far cry 3 the doctor is in

You're hurt.


You need a doctor.


The firefight at the Medusa – a rusty relic of a ship crashed upon the shoreline of the idyllic island that has become your hellish prison – has left you in desperate need of medical attention. Your deceptively simple goal – deactivate a scrambler preventing you from communicating with the outside world – turned into more than you bargained for. It turns out the Medusa was claimed by thugs loyal to Vaas, one of the many madmen occupying this twisted, lush world. His men share his unstable grip on reality and tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.


What starts with quick, stealthy kills using a knife turns into a miniature war, as you struggle to reach the mast of the ship. With the scrambler shut down, you realize you're gravely injured. You return to your Jeep, and call a friend on the radio for advice. He recommends you seek the aid of Doctor Earnhardt, perhaps the only person on the island who can treat your wounds.

A New Look At Far Cry 3
(Features Pre-Rendered and PC Footage)

Far Cry 3 thrives in these moments of desperation and peril. Despite its strong focus on gun-based action, it taps into an unnerving emotional core that drives its spiral into madness. The characters here are twisted, warped by the world around them into something slightly inhuman and certainly uncivilized. 


Earnhardt isn't unhinged like Vaas, who thrives on pushing people to violate his bizarre, lethal sense of justice and civility. Earnhardt's motivation is to quench his thirst for what appears to be a drug addiction, and his need to experiment with more and more substances. Your request for help is quickly met with an injection of an unknown drug, and as the frail, rambling madman discusses his love for out-of-body experiences, you realize he's not simply going to heal you. He wants something. He needs you to explore a network of caves under the island, where a particularly intoxicating and rare mushroom grows. Doing this will gain Earnhardt's favor, and perhaps that will benefit you as you battle the forces of evil on the island and attempt to escape – and perhaps rescue your friends. 


The designers of Far Cry 3 don't want to focus entirely on traditional mission types. What's most remarkable about your quest for this mushroom is it doesn't rely on shooting. There are no guards lurking in the caves. No hiding behind rocks. Your obstacles, it turns out, are tiny spores polluting the air. Or maybe it was that substance Earnhardt injected into your arm. In fact – how do you know Earnhardt is trustworthy at all? His vacant stare suggests he's not even fully engaged in conversing with you. What does he really want? Is your one potential source of aid actually yet another manipulative entity? 

Far Cry 3: When Heaven Turns to Hell

The unpredictable nature of the game is what makes it so intoxicating. Waiting for Vaas to snap, for Earnhardt to subtly suggest he's more interested in getting high than healing you, discovering that the cave's spores are warping reality around you – these are the moments that will potentially elevate Far Cry 3 above the many, many first-person shooter games out there. It allows its characters to define everything from the narrative to the mission design. And Ubisoft promises your lead character, Jason, will not emerge from this conflict in one piece – literally or figuratively. 


The cave mission is the perfect example of this. Jason's hold on his senses gives way, as the moss and vines begin to warp and blur, colors erupt from the walls and ground, and a haunted forest springs to life out of nowhere. Whether due to spores or injected drugs, Earnhardt's request is quickly spiraling out of control. Oddly enough, the cave's hollow, disorienting feel closely resembles the doctor himself. Character informs gameplay in Far Cry 3, which isn't always the case in a first-person shooter. 


Dan Hays, the director of Far Cry 3, describes his cast of characters as a "mosaic of dysfunction," a group so deplorable and memorable that they'll manage to twist an ordinary, adventure-seeking guy into something unrecognizable. As addicting as the game's signature, open-ended combat will be, watching a gritty, realistic social experiment play out in the form of a game will be equally as fascinating. This third installment of Far Cry intends to capture many elements of previous entries while forging a different path entirely. With any luck, the game will be as good as its concept when it's released on September 4th. And maybe then you'll find a doctor