Why No SJW Should Be Proud of Amita From Far Cry 4

WARNING:  This article contains plot spoilers.

On an otherwise uneventful August 28^th, Far Cry 4 writer C.J Kershner indicated that Far Cry 4 might have a little something for his social justice homies, and reached out to them via Twitter:

You might wonder why anyone would attempt to reach out to social justice warriors, since they are a notoriously fickle lot, unless they have been roommates/Patreon donors/Patreon donatees/coworkers/lovers with you.  To put this in context, the social justice network had just finished foaming at the mouth over the leaked cover art of Far Cry 4:

Their concern was compounded by Far Cry 3’s narrative, in which rich white “dudebro” Brody Jenner (at least I assume that was his name) becomes the unofficial savior of an indigenous tribe, bangs the opposition leader’s hot sister, and poaches every species of creature on the island to accessorize himself while saving his all-white cast of friends and eventually leaving the island on a yacht.  In short, it was an awesome game.

So what was C.J. Kershner referring to?  On November 18^th, 2014, everyone got to find out.  Meet Amita, one of the two leaders of the Golden Path, the group in opposition to that dapper gent in pink and all around psychopath, Pagan Min.

A Telling Portrayal

In contrast to Sabal, a charismatic man who cares about the lives of his fellow Golden Path members, Amita is only concerned with success, and is not concerned with the welfare of her group.  In one scenario, Amita proposes to leave fellow Golden Path members in captivity and use the intelligence gained to strike at Pagan Min’s forces, while Sabal argues that the captives will not survive long enough for Amita to get around to them.

In another, after just having saved a young girl from a burning building, Amita immediately berates you for not following her instructions and coming to the rescue of the villagers.  She also ignores Sabal’s pleading that Bhadra, the young girl you rescued (who is probably suffering from smoke inhalation at the minimum) should have rest, instead choosing to parade her in front of the villagers to show them she is not dead.

Every interaction with Amita (and yes, she is very clearly named after an infamous “Anita”) follows this methodology.  Anita will ask you to do something though acting derisively towards you, and typically what she is asking of you will sacrifice innocent lives in favor of her objectives.  Meanwhile, Sabal will charismatically thank you for your help thus far, and ask you to take on a mission that saves more lives.

If you choose Sabal as the leader of the Golden Path (which, it bears mentioning, runs drugs and arms to keep the coffers full), Amita calls you a sexist.  And somehow, she does not see her regular disrespect of you as pertinent in your decision to support Sabal.

The game is actually even more unintentionally funny if you side with Amita, however.  If you do that, her “final solution” is to turn Kyrat into a dictatorship, all the while sending her soldiers into villages to recruit children!  She also alludes to the fact that she had Bhadra, the young girl she has been parading around as a deity-like figure to cement her power, assassinated.  She justifies this by saying that she doesn’t want people rallying behind her.  She preemptively murdered a teenage girl because she was afraid of the competition.

Tactics are not her strong suit

The joke here is that Amita’s tactics would almost certainly lead to the ruin of the Golden Path if your character wasn’t running around like Jesus with machine guns.  Amita’s tactics of mission accomplishment over personnel work if what you are working with is a large force like a branch of the U.S. military.  You can afford to lose a few people in support of the mission (though it’s never ideal) because your force is both highly trained at the individual level and numerous.  This doesn’t work with a small force like the Golden Path, who probably number in the hundreds and are facing a better equipped and just as numerous foe.

If you tried to use those tactics with a small force, you would end up either dead or without enough soldiers to follow the plan you have crafted with your intelligence.  That is why historically successful small forces (think Mao Tse-Tung’s Red Army fighting Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists) have used guerrilla tactics which are designed to inflict casualties with minimum risk to the attackers.

The purpose of this is to keep the attacking forces safe and able to disengage at a moment’s notice once the superior force becomes aware of their presence.  These are the tactics you use when you don’t have the bodies to give up in support of a more efficient strategy.  Amita’s tactics would have allowed Pagan Min to win total control over Kyrat.

Inadvertantly accurate, or trolling his own kind?

With some of the details of Amita’s character, you have to wonder if Kershner is actually trolling SJWs.  His “strong woman” character is incredibly flawed, both in personality and actual leadership ability, and seems to care only about her own ascendancy to power.  Then again, SJWs have lauded themselves without fail for oppressing others.

Sam Biddle, hardcore SJW and anti-GamerGate writer for Gawker Media, wants to bring back bullying to oppress the “nerds” who disagree with him.  Randi Harper created her blocklist which labelled anyone who supported GamerGate as a harasser (defined here as someone who does not agree with her).  And there is no need to mention the misdeeds of this character’s namesake.  Amita from Far Cry 4 is art imitating life—one can only wonder if the artist intended to create such an accurate portrait.

Read More:  Video Game Trade Show Awards Are A Joke