Before I get started, I should probably give a rundown on what the game is about.
You are Jason Brody, a privileged white American, who goes out with his friends on the trip of a lifetime. Of course, it goes horribly wrong: you become stranded on an island, your brother is killed, your friends taken for ransom, and now you have to learn the skills to save them. Luckily for you, there's a tribe of warriors who set you on the path to becoming a warrior. Your skills are displayed for all to see in the form of the tatau (word for tattoo from the South Pacific Polynesian culture) which covers your entire left forearm.
And as you're killing pirates and blowing up enemy camps, maybe you'll start to enjoy it. For the first time in your life, you're winning. You're killing, and slaughtering, and, well, you're proud of yourself. You've found that one thing that you are proud to have done.
You are a warrior.
So if you haven't noticed yet, this sort of screams of the mighty whitey trope. In it, a predominantly white European or American or just plain white if you will, comes to an alien land, learns their ways, and then become better at it than even the original inhabitants. For some reason, I've always liked this trope. Not for the obvious racial undertones, but because it's an easy way to learn about their culture. Too bad the Rakyat are pretty shallow on that. They're the proud warrior tribe who worship ancestors (don't know if it's a group or only those in your direct lineage), know how to fight (but suck at it) and give you tattoos and drugs.
You see, as you learn more about killing, you get more of your tatau completed, which in turn means you're now more like "them," the Rakyat and less like the average guy we can relate to. And in a way, even we can relate to Jason becoming a killer. In a place where you have to kill and there are people to teach you, would you turn out any different? Would you turn down the skills to save your friends? The problem is that all the skills you learn are supposed to be from the Rakyat. So, why don't they know any of them?
In the game, you fight all sorts of animals: dogs, tigers, dingoes...the list goes on. Dogs are the easiest, dying in one shot from a shotgun. The Rakyat get murdered by them. It's horrible. I know I'm supposed to feel empowered by this game, becoming a living weapon and all, but seriously, am I that far up the food chain from these guys? They are the same people who actually live here and yet everything I do is better than them. Even their guns are the first tier of weapons. I get better stuff after an hour of playing this game.
The problem also may be that he changes a little too fast and because the game is open world--meaning you can go anywhere and do anything--it's a little out of order. When Jason kills his first man, he's close to breaking down, but has to move on, else he'll die since he killed the guy while on the run. The next time I'm supposed to kill someone, I'm being sent out to kill an entire enemy camp and Jason doesn't care one bit. This being between ten to twenty minutes after Jason tells his mentor that he's never fired a gun before. I felt a little disconnected from that. The thing is, I love character progression probably more than actual plot, unless that is the whole point of the plot that is. A person should change, that's how we function. We adapt to it, learn to move past it, but in the end, the game is still just a game in that regard. But I will give credit where it's due, because even though that is a big lapse in the narrative, the game has many other great moments that show Jason's progression into a blood loving warrior.
When you look at many works, or any for that matter, you have the person who is changing and then the person who he is changing into. This person is sometimes the mentor, who is directly teaching him these new skills and moreover, what to expect in the coming adventure. And sometimes, there is the villain who the protagonist id beginning to feel a connection to,in both power goals and aesthetically--like when Luke had his hand replaced just like his father, Anakin in Star Wars. In Far Cry 3, it follows the mentor, Dennis Rogers, who is not only your mentor, but the guy tattooing the tatau to your skin.
The mentor in this case, especially with a system like this in place where progression is key, should in a way show the player what is to come in the later stages of the game. Instead, his gun is weaker than yours. You never get to truly see him in action. And his tatau is completely tribal where yours are not. You see, tribal tattoo usually makes use of simplistic shapes in a repetitive design to make a complicated whole. Jason's tatau look more western, picturesque even, instead of the design wee're accustomed to on a tribal warrior. The only connection you have is that, like you, he was not born on the island and came into their culture a stranger.
In literature, this is the usual farm-boy turning into a master swordsmen trope. You're not really supposed to ask how you attained such wondrous skills in basically no time at all, but bask in the fact of how cool and plot convenient it is.
Don't do that.
