Vaas Montenegro is the secondary antagonist of the 2012 first person shooter video game Far Cry 3, a minor character in its 2021 sequel Far Cry 6, and the main protagonist of its DLC Vaas: Insanity. He is the brother of the Rakyat leader Citra, Hoyt Volker's right-hand man, and Jason Brody's archenemy.
He is an overtly insane, drug addicted pirate who leads the pirates on Rook Island and helps to capture slaves for Hoyt. One day, he kidnaps Jason Brody and his friends, and kills his older brother, leading Jason to seek revenge.
He is voiced by Michael Mando.
Far Cry 3[]
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 decided 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.
After Jason and Grant escape and brew up an escape plan for everyone, Vaas shoots Grant in the neck, the latter of whom 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.
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.
Reception[]
The character, and in large part Mandos's performance in the role, received critical acclaim, and the character is often regarded as one of the best villains in video game history. Used heavily in marketing for the game, Vaas become the game's poster child, and was in large part responsible for Far Cry 3's massive commercial and critical success. The character's reception heavily influenced later games in the series, who become far more marketed and focused on their villains, such as Pagan Min, Joseph Seed, and Anton Castillo.
Trivia[]
- His role is more of the other main antagonist, because he is a much more active threat and personal enemy than Hoyt Volker.