Power Struggles in Far Cry 4

Far Cry 4 is an action-adventure first-person shooter created by Ubisoft and released on November 18, 2014. The user plays as Ajay Ghale, a young Kyrati-American, who is caught in a civil war in Kyrat, a fictitious Himalayan country filled with poverty, a drug trade, and authoritarian rule. The story follows Ajay Ghale as he helps the rebel group known as the Golden Path fight against the tyrannical king Pagan Min.

The story begins with Ajay Ghale as he is traveling to Kyrat to fulfill his mother’s dying wish: to bury her ashes in her homeland. On the way there, the bus he is on is ambushed by Pagan Min’s royal army and you learn just how powerful and psychotic the Kyrati dictator is. Pagan Min holds him prisoner but treats him well as he claims that he was romantically involved with Ajay’s mother.

Ajay is able to escape with the help of the Golden Path, a rebel group created years before by Ajay’s father, Mohan Ghale. Ajay meets the current leaders of the Golden Path, Sabal and Amita, who tell him that he must help them fight and be the symbol for the people. Ajay has no choice since the Royal Army has control of the only airport and sealed the borders.

The power dynamic of the Golden Path is interesting because although Sabal and Amita are working together towards the same goal, they each have different morals and ideas on how to get to that goal. Sabal tends to favor traditional values whereas Amita favors more progressive ones, one of which is relying on the drug trade to build up an army. This power struggle between the two causes stalemates that Ajay Ghale is forced to work out. There are many scenes in which Ajay Ghale walks into a heated argument between Sabal and Amita and where you have to choose whether to go with Amita’s plan or Sabal’s. Each plan has its benefits but also has drawbacks and it can mean the loss of soldiers, important locations, or other consequences.

The goal of the game is obviously to free Kyrat from Pagan Min’s rule and the way you do that is by freeing various radio towers and outposts controlled by the Royal Army. The radio towers allow the Golden Path to spread the word of their cause to the people of Kyrat in order to strengthen their group. As you progress through the game, Pagan Min’s power diminishes as the Golden Path’s power rises until you finally reach Pagan Min’s doorstep. You then have the choice to let him leave Kyrat in his helicopter or kill him. This power is given to Ajay Ghale but also to the player.

The player also must choose who becomes the new leader of the Golden Path. If you choose Sabal, then the country becomes a religious fundamentalist theocracy and all of Amita’s supporters are executed. If you choose Amita, then the country becomes an authoritarian drug state where all the farmers are forced to work in factories and children are enlisted in the Golden Path to fight against the remaining Royal Army. Whichever person you choose requests that you kill the other to prevent another civil war and you again have the choice to let them live or kill them. In the end, all the work you do seems as if it was for nothing as you learn that Sabal and Amita are no better than Pagan Min.

Far Cry 4 is a game in which the player is constantly dealing with power struggles and must make the ultimate decisions. It is an open world game, so you are free to roam wherever you please. Though there are some limitations, in the game the Royal Army closed the borders so that you are stuck in Kyrat. The lack of power you have in the beginning is limiting but changes drastically throughout the game as you help the Golden Path grow to power and overthrow the authoritarian government. The different conflicts, power struggles, and limits in this game can allude to those of modern-day countries similar to that of Kyrat where poverty, drug trade, and tyrannical rule exist.