please'?

    Why exactly is it okay for Pagan Min to murder and torture innocents? And why in God's name would you NOT want to get the the hell out of there? Does Ajay have access to the strategy guide?

    Spoiler:  Show

    But that's just it - Pagan Min hasn't tortured or murdered any innocents by this point, at least none that Ghale knows of. The only murdered innocents were the victims of the commander, who Pagan clearly did not side with. Of course Ghale doesn't enjoy Pagan's torturing of the man across from him on the bus; that being said, the man is hardly his friend, and he knows the man was from the Golden Path, and he knows the Golden Path aren't operating within the law well before Pagan's arrival. So yes, of course Pagan is not the most desirable person to be around, but compared to the people that he knows are radical and violent enough to completely remove the government's presence form the area? It's a fairly easy choice, all things considered; Ghale would hardly be sociopathic for taking the side which so far has less evidence stacked against it. Of course, that's sort of the point as well; neither side is ideal and both have severe faults in their ideology. Neither side is a true 'hero' by any stretch; that being said, the Golden Path are given more evidence to be 'evil' by the time you arrive at the dinner table, which is what causes the issue at hand.

    Pagan Min's actions after these scenes have no bearing on Ajay Ghale's knowledge of him at that dinner table; he would need to have psychic powers to be aware of any morally evil acts Pagan commits before or after that point. All Ghale knows is that the Golden Path are fighting a government that he has no reason to assume is corrupt, and Pagan is fighting the Golden Path, albeit in a less than savory manner. As it's been said, neither option appears as wholly 'good', but one is at least fighting against something that is clearly not 'good'.

    Even if you remove the entire good/evil dilemma and assume Ghale is in fact a sociopath, he is being faced with the choice of trying to escape a compound of several armed men in the middle of nowhere, or waiting for Pagan and finding out why he seems to know Ghale so well. From this emotionless-Ghale standpoint, Pagan still wins, because it's rather hard to argue that if someone clearly knew who you were, and spoke in detail of your mother, that you wouldn't want to know what more they had to say at the asking price of waiting for him to return.

    Of course acts committed by both sides later in the 'main' story can shift the moral scales; that being said, armed only with the knowledge he has at the table, waiting for Pagan is still both the most logically and morally sound course of action available to you. In theory, if we removed the game's constraints and gave Ghale absolute free will, the most logically and morally sound choice would be to side with neither Pagan or the Golden Path and have him find where to place his mother's ashes on his own; that being said, since that is not an option, when faced with both paths, Pagan's is not only the one with more initial appeal, but also the one which proves itself to be the least harmful option as it plays out.

    The Far Cry series is no stranger to such morally ambiguous cases; Far Cry 2 and its war between the APR and UFLL is a prime example. The two sides are both corrupt and 'evil' in their own separate ways, and your character inevitably must decide which of the two 'evils' is the lesser one. The choice is there, and even if you're proven wrong later, it was your choice to make, so the blame rests on you. Yet in this game, we are presented with a very similar issue, the only difference being that if the player makes the decision the game deems as 'wrong', then the story is heavily truncated and when it concludes you are tossed right back in with your only option being to make the choice you wouldn't have naturally made. That's where the issue lies; in a game of moral decisions, making the first moral decision one you truly have no impactful control over despite having evidence to weigh is odd, almost unnatural. The alternate ending looks like it very much could have continued on, with you and Pagan joining forces to - as he says - 'shoot some g d guns', and maybe at one point this was a planned feature that didn't make the cut, or perhaps it is something they intend to flesh out later as a DLC feature. Nonetheless, as a player of the game now it feels odd to not be able to have any real say in which morally questionable team you side with on your open-world adventure.

    Of course, that's just my opinion, and you're fully welcome to disagree.
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  4. #4
    Charles_Phipps's Avatar Senior Member
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    You're actually 100% right.

    Except, also wrong.

    Spoiler:  Show
    Min is a foreign despot ruling over a nation he's taken over by force. However, he's not a purely evil person.

    Ghale's father WAS evil, though.

    So, really, the ambiguity is deliberate and a good design decision. Just because Min is a brutal dictator doesn't mean he's incapable of love or humanizing qualities.

    I think this makes him more nuanced.

    Aside from adding "Pagan Min Mode" though, there's not much else to do.
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