Just Cause 2: The Depth

Sharks! We all like sharks, right? I mean, in-game, not real life as they are vicious predators. To some of us players, Sharks are the perfect enemy (In games like GTA V), perfect prey (In games like Far Cry 3 and 4) and a perfect prop (kinda like in Vice City).

In some games they appear as Easter-egg, some enemies. All depends, really. However, today, I'll be talking about a little experience in a beloved game of mine, Just Cause 2.

Recently, I got the game on Steam with all of the DLC and decided to do another playthrough of it, but with a few cheats like God-Mode and Infinite Ammo. I know what you must be thinking 'Why cheat in such a game'. Well simple, you're a God in it already, why not enhance that experience? I mean, we've all had games we wanted to play-back as magnificent fragments of destruction.

So, anyways, I started the game up and every thing was fine. Edited the Settings, lowering the graphics as my PC is quite poo. Started a new game, and the trainers. First set of missions (Welcome to Panau and Casino Bust) went well, no glitches or anything. Then, the world opened and the usual choice of Stronghold take-overs popped on the PDA. Now, since I modded the game, not just with trainers, but Black Market stuff, I could buy anything for free (cheeky, I know) so I got the Pell Silverbolt plane, the one smaller than the game's average car. I flew around the big, snowy mountains, and behind them I saw the Oil Rigs, sitting in the water.

I recall them being very fun to blow up. I landed on a road, got an assault helicopter and went forward. I opened the map to see which Rig should I go and explore. There was an oil rig on the map, just east of The Mile High Club, that I didn't recall in my earlier playthroughs. I shrugged it off as bad memory and went to it, just so I can hear the MHC music whilst recreating Apocalypse Now.

When I got there, there was a pop-up saying "Pelentar Gas Panau Timur Discovered". The name of it rung a bell, because whilst I was browsing for Just Cause 2 mods, I saw a thread on a clan-site of some person claiming they saw a Megalodon shark near the Rig. People laughed him off in the comments, and some even asked for the mod link. I must say, I chuckled as-well because the only 'shark' I remember in JC2 is the Sharkfin 3000 Easter egg.

As I got into position, I fired off a few rocket shots and blew up the crane. As I watched it flop into the ocean, under the rig, the water was quite, quite brighter than usually. It was easily distinguishable. Now, you probably think what I did at the time, that the sun-glare was making the water look bright. But it wasn't. It was moving. I thought nothing of it, and by the time I regained my sense I got shot down by the rigs SAM site. I grappled onto the rig, and went around taking it over. After a minute or so of flying around it to get all the collectibles, I fell into the ocean by accident.

I tried pressing F to hook back to the rig, but it was out of reach, and, when I started swimming, some form of tide swung me back. And below Rico, there was a shade of blue that was still. Now I was a bit scared, like my first encounter on the LOST island, but I had God-Mode, so I couldn't die.

I went underwater to search for the blue object. I swam a bit deep and saw a side of a boat. Now that isn't odd, as the game has a few ships and boats sunk around. However, at the corner of my eye, I saw a bright-blue fin. It was similar to the one in the lake in the desert, but it was quite bigger. Then, it just dissapeared. I turned the camera around and saw what looked like a very, very big and quite angry shark looking at Rico. Now, I'm not the horror game type of person, so I just started hammering W and trying to swim up as fast as possible. I was near the island below the nightclub so I swam towards it. The shark was closely behind me, I could see it's sharp fin chasing after me. In a few seconds, I finally got in range of the island, and hooked to it. I got my rocket launcher out and just started shooting the water.

After a couple of shots, the game popped up the Chaos meter, and how many Chaos points I just received.

I spawned a boat and went down. It was quite a way deep and I found the dead body of the shark. I tried to get in for a closer look, and even a screenshot, but before I could press F12 to take it, the body vanished. Kinda like a dead soldier would, or a carcass of a vehicle.

I then closed the game and went onto internet surfing. The next day I got some modding tools to inspect the game, and it's engine files, closely. I saw that in my copy there was a doubled engine extension simply titled 'sharkbig'. There was a model and texture file. It was the creature that chased after me. Following through the extensions and edits, I found a script that triggered it to spawn. Apparently, it's tied to the New Game. Every time you start a new game, you get a 7.2% chance of it spawning near an Oil rig. But, it seems that not many people knew about that.

That didn't ruin the game experience though, but as I'm slowly passing through it, destroying bases and the military, I still am a bit nauseous when I'm driving a boat on water, near a Oil Rig