Far Cry game series is a popular and successful video game franchise. Majority of the games in the series let the player to enjoy action packed first person shooter experience in beautiful, colorful, exotic locations. Far Cry 2 (2008) is an outlier in the series. It drags the player through brutal, unforgiving landscape of the African savannah. Also the Plot of the Far Cry 2 revolves around real world problems in the African region such as political instability, illegal arms trade, illegal diamond trade, rebel groups and so on. On the other hand the Blood Diamond (2006) movie discusses the same issues but in great details. It almost feels like that the Far Cry 2 is the video game version of the Blood Diamond movie. They both discuss following parallel topics.
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Sets in Africa
With 54 countries, Africa is the continent with the highest number of countries in the world. So ‘sets in Africa’ doesn’t mean much. But as a region Africa gets less attention in popular media than the rest of the world. So it was a good thing that Blood Diamond and Far Cry 2 were focusing on the struggles and problems of the African people.
Plot of the Blood Diamond is unfolding in Sierra Leone which is a coastal country in west coast of the African continent. It is famous for its beautiful white sandy beaches. On the other hand Far Cry 2 is ambiguous about its exact location. It sets somewhere in central Africa. But in both cases we see beautiful counties with thick vegetation, mountain ranges, vast savannas and rich river systems.
War torn region
In Blood Diamond a rebel group called RUF is spreading terror in Sierra Leone. They invade villages to kill, amputate, and abduct civilians as their scare tactic. Most of the abductees end up as slaves in diamond mines, some of the younger ones get brain washed into serve as child soldiers of RUF rebels. With ruthless methods and tactics the rebel group managed to grow in power so that at one point they managed to successfully invade the Freetown, capitol city of Sierra Leone. Government was too weak or too corrupt to defeat rebels.
In Far Cry 2 there are no government presence what so ever in the area. The entire map is controlled by different factions of rebels who are at each other’s throat for the dominance. As the player you cannot travel two feet on the open road without getting shot at. Far Cry 2 doesn’t show you violence against the civilians, but it is insinuated via npc dialogues and Jackal’s tapes that war crimes are an ongoing issue in the region.
Blood diamonds
Uncut diamonds are the only currency in Far Cry 2 game. You get paid with them for your mercenary work, you find them when looking for loot and you pay for everything with them. Even after the events of Far Cry 2 those so called conflict diamonds or blood diamonds pop up in later Far Cry games acting as funds for different wars in different part of the world. Some of them end up in the hand of Vaas’s pirates in Far Cry 3 and some of them end up with Pagan Min’s militia in Far Cry 4.
As the movie title suggests, Blood Diamond shows us how finding diamonds affected the lives of Sierra Leonean people. This invaluable mineral did not bring wealth and prosperity to the country, instead it brought death and destruction along the greed. Diamond mines became the source of power in the country because whomever control them control the country. For the government diamonds are a source of income. For the rebels diamonds are a source to fund their war against the government. In order to prevent rebels getting profit from blood diamonds, there was a trade ban on conflict diamonds from Sierra Leone, so rebels were using smuggling routes to mix them with legally mined diamonds in Liberia.
Mercenaries
People fight wars for various reasons such as for their country, for their religion, for honor and of course for profit. Mercenaries fight in wars for the latter reason.
We see the story of Far Cry 2 through a mercenary’s eyes. Player has to choose a character to play from a group of mercenaries. According to their bios, they come from various parts of the world to end up in the middle of a war in an African country.
One of the main protagonists in Blood Diamond is a mercenary. Danny Archer, played by Leonardo DiCaprio is a man who value profit more than anything to the very end. Double crossing, lying and manipulating are second nature to him. He was born in Rhodesia. He was a soldier in his youth and later became a mercenary. He smuggles illegal weapons in to the Sierra Leone to sell them to RUF rebels, in return he get uncut diamonds from rebels. He then smuggle those Diamonds out of the country to sell in the black market. As soon as he learnt about the large pink diamond which was found by a slave, he did everything he could to get his hands on that rare diamond.
People who reap benefits from conflicts
In Far Cry 2 your main mission is to kill a man named Jackal. According to the intel you get, he is a notorious arms dealer who was connected to most of the major wars in the region. He was not affiliated with any rebel group. He just don’t care about the politics or reasons for the conflicts. Wars need weapons. He was there to supply them. As the main protagonist and a mercenary, you are not doing things out of the good in your heart either. On the quest to kill the Jackal, you have to do the dirty work for the leaders of each rebel groups.
In Blood Diamond, mercenaries and the Van de Kaap diamond company reap the benefits from the civil war in Sierra Leone. Mercenaries like Danny Archer work for a man called Colonel Coetzee. Col. Coetzee uses his mercenaries to smuggle illegal weapons for the RUF rebels in return for conflict diamonds. When the rebels become too much of a problem for the government to handle alone, the government hires the colonel’s mercenaries to fight back the rebels. It’s a win-win situation for the colonel.
According to the Danny Archer, the diamond company does not directly involve in the Sierra Leone civil war. They just make the environment so that the war can be carried on. They do this to prevent conflict diamonds from flooding the market and disrupt the artificially maintained supply and demand balance.
Lots of guns
In Far Cry 2 after you purchase a weapon, you can get unlimited amount of replacements for that particular weapon. Also in the middle of the African jungle every rebel solder is armed to the teeth. We know that the Jackal is responsible for most of the illegal arms in the area.
Blood Diamond is no different. RUF rebels are also well armed. In that case they get their share of weapons from arms smugglers such as Danny Archer. At one point RUF’s fire power had exceeded the fire power of the government troops so that the Freetown, the capitol of Sierra Leone fall to the hands of the rebels.
Suffering civilians
Far Cry 2 doesn’t properly show how the war affects civilians of the country. There are missions to bring passports for hidden civilians in exchange for malaria medicine. In that missions we can see bunch of people huddled in small rooms to hide until they have a chance to flee the country. At the end of the game a cut scene show a large number of civilians marching towards the border to get out of the country. Apart from those occasions you don’t see any civilian activity in the area.
Blood Diamond differ from the Far Cry 2 in this case because it does not afraid to show us the horrors of civil war on innocent civilians. It shows how RUF barge into villages to terrorize villagers, how RUF kill, amputate and torture Sierra Leonean people. These terrorist acts and the fall of the Freetown cause people to flee RUF controlled areas. As in Far Cry 2 we can see large groups of displaced civilians are marching towards refugee camps for safety. Movie shows the displacement crisis by simply showing us the sheer size of the vast refugee camp.
In any conflict the innocent people; men, women and children suffer the consequences. Blood Diamond shows it perfectly. It opens the eyes of unaware people from outside the region to look into problems in Africa, and also what lengths greedy corporations go for profit.
On the other hand Far Cry 2 was set up in a perfect setting to show rest of the world the problems in African region. But in my opinion its lack of a strong plot and a proper story telling made it miss the chance to communicate a deep and powerful message as Blood Diamond. Everyone remember Far Cry 2 for its high difficulty, instantly re-spawning enemies, guns breaking down mid battle, but I don’t think many people remember or pay much attention to the plot. Only if developers were not afraid to explore the horrors of war through the plot, it could have been a great eye opening game.
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