India se Kyrat: A Far Cry 4 Diary – Day 4

iLLGamer Tathagata has been taking Far Cry 4 to his heart, and is exploring the Himalayan fallen paradise inch by inch. Besides all that firing and Kyrati adventure, he is also maintaining a diary revisiting the key events of the day. You can read some of his previous pages to step into his shoes. In case you want to keep off the spoilers of Far Cry 4, you can consider playing the game before you start following his journey.

Read Day 1 Chronicle:  http://www.illgaming.in/2014/11/india-se-kyrat-far-cry-4-diary/

Read Day 2 Chronicle: http://www.illgaming.in/2014/11/india-se-kyrat-far-cry-4-diary-day-2/

Read Day 3 Chronicle: http://www.illgaming.in/2014/11/india-se-kyrat-far-cry-4-diary-day-3/

Day 4: The Spirit of Vaas Montenegro

Slipping through the torn pages of an ancient script, I walk out facing the sunlight over the Kyratian plains again. This land was dying every day, every minute, and the more I could do, the less it seemed. Ajay Ghale has been writing his name all over Kyrat’s imminent future, but there was one place that stood in the path of absolute victory: Pagan Min’s lavishly guarded North Kyrat. Amita laid down the plans for the evening: gate crash the King’s Bridge, the one that connects South Kyrat to its Northern brother, and charge in the Golden Path brigade into the Royal frontier. Like Amita’s previous missions, this too was a little convoluted. The gate was built of solid mass, and no C4 or RPG could ever bring down the royal firewall. There was only one way to breach it, and ram it open, a truck full of explosive material was travelling to the North. Ajay’s job was to hijack the truck and lead it right to the Northern mouth. When the truck is stuck up with the wall, blast it open using a C4. Catching up with the truck was a painful task, releasing the patrol vans up in the air using the grenade launcher, I aligned my car next to the driver’s seat, and with R3 Ajay jumped right into the truck, stabbing everyone and taking over the wheels.

Upon reaching the mouth of North Kyrat, I was welcomed by pouring snowflakes; and suddenly the Himalayas felt like the real Himalayas that I would visit during my vacations. Upon crashing through the door, I had to send out a radio signal to Amita to rush in with her reinforcements. As enemies started raining down upon me, and as Ajay Ghale, I was running around shooting heavily armed guards, till my backup finds the checkpoint. It was a long battle, and a well fought battle too, soon the Golden Path vehicles darted in through the destroyed door, as the enemies resisted from the exit door, and in between the fight came in a few snow leopards to create madness out of nothing. Welcome to North Kyrat, said my inner voice. North Kyrat seemed like the second island in Far Cry 3, severely dangerous, challenging and daring me to explore it all. And the towering figure of Yuma Lau echoed through the wilderness of North Kyrat. Let me take you back by a few hours to unravel who Yuma is.

Yuma was the daughter of an eminent Hong Kong based mafia leader, who was shot down by the CIA during their raid. When the news reached Gang Min, Pagan’s father, he took in young Yuma, and raised her like his son, young Pagan. The two grew up together, and the bond became even fiercer between the two, they would bleed and die for each other. Pagan was her ideal role model, until they forced their trade into Kyrat and Pagan became a King. As recollected by Yuma, Pagan used to be a tough nut, a real definition of fear. Until he fell in love with Ajay’s mother, Ishwari, and the two started developing a thing. Yuma attacks Ishwari’s non persuasive ways of affection that made her idol lose his grip and become a coward in the process. Yuma was waiting for vengeance on a Ghale ever since Ishwari left with young Ajay for the States, and holds Ishwari responsible for the littlest acts of kindness that Pagan performs, every now and then, including his decision not to kill of Ajay yet. Yuma, in all actions, was becoming strangely identical to Rook Island’s Vaas Montenegro. Not only was she second best to the Far Cry world’s despot, but also had her own suffering to provide for her actions. Even though there wasn’t much information about why Vaas betrayed his own Rakyats to join Hoyt, one could easily make out that he wasn’t the only one who was fucked in the head, by the end of Far Cry 3. And that’s when my strange liking for a character like Vaas developed, after he was done and dusted. With Yuma, you will come a step closer to knowing the truth behind the revolution at Kyrat.

Remember Willis? The guy who dropped you paragliding into the second island in Far Cry 3, well he is back in Kyrat. He and his CIA plans. He helps Ajay track down Yuma by providing him information about his parents in exchange. You travel all the way to the Himalayas with Willis to ruffle up Yuma’s territorial domination. You take down the Kyrat International Airport with Willis and work for him only to find out details of a horrible past about your parents. You learn that your mother, just like young Bhadra, was a Tarun Matara, the real life incarnation of the bride of Banashur, the Mythological God of Kyrat. Far Cry 4 induces you to witness the friction between male and female domination within the Kyrati society, by introducing the optional Amita or Sabal missions. You realise that perhaps Amita is fighting for something more than just freedom, she wants to revolutionise the role women hold in the Kyrati society. And Willis just drops the plot right there when he tells you that your father, honourable Mohan Ghale, was maybe not that great after all. Because he wanted to kill his own wife, Ishwari, for whatever reasons, persuading her to flee to the States with you, an infant Ajay Ghale. Society is fucked up, right?

Nearing Willis’ last mission, which is one of the greatest experiences during my time in Kyrat (jumping out of aeroplanes, paragliding through mountain ridges), I get booby trapped, all because of the hypocritical CIA agent. Yeah fuck you Willis. Waking up, I find my eyes blinded and my head sore with injuries, as Pagan’s word silence out the misty mountains. “You’ve been a naughty little shit, haven’t you?” was Pagan’s playful way of chiding me. As I recovered vision, I think I saw a feminine manifestation of the Vaas Montenegro from Far Cry 3. Lifting her pink hair aside, Yuma looked at me like a dog waiting for a rare bone, for years. This was destiny, this face off was definitely written in the stars. I was in Durgesh, atop the most terrible Kyrati mountains, as I looked down to find death and a broken grapple hook. Escaping the prison was a priority, but what drove me crazy was, why in this world would you not lock your inmates up, especially if it’s about one rare Ajay Ghale?! As I walked out of my cell, I was jumped by this crazy fucker who was yelling about Rakshashas and slitting his wrist up. Gazing at the second cell mate, I find this woman beating her head against the wall, spilling blood all over her ragged clothes. This wasn’t a jail, this was an asylum, meant to drive the inmates to the extremes of their mental borders.

Sneaking through the chambers, scared like a child, I reached a summit from where I think I saw something move rapidly. In flashes. The joypad started shaking wildly, like I consumed some contagious gas, as my vision started blurring out. In a moment of fit, I saw it, there it was, a Rakshasa, from the pages of Kalinag’s dive into Shangri La. A Rakshasa was watching over the prison and driving people insane, leading to hurt their very self.  I had to find two hook pieces to reanimate the grapple hook that might lead me out of the prison, and without wasting a second, I crawled behind the demon in pursuit of the hooks. The idea wasn’t the brightest, and as soon as I retrieved the second hook, attached to a corpse, the Rakshasa sensed my presence and started chasing me, wildly. Running towards the edge of the prison, I jumped at the sight of the grapple contextual button. Mashed it right, left and centre till I could see the Rakshasa figure disappear in the blizzard. By some hook (literally) and crook I reached the foothill, from where I progressed to escape the area.

Sneaking behind an unaware guard, I went for his throat, my heart was beating out of pressure and for a moment I had no knife to perform a stab kill. He turned around and found me doing my futile theatrics, and started shooting at my feet. Crafting the evasion syringe on the go, I made a run for the walls. Climbing atop a bell tower, I seized upon the zipline, landed on top of a corpse, found his free AK on the ground, shot open the locks of the prison exit, and made a run for my life. “Run, Forrest, Run”, I think I heard Vaas crying out to me through the mountains. The thing about the Himalayas is that never venture out in the cold without an Oxygen Mask, and after running for a mile, I saw my eyes closing and my breathing stopping. In the last moments, I think I saw a Yeti strut towards me. I had enough for the day, I shut my eyes off. So that was how I met Yuma.

During my early days in North Kyrat, I trekked uphill to discover the people who are putting up a fight against this inhumane Pagan regime, and so I discovered Utkarsh. A lively neighbourhood with a Kyrati marketplace brimming with strange characters, like snake charmers to dish washers. Reaching my next mission, I enter the cottage of the Ranas, who were hiding the Golden Path members beneath the floor. While a peaceful meeting was going on, enter Pagan Min talking to his civilians in a manner that is strange enough to send shivers down your spine. Shooting the Ranas in cold blood, Pagan makes way in his Royal Vehicle. Informing Amita about the latest Min move, Ajay Ghale pounces on Pagan’s tracks in a buzzer, deciding to kill him off for good. Only to realise that the Pagan he shot down was nothing but a cheap Australian decoy. Amita and Sabal were terribly confused about Pagan’s next move, and when Pagan decided to throw Yuma down my road for a one versus one challenge, it was an unanimous Golden Path decision for me to go for it.

Yuma made her mark even in the shortest screen time, just like Vaas. And just like him under Hoyt’s aura, Yuma possessed a persona that complemented the madness in Pagan’s regime. Just like Vaas, she was not completely satisfied with her boss’ KRAs, and would usurp him any day to resolve the minor errors he left room for. She, in a lot of ways, hurried me back through the back alleys of Rook Island. Attempting to finish her off for good, I entered yet another trap of hers. You see, insanity is doing the same fuckin’ thing, over and over again. Instead of learning from my previous failures, I went head straight into Yuma’s den, only to get drugged to blindness (just like the final conflict with Vaas). My blood was gushing with vengeance and nostalgia at the same time, wondrously. Yuma’s number one priority was to unravel the secrets of Shangri La, the one that immortalized Kalinag, possess the chants of the Rakshasas and become a mythical queen in the process. When she drugged me, I was walking through the ruins of Shangri La, in colours borrowed from the mushroom caves in Far Cry 3. On my way I saw conspiracies, loads of them, Amita using the power of being a leader, scavenging the carcass of her very soldiers, and attempting at doing another round of Pagan Min. Stuff that I feared and coined in my previous diary page. After swinging between imaginary cliffs and pillars of Shangri La, I entered a battleground with a one on one with a corrupt Kalinag, firing arrows at me, aided by his mythical white tiger and a group of Hunters, or maybe Rakshasas in human flesh. At first I had no idea what I was supposed to do with a bow and arrow, but then I shot an arrow at a firepot accidentally, watching it exploded. Then I shot some more, and watched Kalinag become weaker. He kept of disappearing, just like Vaas. And when I finally stabbed him, the nightmare broke with the sight of a dead Yuma lying next to me, stabbed brutally by, perhaps me.

Questions never cease to exist in a complicated world like Kyrat, the line between right and wrong, and real and unreal is a flickering one. Just like it happened a few years back on Rook Island. When I was done with stabbing Vaas, through his chest and stomach, and watched him die, I went into a state of despair. Was that the real Vaas, or was he an image inside my head? Is he dead or is he still alive, somewhere? Was Vaas indeed a power hungry pirate or was he just another masterpiece of the complicated society that we live in? Yuma makes room for the discussion. There will be Vaas’ in the world as long as the balance of power is not set right. Yuma’s death was uncalled for, and certainly quick. But did she really die for Pagan? Or did she die for herself? Or did, she die for Vaas, or the other Vaas’ that are still out there? The question lives as long as we serve the society.

Coming down from the misty mountain tops, I hear Cliff Martinez’ Unfamiliar Paths singing to me in the background. Not even a track so heavenly could control my anxiety and fears, previously Vaas and now his manifested Yuma took a toll on my mind. Insanity was happening over and over again. Walking down a few miles, I find a couple of stray dogs lying dead and cold on the floor. Projecting my view upwards I see that the whole sky is crashing down, people are running around crying Avalanche! I have no idea what to do now. Fuck!

Read Day 5 Chronicle: http://www.illgaming.in/2014/11/india-se-kyrat-far-cry-4-diary-day-5/