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This article appeared in Far Cry 3This article appeared in Far Cry 6

« Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity? »

Vaas

Vaas Montenegro is the secondary antagonist of Far Cry 3. He is the archenemy of Jason Brody and Dennis Rogers and the main key art character of the game, being featured in numerous promotional materials.

He returns in the first DLC released for Far Cry 6 entitled Vaas: Insanity. In this DLC, Vaas is the protagonist, and the player gets to navigate through his mind.

Biography[]

Early life[]

Vaas was born in 1984 on the Rook Islands and from a young age, he was a member of the native Rakyat. He was particularly close to his sister Citra and mentions that the first time he killed was for her. Since he was a child, Vaas was deeply infatuated with his sister to the point of obsession. He would commit violent acts against anyone who gained her affection, such as a man who he caught with Citra in bed. It is implied that Citra wanted to bare a child with Vaas, similar to how Jason has with her in the "Join Citra" ending of Far Cry 3, after Vaas has proved himself to be the ultimate warrior. However, Vaas eventually ended up disappointing Citra. At one time, Citra caught Vaas in bed with another woman, who proceeded to stab him in the back and the chest, narrowly missing his heart. Vaas simply removed the blade in anger and walked off the incident, barely being even affected by the wound, most likely due to being under the infulence of drugs. Vaas could never tell his sister how he felt which led to inner turmoil that led to his decline and felt deep regret how he became a disappointment in Citra's eyes.

Meeting Hoyt Volker[]

Over time, sometime before 2012, Vaas became addicted to drugs, brought to the islands by deranged slave and drug trafficker Hoyt Volker. Vaas eventually established contact with Volker who found potential in Vaas and eventually promoted him to right-hand man. However, the leader of a particular group of pirates, which Vaas was part of in the beginning, was planning to eliminate the islands' natives as ordered by Hoyt in order to expand their reach on the archipelago, but due to Vaas heritage, he objected and after asking the other pirates' heritage from the group, Vaas proceeded to shoot the pirate leader in the leg and planned on a mutiny against Hoyt the following day. This didn't, as evident by the game, go as planned and Vaas went on to become eventually become the leader of the Pirates, a faction consisting of scum that either had defected from the natives population or had come to the Rook Islands to rape, pillage, steal and murder. If Vaas' actually attempted the failed mutiny, Hoyt was most likely so impressed by the feat, that he promoted him to the leadership position of the pirate faction, as Hoyt has promoted his men in the past simply due to appearances.

Vaas and his men would help Hoyt with his criminal enterprise on the northern island, such as growing marijuana fields and kidnapping and selling native inhabitants of the island into slavery; as well as sowing terror and injustice in the Rakyat and the islands that are rightfully theirs. Vaas would operate from a hidden fortress in the North Island from where he would oversee the deaths and destruction he caused on the natives and the Rakyat who were once considered his family.

The Far Cry Experience[]

Main article: The Far Cry Experience

« I, um... I forgot to clean up my mess. You know, boys and girls, always clean your room and listen to your parents. »

Vaas telling viewers some 'advice'.


A few days before the events of Far Cry 3, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and his camera-man Barry, who were hired by Ubisoft to beat the odds and survive in the "real" Rook Islands that inspired Far Cry 3 witness Vaas executing a pirate he used as a chariot before he and his pirates come across Chris' ship before killing all the partygoers and blowing it up. Rounding up the survivors, Vaas coerces a female partygoer to execute the rest before discovering Chris is on the island. Expressing his interest in him, Vaas spots Chris and his camera-man Barry hiding behind some rocks before they attempt to escape. Managing to catch up to Barry, who was shot in the leg, Vaas headbutts him into unconsciousness before grabbing the camera to express the viewers not to vacation on Rook Islands. Vaas and the pirates took the partygoer and Barry to a camp where he tortured them to bring Chris out of hiding, and following his failed attempt to rescue them and escape, Vaas was able to capture him and buried him up to his neck on a beach, where he started a daily torture films, such as dehydrating him, trapping his head in a glass bowl with a giant spider, having a fire cracker go off in his face, urinating on him, shocking him with a car battery and fed him pieces of Barry's flesh, whom he blew up with a rocket launcher. Upon discovering pleas by viewers to let him go, Vaas complies, only to find Chris seemingly not moving and tries waking him up, only to discover he is dead. He tries giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation before giving up, until Vaas hears from a pirate about skydivers landing on the island and leaves to "welcome" them, briefly returning to Chris' body to bury his head.

Far Cry 3[]

« Way up in the fucking skies, you thought you had your finger on the pussy trigger! But hermano, down here, down here ... you hit the ground. »

Vaas telling Jason and Grant that he owns them


During Jason and his friends' trip in Bangkok, he felt a grudge against him for screwing up his plans to overthrow Hoyt. They hear about an island where you "can do anything" from Doug, the nightclub DJ that works as a spotter for Vaas. They then decide to do a blind skydive over the Rook Islands. After landing, they are soon captured by Vaas and his Pirates. While Jason and his older brother Grant are tied up, Vaas explains how he is going to ransom them for large amounts of money from their parents. It is revealed later that even after receiving the ransom money, Vaas would sell them all as slaves for increased profit.

Make a Break for It[]

Main article: Make a Break for It

« Run, Forrest, Run! »

Vaas yelling at Jason to run for his life


After Jason and Grant escape and brew up an escape plan for everyone, Vaas shoots Grant in the neck, and as a result Grant bleeds to death. Vaas decides that instead of killing Jason, he lets him run. This mistake would later be his undoing.

While on his campaign to save his friends, Jason learns that Vaas is keeping Liza Snow hostage personally, as a way to make Jason come to him. When Jason assaults a slave prison that is said to hold Liza, he is knocked out and captured by Vaas. When he wakes, he, Liza and Oliver are tied up in chairs in an old, abandoned building, while Vaas is pouring and covering them in gasoline. He then sets fire to the building and leaves Jason and Liza to die, but he takes Oliver with him. They escape just as the building is engulfed in flames and collapses on itself.

Jason continues his campaign of saving his friends. During a meeting with CIA agent Willis Huntley, Huntley puts on a recording of a conversation between Vaas and Hoyt in which Hoyt briefly chastises Vaas for not taking matters seriously with Jason and urges him to take care of him while he searches Beras Town for a transportation manifest that holds the name of Oliver Carswell, who happens to be one of Jason's kidnapped friends.

After being given a mission by Citra to save some of her kidnapped warriors, Jason and some Rakyat members ambush Hoyt's men who are transporting Citra's warriors. Jason is, however, ambushed by Vaas again, when opening a truck that he believed to house the captured warriors. Vaas then ties Jason to a cinder block and introduces him to his insanity monologue before kicking him into a cenote, intending to drown him.

Jason escapes, then proceeds to kill more of Vaas’ men to acquire a helicopter and escape. After the helicopter is shot down by an RPG, Vaas comes up to Jason and shoots him point-blank in the chest. It is later shown that Jason survived the shot by way of a lighter, the same one Vaas tried to light him and Liza on fire within the abandoned hotel.

Payback[]

Main article: Payback (Far Cry 3)

« Take me into your heart. Accept me as your savior. Nail me to the fucking cross and let me be REBORN! »

Vaas, moments before being stabbed by Jason


After becoming intimate with Citra in her temple, Jason is finally given the task to kill Vaas at his compound, who is throwing a party in celebration of Jason’s "death". Jason is led to believe he is infiltrating the compound successfully but is surprised when Vaas sounds the alarm and broadcasts that he knew Jason was coming. After killing all of the pirates, Jason stumbles into a larger warehouse looking to confront and kill Vaas once and for all.

When he confronts Vaas, Vaas stabs Jason in the chest and then seemingly walks away. Jason enters a similar dreamy state in which he confronted Buck and kills several visions of Vaas, before finally confronting the true Vaas. After some struggle, Jason plunges his knife into Vaas' chest again and again until Vaas falls to the ground wounded. In the last scene, when Jason collapses next to Vaas after the long fight, Vaas’ eyes look straight into Jason’s one more time before Jason wakes up.

As Jason approaches Citra in the final dream sequence, Vaas, or at least a voice in Jason's head that sounds like him, says that she's going to make him a warrior.

Fate[]

Following speculation that Vaas may have survived, Jeffrey Yohalem answered cryptically via Twitter [1]. Instead of explicitly confirming that Vaas had died, he merely commented that the Privateers believed Vaas had died, saying "Sam and the privateers confirm Vaas' fate. What reason do you have to question them?"

The Insanity Monologue[]

« Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact... same fucking thing... over and over again, expecting... shit to change. That... is crazy; but the first time somebody told me that... I dunno, I thought they were bullshitting me, so boom — I shot him. The thing is, okay... he was right. And then I started seeing: everywhere I looked, everywhere I looked, all these fucking pricks, everywhere I looked, doing the exact same fucking thing... over and over and over and over again thinking: "This time, it's gonna be different; no, no, no, no, no, please... this time it's gonna be different." I am sorry, I don't like the way you are looking at me... okay, do you have a fucking problem in your head? Do you think I am bullshitting you? Do you think I am lying? Fuck you! Okay? FUCK YOU! It's okay, man. I'm gonna chill, hermano. I'm gonna chill... the thing is... alright, the thing is: I killed you once already... and it's not like I am fucking crazy. It's okay... it's like water under the bridge.
Did I ever tell you the definition... of insanity?
»

Vaas


Far Cry 6[]

Vaas: Insanity[]

Vaas is the protagonist the DLC, who is trapped inside his mind and is haunted by visions of his past and events of Far Cry 3, though of which details have been warped, where the role of Vaas has been replaced with Jason Brody or Vaas seeing his supposed death in third person. Even though Vaas can survive the ordeal, the setting of the DLC (the events unfold in the protagonist's mind) and the fact that you can access these DLCs from the main game, using gaming consoles located in revolutionist camps, suggests that these DLCs are fictional like the Lost On Mars DLC in Far Cry 5.

In a secret ending of this DLC, it is revealed that Vaas somehow survived his encounter with Jason. A visibly aged Vaas is shown sitting on a beach, talking to a tennis ball which resembles Jason.

The Vanishing[]

Vaas makes another cameo in "The Vanishing", in which, after Dani Rojas returns to their dimension, Vaas can be seen blacked out drunk at the bar just beside them. When Chorizo shows back up, Dani takes Vaas' tennis ball and tosses it for the puppy to catch.

Personality[]

What is known about Vaas' personality comes from his close and often dangerous encounters with the main protagonist. Close observation shows that he is reckless, violent, sadistic, brutal, unpredictable, cynical, Machiavellian, psychopathic, insane, extremely prideful, and a remorseless pirate with a gallows sense of humor and a violent personality - who is feared even by his own men, some of whom are as chaotic and psychotic as Vaas.

Vaas, unlike his sister, admires the colonialists who have set foot on the island since he was a child. He even mixed Rakyat mythology with Western technology, such as adding modern weapons to mythological figures.

Vaas does not like to be imitated. Considering an imitator of the sectarian leader Joseph Seed, he even shot the TV.

Despite being crazier and more mentally unstable than the other antagonists, such as Hoyt Volker, he was a charismatic leader and provided most of the jokes in the Far Cry Experience which saw the torture of Christopher Mintz-Plasse and his cameraman at the hands of Vaas.

According to Michael Mando himself in an interview with Ubisoft, Vaas does not hold a true understanding of pain, and a guy that is "completely gone," and that he doesn't truly mean to hurt anybody. Mando believes that Vaas's murders are all "symbolic," and Mando says that he feels like he is "responsible not to put something out in the world that's just violent for the sake of violence." [1]

However, one can notice that once Christopher is not moving for the last time, he begins to attempt a resuscitate Chris. After failing, he seems to begin to genuinely mourn him, just before a fellow pirate announces Jason's arrival. Showcasing how quickly Vaas' moves from one obsession to the next, he then humorously begins to bury Chris' head in sand. This marks one of the few (if any) times in which he shows remorse towards one of his victims.

Hoyt and Citra had turned him into a psycho killer, they drove his mind insane and his sister betrayed Vaas by attempting to kill him with her knife despite his mind slowly descending into insanity due to drug abuse and a promise to become a warrior. He even tried to make a war against Hoyt for harming his native for so many years by shooting their pirate leader and declared a war with Hoyt, but unfortunately his stage of the plan against Hoyt had failed due to Jason's intervention.

Physical description[]

General[]

Wardrobe[]

Murderer[]

Vaas has killed, mentioned to have killed, or been the root cause of death for many, many people, including:

Related Missions[]

Gallery[]

Far Cry 3[]


The Far Cry Experience[]

Far Cry 5[]

Far Cry VR[]

Far Cry: Rite of Passage[]

Vaas: Insanity[]

Trivia[]

  • He is voiced and motion captured by Canadian actor Michael Mando.[1]
  • An interview with Michael Mando from G4TV revealed that when Michael went to audition for Ubisoft, Vaas did not actually exist. He originally auditioned for the character "Lupo" with features very similar to Vaas but decided to do a different take of insanity on the written persona and didn't get the part. However, Ubisoft was so impressed by his performance that they decided to scrap "Lupo" altogether and give Mando the role of Vaas.[2]
  • Originally the character of Vaas was a huge, heavily scarred man called Bull, who looked nothing like Vaas; but Mando's audition was so good the writers changed the character design to the Pyro enemy, who looked just like Vaas, but with the left side of his face and upper body badly burned. Mando's casting and performance led to more changes that eventually led to Vaas.
  • Vaas is featured in The Far Cry Experience, a web-series short film promoting the game, where he terrorizes a celebrity who is filming a reality show/documentary. He is played in live action by his voice actor, Michael Mando.
  • All the antagonists of Far Cry 3 are killed with a knife, including Vaas. This is due to Rakyat honor, which requires killing with a knife.
  • Despite being the secondary antagonist, Vaas has more appearances than Hoyt Volker and his role has the most impact on the story. This led to rumors of Vaas being the true main antagonist (since he is Jason's and Dennis's archenemy.)
  • Vaas' definition of insanity monologue is based on a quote often misattributed to Albert Einstein.
    • According to Vaas: Insanity, while watching an American televangelist while on drugs, the televangelist referenced the "definition of insanity", to which Vaas shoots the television sets, believing the televangelist to have copied him.[3]
  • Vaas seems to be an avid fan of movies as he has made references to Bambi, Forrest Gump and mentioned that he is a fan of Christopher Mintz-Plasse having seen most of his movies, "even the shitty ones". He immediately refers to Christopher as "McLovin", a reference to the film, Superbad.
    • Vaas makes a reference to the movie Forrest Gump at the beginning of the game when he tells Jason: "Run Forrest, run!"
  • You can spawn Vaas as a hostile AI in the Map editor, but his voice will not be used. Instead, it uses a pirate's voice.
  • In the mission Payback, the same music in the club is used in Vaas' compound. The song name is I Fink U Freeky.
  • Montenegro is Spanish for "Black Mountain".
    • Montenegro is also a former Yugoslavian country.
  • Much of his fight scene foreshadows the climax of the game, with Jason essentially descending into Vaas' remorselessness and insanity, thus rebirthing Vaas through Jason.
  • He seems to have respect for and loyalty to his men and allies. This is notably shown in the video with Liza Snow, as he only told one of the pirates to leave for interrupting the video, rather attacking or killing him. This is also shown in the Far Cry Experience videos where he respectfully talks to his men.
  • The only time Vaas and Hoyt interact is in the mission A Man Named Hoyt, where you can hear them talking through an intercepted radio.
    • They also appear physically together in the mission Make a Break for It, when Hoyt orders Vaas to stop harassing Jason and Grant.
  • Vaas is one of the few characters to use a pistol, the other is Jason and Sam (who never fires, however).
  • A prestige outfit, bobblehead doll and shirt of Vaas is available as a vehicle and clothing customization in Far Cry 5. The outfit does not include his beard for some reasons.
  • In promotional material for Far Cry 3, Vaas has been compared to The Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. The lead writer of Far Cry 3, Jeffrey Yohalem, says in an interview with OutsideXbox; "He's a creature of this rabbit hole of the game incursion. So, there's this other layer to the game, there was the real layer of the game, which is the island layer. But there's this kind of Neverland, Alice in Wonderland layered of the game, and he's sort of The Cheshire Cat. So, he's leading the protagonist Jason through this experience but at the same time he's trying to kill him."
  • The actor of Vaas, Michael Mando, has worked with the actor of Antón Castillo, Giancarlo Esposito, on the Netflix show Better Call Saul.
  • Vaas along with Pagan and Joseph, appears as a playable character in Far Cry 6's Season Pass. Vaas's part will focus on his inner mind of insanity, and how Jason Brody is affecting his mind.
  • Vaas's conversation with God in the secret ending of "Insanity" is in reference to the famous and disputed story of Diogenes the Cynic and Alexander the Great. In the story, Alexander the Great approached Diogenes as he was lying in the sun and offered to grant him any wish he desired. Despite Alexander's immense power and wealth, Diogenes simply and rudely asked Alexander the Great to step aside because he was standing in front of the sunlight. This act led to Alexander expressing some envy towards Diogenes by saying "If I were not Alexander, I would want to be Diogenes."
  • In Vaas: Insanity, Vaas's takedown animation are more gruesome and bloody compared to Jason's takedown animation due to Vaas has been a warrior of Rakyrat a long time ago along with his psychotic episode in his mind before the main events of Far Cry 3.
  • Vaas' tennis ball in the secret ending to Vaas: Insanity is a reference to how Far Cry 3 was filmed. Michael Mando would film his scenes talking to a tennis ball on a stick which stood in for Jason.
  • In the post-credits scene of Far Cry 6, Juan Cortez speaks to a smuggler about a Viviro trade, and the recent deaths of Antón and Diego Castillo. The smuggler's voice is that of none other than Michael Mando, the voice actor of Vaas Montenegro, who calls Antón's "mercy killing" of his own son "crazy". Juan agrees, then bids farewell for the time being.

See also[]

Vaas Montenegro/Quotes

References[]

  1. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3103126/
  2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY6bpf3Oy30
  3. Televangelist: "--Tell me, why do we do the same things over and over..."
    Vision Vaas: "No he did not."
    Televangelist: "...Thinking the result will suddenly be different? That, my children, is the very definition of insanity."
    Vision Vaas: "Copycat motherfuckers..."
    Televangelist: "With the tithes you'll be giving today, my church, we will send our missionaries to every corner of God's great and wonderful world."
    Vision Vaas: "What kind of a god needs money, huh?"
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