I’m probably guilty of unjustified murder. I’ve got to be. It wasn’t until halfway through the third act that I realized I’d been gunning through hundreds of men in Shanghi without knowing why.
Early in the game, some doober named JB, who supposedly worked for the same company as you back in the day, walks you down some alleyways while Shanghi gets bombed to sh*t. In the same fashion as you, JB kills two guys walking by in an adjacent alleyway saying something like, “You can never be too careful in Shanghi.” Of course you can’t be, because if you aren’t careful, giant Gears of War like Mercenaries will gun you down without questions. Seriously, wtf?
So we’re killing people, they’re shooting at us, we don’t really know the relationship. At some point I try to switch weapons but end up playing rock, paper, scissors instead, building a relationship with my bro instead of killing. The ultimate make peace not war demonstration except the moment I lose my third game in a row, we go back to the killing. Does a chest bump over a pile of bodies justify it all?
So every cutscene either involves guys larger than you with large guns shooting into the air and possibly smoking cigarettes at the same time or heaven raining ballistics onto the Shanghi sky line. That is as much plot as you really get.
Some questions that have come to mind, besides the obvious, “What the hell is going on?” are things like, where’s the Shanghi military? China has the largest military in the world. If someone is bombarding the city with missiles, they should be able to do something about it after a few attacks.
Then I thought to myself, maybe it’s an inside job. I guess that’s still a possibility, but I feel it’s unlikely because all of the “enemy” mercenaries speak English. In fact, the closest thing you get outside of English, is a wonderfully racist Engrish speaking man in a zoo.
I’m assuming the plot is somehow related to how the two characters in this game took down the Private Military Organization they worked for during the first game, but for those that skipped the first one (and there are a lot of you) you would have no freaking clue. Actually, I played through the first one twice, and I still have no clue if that is the plot in the second game.
This game is also guilty of about 101 gaming/literary laziness issues.
How do we stop them from going up to a floor we don’t want accessible?
Answer: Pile a bunch of office equipment and metal carts on the stairs.
How do we progress the plot when we write ourselves into a corner?
Answer: Make a character fall and hit his head, waking up hours later, with a new cast of characters and new plot points.
Well, they killed our boss guy pretty easily, how do we make it harder?
Answer: Throw three of that boss at them at the same time.
The thing is, I’m loving this game. For all the issues there are, this game is fun as can be… as long as you have a buddy. I’m about 4/5 of the way through right now, so be looking for the full review soon here. I hope by then I have some sort of a grasp on the plot.
I don’t wanna spoil anything here, but I just don’t think there are any meaningful answers for you at the end of this game. But, like you said, you played more of the first than I did. I wasn’t put off by the lack of story, but that shouldn’t excuse it. The game had a handful of interesting environments that it tied together with excuses. That’s lazy, and you’re right to take them to task for it.