Sandbox games offer players fully functioning worlds in which characters go about their daily business until somebody starts lobbing rockets or blowing up bridges. But what happens if you just, well, leave NPCs be? In Just Cause 3, things still find a way to go topsy turvy — fast.
ThingsWePlay decided to just stand still in Just Cause 3‘s Mediterranean paradise — or “paradise” — of Medici. The goal of their experiment? To understand how the game’s NPCs behave when you’re not blowing everything to tropically scented smithereens or soaring around at a million flying squirrel kilometres per hour or pressing a single button. Would civilians keep things civil? Would they get confused?
Turns out, the answer was none of the above. Instead, it took them only a couple minutes to go completely nuts. Seconds in, there were already multiple traffic fatalities and some confused drivers. Gunshots followed shortly after. It wasn’t long before cars were swerving all over the streets, leading to copious accidents, fights, and fatalities.
It’s not entirely shocking to see that Just Cause 3‘s illusion of peace (or at least brief sanity) is positioned on an extremely precarious precipice. Still, it’s interesting to see just how quickly everything crumbles into madness and automotive insurance catastrophes regardless of whether or not Rico’s actually involved.
Rare is the video game NPC that doesn’t do something strange when the player isn’t directly involved. What I like examining is the differences between them. Grand Theft Auto‘s tend to be kinda like Just Cause 3‘s — prone to violence and nonsensical havoc. In Bethesda games like Fallout 4 and Skyrim, NPCs behave a bit more realistically in that they stick to schedules and determine who they attack based on factional influences… unless they’re Dogmeat, who enjoys carving a path of suicidal carnage on the way back to your settlement for no real reason. Oh, and then there’s The Witcher 3‘s NPCs, who reveal their true mutant sludge monster forms as soon as Geralt’s out of eyeshot. It’s like my grandmother always used to say: video game technical limitations make monsters of us all.
Sometimes, the best parts of games are the things the developers never meant for us to see. It’s so much fun to peek behind the curtain, especially when “backstage” is as explosive and ridiculous as it is in games like Just Cause 3. What’s your favourite weird thing you’ve witnessed an NPC character doing when they were pretty sure you weren’t looking?
Comments
7 responses to “Just Cause 3 Becomes Pure Chaos Even If You Do Absolutely Nothing”
Any word on how this game is holding up on the PS4? Apparently there were frame rate issues when it released, has this been patched and fixed at all? I’m on the verge of buying it, but still not sure.
I still haven’t booted up my Xbox one copy again since launch am waiting for a patch
I was wondering the same thing. Wouldn’t mind picking this up, but am waiting for the reported frame rate issues (not to mention the supposedly really bad load times) to be sorted out first.
Oh well, I just started MGS5 a few days ago, I suspect that will be occupying most of my gaming time for a fair while anyway. Maybe JC3 will be all patched by the time I’m finished MGS5.
They’re released a patch already. Not sure about the frame rate (playing on xbox), which seems ok to be, but they’ve patched the load times
I have been playing it pretty solid for a week and have only had very brief frame rate issues on the rare occurrence when there is to much going on (like I am in a helicopter fighting 10 other enemy vehicles from boats to other helicopters as well as guys on the ground when everything starts to explode and some big multi part prop begins to crumble by folding over and falling to bits). I have conducted bombing runs in a jet at high speed, raced an F1 car along the highway during a gun fight and many other things and experience next to no issues.
The long load time is just at the beginning while it loads up the giant sandbox world. Once in there are no load times normally and short (less than 20 seconds tops) loading specific challenges and missions.
That is my experience. As well as tethering guards to gas bottles and turning them into spacemen.
I’ve had the game come to a complete stop while processing “stuff”. That was only one time though, but I regularly see quite noticeable frame-rate drops, either when traversing quickly or causing major simultaneous destruction. This is on PS4 for the record.
Hmmmm, still seems like mixed reports. I was hoping for something to keep me going until Uncharted 4 and No Mans Sky and JC3 looks like a blast. I’ll wait until I’m bored with Rocket League. Thanks for all your responses.