Developed: Ubisoft Reflections, Ubisoft Ukraine, Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Shanghai, & Ubisoft Toronto
Published: Ubisoft
Released: March 27th, 2018
Reviewed: June 18th, 2018
PlatyStation 4 review
I don’t think “just more Far Cry” is compelling criticism, largely because mechanical similarities aren’t enough to dismiss a sequel as unnecessary. After all, Assassin’s Creed Origins gave its controls a major shake-up, and I still found it to be the second most tedious game in the franchise. I hold Far Cry 3 as the best in the franchise because subsequent games (Far Cry 4 and Far Cry Primal) didn’t bring the same strong characters, zany tone growth-oriented plot, and congruent mechanics. They felt like Far Cry toy sets; the familiar pieces were there but without the same imagination. Far Cry 5 is here to remind gamers of how good the series can be.
Far Cry 5 begins with a small law enforcement team flying into Hope County, Montana, where a radical Christian cult leader named Joseph Seed has been militarizing the population. His followers have moved enough guns into the county, currently possessing enough force to being kidnapping and harassing the townsfolk. After an attempted arrest goes poorly, The Deputy (our customizable protagonist), and their now dispersed crew, are left stranded in this hostile region. They set out to reunited the squad, mobilize the local population, and bring the Seed family to justice.
Most of the raw mechanics are the same as with previous games. First person shooter controls with the typical array of Far Cry guns: assault rifled, submachine guns, shotguns, pistols, bows, explosives etc. The machete was replaced with a serious of blunt objects, which get the stealth takedowns done just as effectively. It has many of the same standard vehicles: cars, ATVs, boats, jet skis, and trucks, but there are also helicopters and personal planes for fun aerial battles. While the gameplay loop has not been radically re-envisioned, it does take place in a better-designed open world.
On top of being an absolutely gorgeous rendition of a fictionalized Montana municipality (one that made me long for a Photo Mode), Hope County is a far more engaging world to explore than many other Ubisoft games. As I have said in previous reviews, Ubisoft has a tendency to clutter the map with content, proudly displaying every missions, character and secret the game has to offer. This starts to make their games feel like pictorial checklists, as players race from one spot to another. Interaction with the world is so limited because everything of worth already has a map marker.
In Far Cry 5, the player has to talk to people for missions to reveal themselves. Small encounters – freeing prisoners or killing Eden’s Gate cultists – direct you to big ones. For example, someone I rescue can lead me to a cult stronghold, where I can unlock a side mission upon liberating it. During the mission, I might find a key that opens an underground Prepper’s Stash. Serious effort was spent ensuring that activities flow into one another, creating an experience that opens itself organically. Even the collectibles only appear on the map when the player finds a text document that reveals their location. I did not expect this level of engagement from a modern Ubisoft game.
Consequently, Far Cry 5 is an example of good open world design with small quests forming a whole that is more cohesive. There is a real focus on exploring the map, finding secrets, and taking time to stop for a bit of fishing. Free-form discovery fuels a new system for narrative progression: earning Resistance Points. Hope County consists of three separate regions, each one under the command of Joseph Seed’s siblings: John, Jacob, and Faith. Earning enough Resistance Points draws the siblings’ attention to the player, leading to missions that move the narrative forward.
Almost every activity in Far Cry 5 offers Resistance Points as a reward. Main missions, side missions, fetch quests, and stronghold liberations offer large amounts of Resistance Points, while smaller quantities can be earned through the random encounters: freeing hostages, killing important cultists, or destroying their property. Once the player hits a certain number of Resistance Points, the next encounter with a Seed begins automatically. Though it may be annoying to have progress halted so suddenly, I think this system offer a good balance between freedom and structure.
The player is allowed to do whatever they want, and the story will continued regardless. In open world games, I often feel the urge to do every side quest before moving on in the story, so having that threat of impending progress pushed me in the direction of more spectacular missions sooner. Better weapons also unlock as players earn more Resistance Points, discouraging me from grinding (and subsequently burning out) in any one area. Lastly, this system yield greater replay value, since I can get to the end with any different combination of activities, but not all of them.
While narrative progression is cool, I am not as sold on the character progression. Instead of earning XP like in previous games, Far Cry 5 has the player earn Perk points by unlocking Prepper Stashes and completing challenges. These include killing enemies with different weapons, performing different Takedowns, hunting specific animals, and using the wingsuit. They keep the player from getting skills too quickly, but they also encourage experimental play rather than smart play. I never needed to shoot an enemy from over 150m away because stealth and a baseball bat worked better.
Awkward, suboptimal gameplay demands aside, I also do not like how it negates the sense of growth from previous games’ skill trees. In Far Cry 3, Jason gained simpler skills first and tougher skills later, reflecting his transition from green weakling to masterful warrior. He learned how to harvest plants before being able to chain together lethal takedowns. Ajay in Far Cry 4 went through the same kind of evolution. In Far Cry 5, the player can choose whichever new skill they want, leading to situations where I can pull of perfect headshots with a Pistol Takedown, while still having incredible sway and bullet spread aiming down iron sights. My growth makes no sense.
Of course, the protagonist of Far Cry 5 is a blank avatar, a silent cipher simply existing as the story happens around them. This was my most heartbreaking thing about the game. Far Cry 3 blew my mind because of the wonderful character arc Jason went through. He was an interesting individual who reacted to his world in unique ways, and playing as him let us empathize with that journey. Ajay was not as interesting as Jason, but he still existed as an individual. The Deputy is a silent nobody with no thoughts of their own or dynamism of any kind.
Thankfully, the NPCs have plenty of character to spare. I like how Far Cry 5 remembered that villains were supposed to be menacing, taking cues from Vaas and Hoty, rather than the sillier troll that was Pagan Min. John is a straight-up psychopath, masking his antisocial personality in grand sermonizing and sadistic feats of atonement. This often translates to torturing people and stealing their skin. Jacob is an ex-military man who uses classical conditioning and “survival of the fittest” rhetoric to program obedient killers, culminating in clever subversion of expectations.
Faith is the kind, gaslighting arm of the religious cult. She harvest the plan responsible for Bliss, a euphoric substance that encourages cooperation with the outwardly sweet woman. Her performative kindness signaled a malicious obliviousness, insisting that you are refusing her good works by not allowing yourself to suffer her torture. However, Joseph’s silent charisma is the clear attraction. His presence comes with menacing soliloquies, delivered with a haunting calmness. Once you hear him speak, you stop wondering how these metrosexual hipsters with man buns were able to take over a county in Montana.
The friendly NPCs were quite lovely as well. In Far Cry 4, every theoretically interesting character felt like a wacky appendage bolted onto the side of the central narrative. They did not add anything; they were just kooky. In Far Cry 5, the Resistance Point system meant that every NPC quest served the larger goal of weakening the Seeds. Instead of just copying what was popular in Far Cry 3, cultivating Resistance gave the player more narrative license to engage with the imaginative forms of insurgency. There were the pleasant towns folk taking up arms against John, the rugged, outdoors-y types struggling against Jacob, and the traumatized police force reckoning with Faith.
At the same time, there were individual NPCs scattered about the map offering rich encounters for the explorative player. Skylar Kohrs was this adorably snarky young woman looking to buy her way out of town by reeling in The Admiral, a legendarily big fish. Chad Wolanski was a grumbling grillsmith who cooked up ridiculous recipes with the help of The Deputy. Clutch Nixon was a local daredevil whose memories live on in the zany, life-threatening vehicle stunts that players can pull off. These dynamic characters added such a bold flavor to life in Montana.
My personal favorite, however, were the Allies. While I appreciate their combat abilities, I largely preferred their story missions. One that sticks out was helping pilot Nick Rye gather the courage to defend his home from the cultists, as he wrestled with his masculinity. He was caught between keeping his family safe and protecting what is his, sweating himself over the kind of example he wanted to set for his soon-to-be-born child. I found his relationship with Kim highly endearing, especially when we had to race her to the midwife.
Spending that much time with bumbling characters made me appreciate the game’s sense of humor. Far Cry 5 takes jabs at culturally relevant topics, without being a complete mockery of the nightmare circus that is American politics. Overall, I was taken aback by how much of a good-natured experience I had with a game that could have been much meaner. I think of a game like Grand Theft Auto V, in which every joke smothers itself in a thick coating of self-impressed contempt. Far Cry 5 does not feel the same need to punch down, instead approaching the absurdity with love and appreciation for its subjects.
The gameplay, character interactions, and tone all converge on the excellent soundtrack. Far Cry 5 really made every effort to impress. The folksy fiddles for the calm moments gelled well with the modern synth chords during the action, cultivating the trippy unreality that the franchise is known for. I also loved the original hymns. They perfectly capture what it is like to observe a religious gathering, where people sing along to slightly disturbing lyrics that they barely recognize because the melodies are so catchy. They were the kind of soft seeming words whose grim implications snuck up on the discerning listener, perfectly establishing the sinister tone.
Not that the game is as partisan as the ads made it seem This is not Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus taking a definitive stance against Nazis, both past and present. Far Cry 5 is not interested in exploring the nuances of Christian fundamentalism, neither dissecting the ideology of evangelical extremism nor reverse engineering the way its influence expands. Consequently, The resistance is more like the Anarchist Cookbook than Das Kapital; blow up the wierdos and worry less about their ideas. It does the same thing as Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, borrowing the imagery of today’s politics without following through on narrative application.
Still, the game is not without any pertinent discussion, providing some insight into different forms of social control. John Seed is a grandstander who relishes in a captive audience (literally). “The Power of Yes” offers performative salvation through the guidance of a wannabe mega-church priest. Jacob has both his “Survival of the fittest” ideology and psychological conditioning. He can tap into the baser characteristics of masculinity, programming violent responses as tests of strength for his clan of would-be warriors.
Faith reminded me of the phony kindness that abusive people show as they gaslight you. Why were you antagonizing her when she wanted to do good? The sheer strength of her willingness to believe in Joseph Seed kept her from seeing the pain she caused. It reminds me of how many Christians don’t understand that, “Hate the sin, not the sinner” still hurts LGBTQ+ teens, who nonetheless still hear their families condemning them. Sadly, her use of mind control gas causes the game to deviate from any relevant insight into the genesis of Christian extremism.
This extends to the game’s ending. It was a comment on the US’s clumsy foreign policy, drone warfare, and our inability to handle threats like al Qaeda or Islamic State. However, I came to that conclusion on my own, since Far Cry 5 barely addresses its own themes. Same goes for the inclusive militia, considering how these groups almost exclusively draw angry white men. Something about the intersection of gun culture, media-induced “invasion” anxiety, and the reclamation of traditional America appeals to that demographic. Even though there are people of color who find a home in these right wing attack forces, Far Cry 5 never explained how those values intersect.
Still, I am never going to judge a game for including diversity. I like how Ubisoft is just always willing to have women, people of color, and queer people play major roles in their story. In a time when so many “gamers” have been conditioned to get fussy over queer, non-white, non-male characters, it’s refreshing to be reminded that companies are willing to have that inclusivity. That’s just more people to be happy when the game chooses to exclude loot boxes and keep the microtransactions to a minimum (if only to highlight how pathetic they are.)
Overall, Far Cry 5 is one of the best Far Cry games I have played in a while. It falters for its underutilization of relevant issues, but it makes up for that by vastly improving upon the open world design while offering a set of stronger characters to liven it up. Of the staple Ubisoft series currently out to market, Far Cry 5 feels like its setting the best course for the future of the franchise. I look forward to seeing what new ideas make their way into the next Far Cry game. Maybe global politics won’t force a sequel to feel so contemporary.
8.5 (Damn Good)
Revised Score:
★★★★☆ – Strong
thebyrnedisplay
The Culture HUD 
1 Pingback