Open Country can be a frustrating experience. While I have been having a fair share of fun with the game’s characters and world, it’s plagued by game-breaking bugs that turn any potential enjoyment into an uphill battle. Case in point, my alien encounter.
My character — simply named Male Character according to the Trophy list — went out in a boat to do some fishing, but those fishy little bastards just weren’t biting that day. Well, they might have been biting, but the fishing mechanics are so broken that it’s hard to tell. My fellow Half-Glass Gamer Julian wrote up a pretty in-depth guide to fishing, and even that’s not helping me much.
So Male Character was fumbling around with his rod, and I was pushing buttons I shouldn’t have been pushing. In most games, this would be fine. In Open Country, you never know what you’re going to find when you start playing with random sequences of button presses. For me, this turned what was supposed to be a peaceful fishing trip into a possible alien encounter.
Suddenly, Male Character was lifted out of the boat by a force I can’t explain. Here’s a video:
What happened? Had he died in some sort of freak fishing accident? Was his spirit ascending to heaven? Was this an out-of-body experience?
When I looked down, I realized that the floating body was Male Character’s real, physical body — there was not another one left behind in the boat, at least. So I only have one explanation…
What else could it be but aliens? Male Character seems to have been caught up in some sort of tractor beam, lifted from his borrowed boat. And, I mean, it’s my fault, really. I certainly made him an easy target by zooming across the open waters like that, and I was distracted enough by the whole fishing thing that I didn’t notice whatever was overhead. It was inevitable, really.
Before I could find out where this whole scenario was going, Male Character was returned to his boat. Was this just a break from reality? Or had the aliens managed a partial memory wipe? Were there horrible, unspeakable things happening that neither of us can remember?
I really don’t know what was up with this, but what I can say with some measure of confidence is that this is probably the end of my fishing career in Open Country.
