10 Things You Can Do In 'Far Cry 3' That Will Totally Piss Off PETA

Far Cry 3's open world is one of the most interesting and intricate game environments we've ever played in. There are radio towers to climb, vehicles to commandeer, treasures to find, side quests to unlock, and tons more. It engages you in a million ways, and it's even easy to get around.

Early on in the game, we found ourselves ignoring missions in favor of simply hunting; we were frustrated by low inventory capacities, and we sought to remedy that by gathering materials from the wildlife found all over Far Cry 3's Rook Island. We spent hours just hunting down a half dozen or more of each type of animal.

It was during that time that we discovered all the awesome interactions you can have with the animals of Far Cry 3—and we realized that PETA, which often targets video games for some reason, probably won't approve of any of them.

You know what, though? That just makes Far Cry 3 even more fun. Read on!

Follow @ComplexVG

In real life, poachers are totally evil. But in Far Cry 3, they're just trying to survive. Over the first ten hours or so of Far Cry 3, we probably spent more time just hunting animals than doing actual missions. It's that much fun. We don't know why, but it is.

But as far as animal rights activists are concerned, hunting is bad enough as it is. Hunting without a permit, on a foreign island with no idea what kind of impact you'll have on local ecosystems? That's downright irresponsible.

All that poaching isn't for nothing, though. Like we said, it's for survival. After all, how are you supposed to get by without a wallet that can hold $4,000 or a quiver that fits 20 arrows instead of 10?

In Far Cry 3, you'll need to hunt down certain numbers of specific animals for each capacity upgrade, whether for more ammo, grenades, money, medical syringes, or whatever. For some reason, we found this delightful, and by the time we finished all that hunting and crafting we were packing some serious heat.

And no, unfortunately, there are no pleather or hemp weapon harnesses to be made.

We would never condone the hunting of an endangered or one-of-a-kind animal in real life, but thankfully, Far Cry 3 is nothing like real life for most people. And if it were, we'd have bigger problems.

Once you've upgraded an ammo, weapon or other inventory slot up a few times, you'll have to unlock a special hunting quest and track down some rare prey to expand it any further. These missions are deceptively easy; drive to this point on the map, pick up the provided shotgun/bow/other weapon, and search around in the trees for a few minutes.

But there's nothing like skinning a rare blood-red komodo dragon or a uniquely massive great white shark to make your virtual life incrementally more convenient.

This has been highly publicized, so if you've been keeping up with Far Cry 3 coverage you probably already know—but in many pirate camps you'll find a bear, tiger or other fearsome beast locked up in a cage. And what do we do with animals in cages? We let them out, of course!

That said, we normally wouldn't let them loose into the middle of a camp of armed men that are certain to eventually shoot them dead. Keyword here, though, is "eventually," as in the meantime you can sneak in, disable the alarms, and take a few baddies out from behind while they're still trying to kill that rampaging bear.

Of course, you can also just sit back and watch the carnage, like the Roman emperors of old watching gladiators hack each other to bits.

Problem is, if the bear you set loose in the pirate camp comes out on top, it'll likely come after you next. Sure, a little gratitude would be nice, but what can you expect? They're animals.

We were finding it pretty difficult to take down a bear with conventional weapons—they absorb bullets like they were made for it, and chucking grenades tends to be inneffective as well. But relatively early on, we came across our favorite Far Cry 3 weapon: the bow and its exploding arrows.

One or two of those and that bear is lining the inside of your rucksack. Surely that's more human than a shotgun to the face, right? It's a bow!

We had similar problems with the sharks in Far Cry 3—like the bears, they're beastly to take down. And you need shark skins for several high-level inventory upgrades, for some inexplicable reason.

Well, we found it difficult to take out sharks until we found a boat with a chain gun mounted on its stern. That makes sharks into chum faster than you can swallow your first mouthful of shark fin soup.

Okay, that was bad. Killing sharks for their fins is cruel. Thankfully, Far Cry 3's Rook Island seems to have an overpopulation problem in the shallows. And you can't actually take the fin anyway! You take the skin and throw the rest away. Better?

Deforestation is a serious problem in real life, but thankfully Rook Island's trees seem to grow back in between loading screens. That's certainly a good thing, since Far Cry 3, like its predecessor Far Cry 2, has some truly impressive fire mechanics.

Fire spreads realistically with the wind, quickly taking over entire areas. So take a flamethrower or molotov to the wilderness, and Woody Woodpecker's cozy little treehouse is blackened to a crisp before he knows what hit him.

It's a great way to burn fields of drugs, harass mean pirates, and—of course—flush out your prey when hunting. Just don't come crying to us when you wind up lighting yourself on fire too.

Real-life ecosystems are kept in delicate balance by the various machinations of nature, which unfortunately can be easily disrupted. Thankfully, Far Cry 3's ecosystems are somewhat harder to fuck with, though that certainly won't stop us from trying.

During our time with the game so far, we developed a strange habit of killing the predator but not the prey whenever we come across two beasts going at it. If a tiger is chasing a pig through the forest, we hit the tiger with an arrow to the dome and let the pig live.

We like to think we're contributing to some sort of underground pig revolution, maybe. Or we just like screwing up the natural order of things. Either way.

Giant tortoises are not as common as you might think on an island filled with tigers, leopards and bears. Wait—actually, it makes perfect sense now.

Either way, we didn't get to test this one out, but we've heard you can strap C4 to a turtle's back and send it on its merry way as a slooooow remote bomb. We tried strapping C4 to a rabid dog instead, but that didn't end so well.

Actually, PETA might be okay with this one, since the one who often winds up getting hurt during all this mayhem is you. You can hunt all you like in Far Cry 3, but wandering through the wilderness is not without its dangers. About half the creatures on Rook Island are better at killing you than you are at killing them. You'll become painfully aware of that every time you get taken out by a surprise pack of wolves and love ten minutes of progress.

Things get pretty violent when a crocodile or bear gets up in your face (though thankfully the quick-time events are kept to a minimum). In Far Cry 3, you have to work to get to the top of the food chain. It's a dog-eat-dog (or tiger-eat-player, or shark-eat-player, etc.) world. It's just a shame we can't all get along.