Jack Carver has left his mysterious and bitter past behind him and dropped out of society to run a boat-charter business in the South Pacific. He is hired by Valerie Constantine to take her secretly to an uncharted island in Micronesia. After Valerie takes off on her own with a jet-ski, Jack's boat is blown apart by a mercenary rocket. Jack manages to escape but is stranded thousands of miles away from home. With his employer lost somewhere in the depths of the jungle, he must now find his way back to civilization.
With the help of a man named Doyle, Jack travels across the various islands, battling mercenaries in search for Val. Through encounters with the Trigens (genetically altered beasts) and information from Doyle, Jack soon discovers that the island is part of an experiment involving genetic modification.
As the game progresses it becomes clear that the Trigens are becoming too large a problem for the mercenaries to handle, and that the experiments are not limited to just primate mutations, but moved on to mutating mercenaries. When Jack finally catches up with Val, she is being taken to another area by a helicopter. Jack attempts to stop the helicopter and Val manages to escape. After swimming to shore, Val reveals that she is an undercover CIA agent and is investigating Krieger’s operations. Val then suggests that the two of them split up in order to better investigate the islands.
After further exploration, Jack must again search for and rescue Val. This is made increasingly difficult as more Trigens have escaped, and have begun a revolt against the mercenaries on the island. As a result Krieger has called in elite mercenaries, and Jack must battle them to reach Val. After that they split up again, and reunite when Jack has killed the mercenary commander, Crowe. Information Crowe had with him indicates Krieger has a tactical nuke on the island.
After the Department of Defense has supposedly analyzed the situation, Jack and Val steal a tactical nuclear weapon Krieger had intended to use as a last resort in covering his tracks, should his projects be investigated. Jack seems uncomfortable about setting off a nuclear weapon, but Val assures him “its only a tactical nuke, just enough to take out the factory and the base. By the time it goes off we’ll be upwind and out of range.” Before entering the factory Doyle warns that the mutagen might infect them when the blast goes off, and advises them to take some antidote before arming the nuke. Inside the factory, he directs them to inject themselves with serum from a red box with a biohazard symbol on it. They do so and arm the nuke, which detonates directly behind Jack and Val as they exit the factory, leaving them unconscious.
While Jack and Val are unconscious, Krieger has visited the site, and abducted them. Jack wakes up on a helicopter with Krieger and Val, and is kicked off by an elite mercenary as Krieger says “survival of the fittest, good luck!” On the ground, he finds a rifle has been tossed out as well, with 10 bullets. The player, as Jack, now has to fight through the trigen infested area to rescue Val - for the third time - and escape the islands with his life. Upon reaching a mercenary weapons cache, Jack notices his arm is turning green. Doyle responds “The antidote should have been able to handle it, but the explosion could have saturated the air with mutagen. That’s what happened to Dr. Krieger. He developed a serum to keep it from spreading, and he’s still on the treatment.” Jack is thus directed to find Krieger.
However, once Jack reaches and defeats Krieger the plot twists. Jack asks a dying Krieger where the antidote is, and Krieger responds “Who infected you? The mutagen can only be administered through sub-dermal injection. I wish I could take credit, but I had no time to prepare the serum. You should turn out to be a beautiful specimen. Give it another hour… much less for her [Val].” Doyle comes up on the nearby volumetric display and says “The old man was always one for melodrama. Too bad he had no head for business,” and reveals the ‘antidote’ they took earlier was the very mutagen they were trying to protect themselves from. He also remarks that “Working for the government taught me that where there’s a weapon, there’s money to be made.” Jack threatens Doyle, who refuses to give them the real antidote, and then leaves Val at a dock in order to find Doyle.
After battling through a horde of Trigens, Jack catches up with Doyle and corners him.
Jack then escapes just before the volcano, in which Krieger's main offices were located, erupts and both he and Val are cured from the mutagen. The offices are destroyed by the explosion and he and Val sail off on the boat. The ending cutscene shows Val looking at a thick folder of papers and two CD's tied together labelled "Project Far Cry".
[edit]Gameplay