Headscratchers / Just Cause 2

• With a military junta and three armies of gangsters packed into an island, it seems like you would have the ideal ingredients for a Mêlée à Trois. But there isn't, apart from captured vehicles or factions clashing with the military. How come the Roaches, Reapers and Ular Boys A) Never fight each other B) Drive through each other's territory? Surely they won't want each other controlling Panau once Baby Panay is gone.
  • There is one Reaper mission, "Can I Get A Witness?", that is said to work against the Roaches - but it's an Informed Attribute. Beyond that, the factions don't mention each other, and are actually neutral in-game.
  • Maybe the three groups have signed a secret pact to work together discreetly until Panay is overthrown. Or they don't think messing with someone that's destabilizing the government like themselves is a good idea.
• Why are there so many Settlements in the south-east corner of the island? A huge amount of the pickups and military bases are in that one corner and there are very few missions that take you close except the penultimate one. It's just a huge area that you probably wont even look at until you have gone through most of the other 3 quarters of the map. It just seems like a waste.
  • In real life, people settle near places that have any number of assets, which can range from fertile farmland, access to materials, a path to the ocean, and more. The Southeast may have more of these assets then we know of.
  • From an game development perspective, maybe they just wanted that area to feel unique by being packed with them. After all, the beauty of the scenery is the variety of the locations.
• The character Karl Blaine in 2, or rather the game's treatment of him. Rico arrives on Panau and he's set up as Rico's unreliable (i.e. escort mission fodder) contact. After saving him from a casino bust and escorting him to safety (his first and only non-faction-controlled safehouse,) Rico threatens to murder Blaine if the intelligence he provides you turns out to be less than reliable. And then he threatens to murder Blaine for your troubles rescuing him. Then he threatens to murder Blaine for wanting to upload the intelligence to your PDA. Then Rico threatens to murder Blaine if he tries to screw Rico over. Then, much later, he's captured and tortured for information. Despite being as soft as a civvie after all of the years spent doing nothing on Panau, Rico regard him as a traitor and vow to murder him. Then, after he sneaks out of his dungeon alone and suicide bombs the evil dictator BY HIMSELF, Rico taunts his corpse. What the hell, game? What. The. Hell. The only thing that makes it even remotely tolerable is the fact that Blaine's accent/voice acting is one of the most annoying things in the game.
  • Again, Karl Blaine is doing more harm than good, so it'd be reasonable for Rico to hate him, especially after he finds Tom Sheldon again. The bug Blaine planted nearly got Rico and Tom killed. His information was barely useful, and rescuing him was a hassle. The only reason Rico didn't immediately plant a boot up Blaine's ass as soon as he found out about Blaine's treachery was that Blaine was already captured and Rico had more important matters at hand than getting back at Blaine.
• Of all of the side missions in the game, only about 20% aren't rehashes of the same quests in every other sandbox game. What makes this so bad? That 20% is amazing. If the same amount of fun (or simple effort) had gone into the other faction missions as "Stranded" go to the mysterious island reminiscent of Lost, discover a superweapon capable of destroying any engine-based aircraft being guarded by still-living veterans of WWII era Japan who don't know the war is over, "Fry Me to the Moon" Get in a plane and single-handedly cripple the Panauan space program by blowing up their rockets, one mid-flight, or "Pirate Broadcast" Bolo gives you a device to plant on a satellite dish that will hijack the entire country's primary newsfeed. The dish is eighty stories above ground and needs to be reprogrammed at four waystations swarming with guards near huge drops, the game would have been a 10/10 across the board.
  • They already had a ton of content. The fact that you do these missions with a grapple hook and a Hyperspace Arsenal of parachutes makes the other 80% far more bearable. Helps to break up the monotony when you can immediately claim the high ground.
    • Plus, the game gives you the option to complete the missions in unusual and creative ways. GTA IV, killing a guy is always chasing him down then just shooting him, boring as hell after the first 2 or so times. Here, you can chase him down, grapple onto his car then make it flip over or fly off the road (takes a little practice but is hilarious.) You could drag his car off the road, or fly it with a helicopter then drop it from a great height, and then there are the dozens of ways to kill the guy on foot, so those 80% can be kept lively and fun by being creative.
• How does nuke on oil fields make them unusable? It won't reach the oil deposits and render them unusable, so it would be an ecological disaster, and even that is diluted because at best the radiation only gets around through rainwater. Even if the contamination is that bad, certain oil-related infrastructures remain intact, so Russia, China and Japan could steal any oil stored there without fighting each other. In the case if the United States really learn about the oil, they would just cut a deal, so it ends up being an even smaller issue. Given the game isn't all that realistic, though, it's set up in a manner that shouldn't be bothered after it's done.
• How in the world is Panau supposed to recover? Throughout the game, Rico wrecks every single bit of infrastructure. Unlike the Rebels in Just Cause 3 who actually plan to rebuild whatever they've destroyed in the conflict once they take over, the three factions' ethics are just as questionable as Baby Panay himself.
  • Then again, The Agency probably just wanted to remove Baby Panay and sweep the matter under the carpet before he tries anything else, even if those nuclear missiles are seemingly incapable of getting to the United States. In Just Cause 3, Rico overthrew Di Ravello with minimal Agency intervention because Medici was his home, but nobody in The Agency would really bother about Panau or San Esperito.
    • If this makes you feel bad, just bear in mind that Rico also set off a nuclear bomb in Panau's immediate vicinity. Long-term consequences are nothing compared to getting a good barbecue in.