What if I told you that hunky Far Cry 1 star Jack Carver and creepy Far Cry 2 villain The Jackal were the same person? To quote Eurogamer’s Ian Higton: “The clue is in the name, people!”
Higton published a thoughtful video today that attempts to connect the dots between the different installments in the wide-ranging and thoroughly weird series of shooters that is Far Cry—omitting only the dinosaur-filled Blood Dragon DLC for Far Cry 3. The video is a lot of fun for fans of the series:
The beginning of the theory is the shakiest part—which makes sense, seeing that the original game was created by Crytek and the rest of the series has been produced by Ubisoft. Higton suggests that the mysterious box Jack Carver receives at the end of Far Cry: Instincts is actually full of diamonds.
...which would explain—if Carver is indeed the Jackal—how the man’s lust for blood diamonds first got started. It’s a bit of a stretch, but I guess it makes sense seeing how tiny metal boxes full of blood diamonds are actually a pretty central motif in the Ubisoft Far Cry games.
In Far Cry 4, you have to collect a bunch of said boxes for the character Longinus—a guywho makes repeated reference to the fact that he came to Far Cry 4’s Nepalese-esque Kyrat setting from a central African state that sounds awfully familiar to the setting of Far Cry 2.
In Far Cry 3’s “Monkey Business” DLC, meanwhile, the character Hurk (who reappears in a much more central role in Far Cry 4) mentions conflict diamonds that come from Bowa-Seko, which just happens to be the southern region of the country in which Far Cry 2 is set.
Coincidence?!?!
Higton sees this as evidence that The Jackal—A.K.A. Jack Carver—didn’t actually die at the end of Far Cry 2 after embarking on a suicide mission from which he never appeared to return. Instead, he could have survived and taken his wares—diamonds, guns, and plenty of ‘em—to Rook Island, the setting of Far Cry 3.
As far as fan theories go, I find Higton’s impressive and thoroughly thought-out. My main issue with it is that he rests much of his case on information gathered from Far Cry Instincts and the aforementioned “Monkey Business” DLC. Instincts, in case you don’t remember, is a version of the original Far Cry that was altered in many substantial ways—including in its narrative—to port the game from PC. And the DLC is, well, DLC. Can you really consider something tacked-on post-release to be canon?
Finally, if the Far Cry games really are all connected, what the heck happened to these guys?
Hmmm. Maybe we’ll find out in Far Cry 5?
To contact the author of this post, write to yannick.lejacq@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq.