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iscariotsdeputy · 6 years ago

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Analyzing Staci Pratt’s Character Arc

Julian Bailey once said, on February 13th, 2019: “Yeah, Staci has a real character “arc” and he’s way more complex than he lets on at the beginning…”. And I, Sam, your local Staci Pratt enthusiast, am here to explain why Staci is a deeper character than everyone’s favorite douchebag son. Now, you may look at me and say, “Sam, you dumbass, it simply ain’t that deep.”, to which I say you are completely valid, but you can and should bear with me here for a second. And yeah, you can reblog this if you wish.

Far Cry 5 opens in the small, backwoods locale of Hope County, a completely fictional place in Montana that’s actually inspired by southern Montana. Early on, it’s set up that there’s this heavily armed religious group that has taken roots in Hope County. And guess what? The cops are doing absolutely nothing about it. That is, until one fateful 2:37 AM. The Hope County Sheriff’s Department and one U.S. Marshal have decided to finally arrest Joseph Seed on the suspicion of kidnapping with the intent to harm.

Now, as you sit in the back of the chopper with Sheriff Earl Whitehorse and U.S. Marshal Cameron Burke, two Deputies sit up front, flying the ‘copter and pressing buttons like it’s nobody’s business. Their names are Joey Hudson and Staci Pratt, for the intents and purposes of this post, I will be focusing on Staci Pratt.

Not much is known about Staci Pratt pre-game, except for the fact that an NPC says “Deputy Pratt always came off as a bit of a douchebag, but that doesn’t mean he deserves what Jacob’s doin’ to him”. Throughout the first cutscene, you can occasionally hear some wise cracks from Staci, and although less noticeable, Staci does mess around with Joey up front, offering her his flask and whatnot. Now, Staci’s wise cracks come in the form of hazing the Rookie Deputy (“Maybe we shoulda brought Nancy along with us instead of the Probie. These Peggies wouldn’t fuck with her”) or disrespecting Joseph Seed (“Crazy motherfucker”).

If you think that Staci calling Joseph crazy is the only time Staci is disrespectful to his elders, you’d be incredibly wrong. Now, it’s not exactly “disrespectful”, but it shows a moment of doubt that Staci has towards the orders of Sheriff Whitehorse. When Whitehorse tells Staci to set down the helicopter, Staci does nothing at first. He just keeps the helicopter completely still and doesn’t move it. He’s completely silent too. Staci does nothing until Whitehorse says “Pratt” and Staci quickly says “Roger that”, like he was snapped out of a thought. So, this is where we set up Staci’s character arc:

Confusion. Staci’s character arc is moral confusion and also confusion of one’s identity. As of right now, let me quickly state who Staci is: A guy who’s a bit of a douchebag and he doesn’t believe in a word that Joseph says.

Let’s fast forward to when the Rook eventually goes to the Whitetail Mountains. When you reach these mountains, more often than not, you will hear THIS BROADCAST before you see Staci again. Now, you may say, “Sam, he could’ve just been reading this”. And yeah, definitely, he was reading. The way he stumbles through it and says it so blankly is a very obvious way to say “Yup, that’s false emotion”. So, if I were to put it on a timeline, this had to have been recorded when Staci was first taken in. Maybe within the first week or so of his capture. But, something I didn’t realize at first when I listened to it. Basically, the whole time, it sounds rehearsed. It sounds faked. It sounds like Staci had a gun to his head. But then get to the end. Around 1:10. Please listen close to when Staci says the phrase “Train, Kill, Sacrifice in the name of The Father and The Project at Eden’s Gate”. You hear him, right? Suddenly, he lights up. Suddenly his voice is more gruff, more emotional, more angry. Those cue words, that phrase, and Staci is there again. No stammer. No blank slate. Those are words that Staci believes in.

So, no matter if he doesn’t believe in Joseph normally, as soon as he hits those cue words, his heart is into whatever’s conditioned along with it.

While you’re running around the Whitetails, you’ll hear some NPCs talk about Staci.

My favorite thing is that a few people say “Friends might not be friends after Jacob’s done with ‘em.”, “He might never come out of it. The very least he’ll never be the same guy he was before. Not ever.”, “There’s not much of the old Deputy Pratt left. Jacob made sure of it.”

Alright folks, now we’re at the first time you see Staci in person again. Actually, it’s entirely possible from this clip that Staci is the one who carried your sorry butt to get conditioned. Now, it’s harder to notice because Jacob Seed may believe in culling the weak, but he doesn’t believe in proper lighting: Staci has scars. Staci is roughed up. He went from THIS to THIS. That is the reverse of a glow up. That’s a blow up. In this scene, Staci gets one line: “You shouldn’t’ve come for me. You should’ve run.” Also, the minute Jacob shows up, Staci literally runs to get in his spot. He runs to the back, gets out of Jacob’s way, and just stands there. So, in the time that Jacob has gotten his hands on Staci, our douchebag Deputy has suffered some major wounds to his pride. Believes both Rook and Him were both better off by leaving Staci in the mountains.

BUT HEY HE GETS MORE LINES IN THE CONDITIONING SEQUENCES HA HA GOD I’M IN PAIN.

Hey, hello there, welcome to the Time Break (Part I). What’s the Time Break, you ask? This is where I shamelessly yell about Staci’s voice lines because some of them don’t really fit into a specific point in time (You hear them after you free Stace, but these are just like “hey fun fact Jacob eats a kitkat bar the wrong way i wanna die” reminiscing things) , but they really just reveal facts about Staci’s mental state. Hint: It’s not good.

“Jacob took me on one of his hunts. Only we weren’t huntin’ any animals. A couple of prisoners had escaped. They didn’t get far.” FROM THIS AUDIO

Can I point out how at the end of this line, Staci laughs a lil bit? His voice lightens like he’s amused.

Also, Jacob took Staci on a hunt. It sounds like it was just the two of them hunting people down. I feel like it was a way to “”””reward”””” Staci and get him more chill with pulling the trigger on helpless prisoners.

“I had to help round up the wolves. Y’know, to be made into Judges. They were so scared. So scared.” SAME AUDIO AS ABOVE

This is fairly self explanatory, but yeah, this poor man had to round up scared, whining wolves and lead them to their deaths, essentially.

“I had a dream once that Jacob took me on a hunt. We shot some deer and he asked me to skin ‘em. As I was cuttin’ them open, they changed. It wasn’t deer. I...I don’t think it was a dream.” THIS AUDIO

STACI PRATT HAS SKINNED A HUMAN BEING A HUMAN PERSON A REAL ASS PERSON NOT A DREAM LITERALLY SKINNED A PERSON ALIVE Okay, in all seriousness, I believe Staci was going through his conditioning, which is why they changed. Or, worse, Staci hallucinated it in order to justify his behavior. Either way, Jacob Seed stood and watched as Staci skinned somebody alive under the pretense that he was just skinning a deer.

Finally, here’s Staci singing Only You

Hey there, buddy. Welcome back from The Time Break. Now, let’s keep moving right along through Staci Pratt’s suffering to the next cutscene, again, this is a one line scene. It’s when Joseph comes to speak with Rook about sacrifices and Rook wakes up to hear Staci “They want you to be strong. One of you will be strong.” And once again, Staci finds himself interrupted by Jacob and as soon as Jacob gets there, Staci moves to stand right in Jacob’s line of sight. First he stands on the right of Jacob, but when Jacob turns, Staci rushes to be on Jacob’s left so Jacob can still see him.

Now, let’s go to the next scene where Staci has no lines, but he’s there so let me analyze those body expressions and movements. Pardon my French, but Staci is doing his fucking best here. Like, poor dude has to rush to give Rook their mystery meat and then has to shave Jacob’s beard, then washes Jacob’s hands, and then hands the canteen over to Jacob. The most interesting thing here is the whole shaving nonsense because Staci has a literal knife to Jacob’s throat. Staci has a knife, right there, and he doesn’t slit Jacob’s throat open. He doesn’t kill Jacob, even though he has a very good opportunity. Why? The poor bastard was conditioned to believe that without Jacob, he had no purpose. Jacob is the leader. Jacob is strong. Staci can’t do it. Staci is subservient to Jacob in every way. So no, Staci isn’t going to kill Jacob. Staci is lost without Jacob.

Are you guys ready to commit treason? STACI SURE IS. BUT FUN FACT, I WHOLEHEARTEDLY DON’T THINK STACI THOUGHT OF IT HIMSELF. Let me run through the whole scenario real quick. Staci sneaks out, avoids the guards, goes to Rook, frees Rook, tries to warn Rook about their conditioning, and then shoves Rook onto the truck to free them. Staci thinks he’s being a hero. Staci thinks he’s doing something on his own, but he’s not. Now, why do I think Staci didn’t think of this himself? Because Staci said it himself.

He (Jacob) gets in your head.

Now, please tell me, how Staci would evade capture? He yelled at another prisoner that they weren’t strong. He alerted the Judges there because they started barking when Staci freed Rook. Also, it’s funny how there are no guards out there in the cage area. Nobody watching the prisoners. And how there were no guards that caught Staci and Rook on the way up to Jacob’s office. And that Jacob wasn’t in his office. And that there is a bag of weapons there that anyone would have noticed. Jacob sees everything, we learned this early on. He has security cameras everywhere, just like Eli. Anything Staci did, Jacob or a guard would have noticed. And yet, the alarm finally sounds off just as Rook is about freed. And when you wake up, the truck is all abandoned in the middle of nowhere. Staci was set up. Jacob orchestrated that and let Staci run through the motions.

It was a test. And Staci failed. Staci was weak and traitorous. And we all know what happens to our traitor…

He’s strapped to a chair. He’s publicly humiliated on TV. He’s strapped to a chair in a cold, wet, dark bunker. He is left to die. He will starve and dehydrate. He will rot. When he passes, his body will get thrown to the wolves. And the video ends with Staci crying to help. And guess what?

When you find Staci again. It turns out that he has been listening to that video for days, it has to be less than 7 because he would have dehydrated by then, most definitely. Imagine if you were in his spot. Imagine if you were left to die and all you got to listen to was a video of you being called weak and traitorous, and then you crying for help and crying for Jacob to not leave you there. It’s awful. It’s horrendous. And it leads to a major change in Staci Pratt.

When you meet again, Staci says the line, “Rook, are you real?”. This indicates that Staci had been sitting down there, having hallucinations about Rook and other people. When you free him, he falls to the ground. When he gets up, he says that he was weak. He says that maybe he deserved to die, to starve, to be stuck down there. Then, he takes a sledgehammer, and surprisingly after starvation and dehydration, through that sheer adrenaline and strength, he takes that hammer and smashes everything in sight. Then he takes a gun, says he’s strong and that the people who made him strong are now weak. And that they must be culled.

WOW THAT’S BAD, HUH?

YOU KNOW WHAT THIS CALLS FOR?

Welcome to Time Break (Part II). Now, we’re going to see some of Staci’s lines that happen after you free him and get him to the Wolf’s Den.

“We could’ve died. We could’ve died. And maybe..Maybe I deserved--NO, NO, STOP STOP! The weak! The weak must be culled!”

“Maybe we didn’t survive that crash. Maybe all this is purgatory. We have to atone for all the shit we’ve done before we can leave this place. We have to suffer before God will grant us salvation.”

“Train, hunt, kill, sacrifice.”

“I can’t take it anymore.”

“Jacob. His experiments. He takes us. Owns us. Speaks to us. He hears us.” THIS AND ALL ABOVE IT IS THIS AUDIO

“He was right! He was right! I knew it! I fucking knew it! Shit, Jesus, help us…”

“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

“Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.” (This happens when the bombs go off)

“It’s just gonna get harder. They want an offering. A Sacrifice.”

“I’m trying. I’m trying my best, you have to know that.”

“The whole time I was locked in that room I just kept thinkin’ about how I got here. Y’know why I became a cop…To get laid! That was it! It was a whim! And then after a while I tried to convince myself that I did it for the “greater good”. To help people. But I can’t. I know that now. Jacob taught me that.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore. I don’t even know who I am.”

“I...I don’t know what we’re supposed to do now. Protect and serve? Out here? There’s no law anymore, Rook. Look around! Someone shoulda been here by now! Nobody gives a shit about what’s happenin’ here. We’re on our own. Survival of the fittest. The weak and the strong.” ALL OF THAT WAS THIS AUDIO

If you resuscitate Staci, he says “You’re like my Guardian Angel!”

Alternatively, if Staci’s in pain, he’ll beg The Father to stop his pain.

“This place...do you know what it is? A protector from what’s to come. But it isn’t inevitable. He said to me that you could stop it. But only you, Rook...Only you...But if you don’t...if you don’t listen...if you don’t...We’re all gonna die. Either down here or up there. It won’t matter. We can’t stop it...The Father...He sees what’s coming...He’s right…” FROM HERE

“Nobody’s gonna take anything from me again. Ever.”

“You see that, Jacob?! Who’s weak now?!”

“I’m alive, but I’m weak...weak. Need to be strong. We are meat. We are all meat.”

Also here are four fun videos of what happens when you initiate combat with Staci Pratt: ONE TWO THREE FOUR

Now that we’re free from the final Time Break, let’s talk about the end of the game. First things first, let's talk about the common factor between the two endings, the confrontation with Joseph. This is when Rook turns and sees Joey and Staci forced down on their knees with guns to their heads. Joseph says that you can go in peace and there’s this exchange between Joey and Staci Joey: Go in peace? You’re fucking insane. Staci: Is he? We never should’ve been here in the first place.

Then, in the Resist Ending, as he sits in the back of the car, Staci screams a Hail Mary and then he yells about how Jospeh was right. How Joseph was fucking right. Also, Staci is sitting right by Joseph as he screams that all, so you know Joseph hears him.

Now, to the Walk Away Ending, as soon as they’re let go, Staci is shaking as he gets up and has his hands up to show he isn’t a threat. His back is hunched and he makes himself look small and he’s literally shaking like a leaf. Joey and Earl fight and he rushes to get in the truck. Staci sits in the back with his hands in his lap and staring at the floor. He stays silent until Whitehorse brings up coming back and fighting again. And all he does is say “No. No way. I’m not gonna be a part of this. You heard what he said.”

I’ve enjoyed the time we’ve spent together, I really do, but I’ve realized that I seriously need to come to a conclusion here. So, let’s go back to where this all began. We started with Staci Pratt, the douchebag cop who had wiseass remarks to every situation. Though Far Cry 5 follows the arc of a young, Rookie cop who faces something they were never prepared for, there is an arc to Staci Pratt’s character and it’s a path of confusion and not knowing who he is or where he belongs anymore.

One of the first things Staci does is insult Joseph, and by the end of this story, Staci Pratt believes in Joseph Seed and the Project and culling the weak. Staci’s character arc is so much breaking and breaking and breaking and then being rebuilt in the visage of the Project. In an essence, Staci develops and destroys himself at the same time. Pardon me for a pun, but Staci Pratt is a far cry of the man he once was. As Whitehorse and Joey still fight for the Resistance and loathe Joseph, the same cannot be said with Staci.

He believes is Joseph, but all of his friends are in the Resistance. He is every single one of Jacob’s lessons, beliefs, manifestos, plans, all shoved into one person. He is a living legacy of the man who orchestrated Eli’s murder and yet he’s sitting there in the Wolf’s Den. And yet, he was treated like shit in the Mountains. He was treated as lesser. Even, throughout this all, Staci’s belonging is a topic that really has no proper place.

When Jacob Seed said that Staci would die in the bunker, he wasn’t wrong.

The old Staci Pratt died a long time ago, and now there’s a new man living in his place.

#IM SO SORRY FOR HOW LONG THIS IS #YOU BET YOUR ASS I'M GONNA TAG MY HARD ASS WORK #Staci Pratt #Deputy Pratt #Deputy Staci Pratt #Out of Crashes: OOC

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