[SPOILERS] Far Cry 5

[CharlesPhipps]

This is easily my favorite of the past few Far Cry games. I eventually warmed to Far Cry 3, I loved Far Cry 4 with some caveats, I hated Far Cry: Primal (to the point I didn't review it), and I've really loved Far Cry 5. I will say, though, this is a game which had the misfortune to be released at a time when everyone is trying to make everything about the Trump election. There's some digs against Trump in the game which are hilarious but they're good-natured South Park-esque digs while the politically discourse lately is far more angry.

The premise for the game is you are a nameless, voiceless Montana Deputy who you can make a character for. You and the US Marshal's office have been called in to arrest Joseph Seed, leader of the infamous Eden's Gate cult that has recruited a good half of Hope County, Montana into its ranks. This attempt, clearly based on the raid on the Branch Davidians, goes horribly wrong and you find yourself waking up a few days later to the county under the cult's control. Cut off from the rest of the United States, you must build a resistance to take back the county.

I've seen a lot of reviews attempt to unfavorably compare the game's "commentary" to Wolfenstein: The New Colossus. The thing is, W:TNC didn't have any political commentary on the present, it just so happened to state killing Nazis is a good thing and the fact America has a racist past/present it has yet to confront. That's not commentary on the present but a rather universal theme which just so happened to be politically relevant (unfortunately). Far Cry 5 has a lot of political commentary on it but it's not the commentary which Polygon apparently wanted and missed out on some very interesting themes.

The big thing, for instance, is the fact Far Cry 5 is a love letter to rural Americans. You know, those people who voted roughly half the "correct" way but have been demonized as a vast collection of MAGA-hat wearing racists who have ruined this country. I say this as a left-leaning frothing crazy liberal who lives in said area that is demonized--so you can imagine I'm a bit sympathetic to the game. This is a game where the doomsday preppers and poor working class of America aren't the bad guys and it seems like this burned out the brain cells of a lot of reviewers.

Far Cry 5 is a story about the monster truck and Nascar loving gun-toting rednecks of Montana getting attacked by an evil cult and fighting back. It's the kind of game premise which eagerly adopts themes from "Red Dawn" and doesn't exist in the easy political spectrum of "city folk good", "country folk stupid." Given the amount of flack the game has taken from both sides of the political spectrum, the fact it's got black rural Americans working alongside white ones makes it a reminder of an America I grew up loving. Because, honestly, can't we all join together against the comically evil drug-addled terrorist organization?

Honestly, I feel bad about killing the Eden's Gate cultists at time because they're such an entertaining bunch of evil doers. John, Faith, Jacob, and Joseph are hilariously over-the-top parodies of how cults recruit people. The sad fact is, they're not actually that far from some of the cults which exist in rural America. People I've actually had to deal with and are prepping for doomsday with lots of guns. It makes me wish there was an arrest option for them like in Battlefield: Hardline or a non-lethal set of takedowns like in Mafia III or Deus Ex.

Still, the game is fun and has a lot going for it in making sure you experience all the various facets of it. Like previous Far Cry games, taking various outposts away from the bad guys is a big part of the game but there's also a variety of other missions. The game encourages you to use a variety of vehicles and missions. It also replaces the "Tower Mechanic" of previous games with simple exploration ala Fallout 3 and New Vegas.

Indeed, the game feels like Fallout at the best of times where you're wandering around the beautiful Montana landscape and stumbling across ambient storytelling like the cult having murdered a family along with their pets, a father begging his daughter to come back from the cult only to be murdered, or a bunch of doomsday preppers who built a big bomb shelter stocked with food only to get murdered for it. You'll use everything from cougar bait to Molotov cocktails to SMG to carve your way through the baddies.

The story sometimes goes off the rails, like the fact you're captured like eight times by the Eden's Gate cultists in order to get some face time for the bad guys, but this is a small price to pay for good storytelling. I was particularly fond of Faith, the lone female cult leader, and actually came to sympathize her before the end. Joseph, himself, seems like the least interesting of the quartet and that's a shame. The ending of the game is also confusing and poorly-done but it's hardly the first game which threw in an unneeded twist at the end.
Faith is an awesome character.

Still, this is just a plain fun game and that is the standard by which I judge my games. There's endless number of things to do in the game ranging from riding planes, helicopters,and jet skis to shooting down all of those. You can fish, hunt, and blow things up with the best of them. This is the definition of a wide-open sandbox game and there's very little "filler" like collecting feathers (okay, there's some of that too like bobbleheads and comic books but that's just standard in these sort of games).

The tone of the game is a bit wild but that's to be expected from Far Cry games, to the point they're sort of their own genre nowadays. One mission can have you find out about how the Father murdered his own newborn daughter because she was born disabled, convincing himself it was God's will, while another mission might include punching insane drug addicts into a fire pit while on super-powered meth. I was hoping for some more Assassins Creed and Watch_Dogs references but, sadly, there doesn't seem to be any and I doubt the three universes are still the same by the end.

Do I have any complaints about the game? If there are, I have only a few nitpicky ones. The hunting in the game is nerfed with crafting no longer being a major part of the game. This is a shame because I feel like if there's a game where you should hunt cougars, bears, or moose to make weapon sheaths then this is the one. I also don't much care for the Skill Perk which requires you to use a bunch of weapons and achievements to get Perks versus just accumulating experience period.

In conclusion, this is pretty awesome all round. It's a work which has a political stance but it's one which isn't "Trump bad" as its sole statement but a more universal theme about radicalism, gun culture, freedom, and extremism. There's even the somewhat questionable but still perfectly valid idea that it's sometimes best to leave alone situations which could potentially explode. It's also just a game where you can experience Good vs. Evil gameplay in a story which is just plain silly. You can have both as Far Cry the series has shown repeatedly. Play Far Cry 5 for the fun and don't worry about the politics.

9/10

[SlackerinDeNile]

Interesting review, I haven't played any of these games since the second one, which was incredibly flawed but I rather enjoyed. I plan to play Blood Dragon at some point, that one looks the most fun.

Are you sure this topic belongs in Sci-Fi and Fantasy?

[CharlesPhipps]

Well, it has psychic powers and magical hallucination drugs and....well, the prophet turns out to be real.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I've heard some really angry comments about the ending of the game. How did you feel about it? A solid ending is really important to me, especially for a medium that expects so much personal effort from the player.

[CharlesPhipps]

I've heard some really angry comments about the ending of the game. How did you feel about it? A solid ending is really important to me, especially for a medium that expects so much personal effort from the player.

I feel it's a suitably Far Cry-esque ending. Far Cry is a series based in part on Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and all of the games have had the protagonists achieve Pyrrhic victories at the best of times. You can save some people but will die of malaria after a lifetime of evil in Far Cry 2. Jason Brody manages to rescue his friends but he's become a merciless killer or he's sacrificed to a blood cult. Ajay Ghalia has managed to plunge a country into a Civil War but the sides which will replace Pagan Min are every bit as evil as he was--and it's questionable Pagan Min's followers will obey him or negotiate with him anymore than the Golden Path.

Far Cry 5's ending follows that trend that the solution was never violence in the first place or being the big hero.

[Rodan56]

I can't accept the ending and I feel it's indicative of the overall problem with the game's story. It doesn't go far enough. It just stops short of making the very clear allegory to what these bad guys are supposed to represent. For some reason, this cult of crazy Christian doomsday religious nutters in rural America... are perfectly fine with every other black person joining up? Yeah... no, these types of groups... no. It's like making some Stormtroopers women, diluting the original purpose of the Rebellion having a clearly more female led and oriented leadership and general makeup. The Empire is supposed to be xenophobic and less progressive. They're stand ins for Fascist governments, where advancement for minorities and women would be limited to non-existent.

But The Empire is based in a fictional Galaxy far away from us in the past somewhere. It's removed enough from reality that this ulitimately is a minor quibble that doesn't matter. Eden's Gate is basically a mish mash of the Branch Davidians and the Bundy Clan. They should NOT be this ethnically diverse nor as accepting. And you can feel like Ubisoft WANTS to go all out, because they get everything else right. But in an effort to smooth over controversy and offend no one, they diluted their own intended message. And they dilute further with the ending.

I won't spoil anything, but I find all options abborent. One suggests we should have just LET the murdering scumbags continue to maim, slaughter and make the lives of everyone in this town hell because it was wrong to intervene in their invasion of this county. All those people we helped apparently didn't deserve and we should've let this crazy nutbar continue to break the law and destroy lives. Because... non-violence is better? The other ending... makes no sense in the context of the first and suggests that the bad guy was right all along. And the implications for the final scenario if you're playing a female avatar in this situation are... disturbing. In every previous Far Cry game, while the bad guys were revealed as less black and white than they seemed, you always retained the option to kill them because regardless of what justification they gave, they were still horrible people.

Joseph Seed wins no matter what you do in this game. And I can't abide by that at all. I find it dangerous, immoral and offering comfort to certain individuals who don't deserve it. Especially now. Especially with the second ending. And to see so many alt-right gamers praise this game for NOT going all the way and pointing the finger at crazy gun toting cults entirely, even suggesting the cult aren't actually villains or all that bad... well that just proves my point better than anything I can say by itself.

[CharlesPhipps]

I grew up in rural Kentucky where there were lots of apocalyptic Christian cults.

Plenty of them were multiracial.

Racist Christianity is in not the only brand of lunatic fringe. That tends to be the fundamentalist LDS sects or the actual white supremacist version but there's also crazy hippie branded lunatic fringe. It also wouldn't make much sense for the cult to be kidnapping everyone and indoctrinating them if they were only looking for specific members.

Mind you, many of these multiracial cults did discourage mixing the races but you could be black or white or Asian as part of the group. Because rural Kentucky is racist even when it's not racist.

(Weirdly, some of the ones I've looked up have opened branches in Africa--it's a weird weird world)

I do note, however, taking a stand that the good guys and bad guys don't engage in racism is taking a stand and good on Ubisoft.

Joseph Seed wins no matter what you do in this game. And I can't abide by that at all. I find it dangerous, immoral and offering comfort to certain individuals who don't deserve it. Especially now. Especially with the second ending. And to see so many alt-right gamers praise this game for NOT going all the way and pointing the finger at crazy gun toting cults entirely, even suggesting the cult aren't actually villains or all that bad... well that just proves my point better than anything I can say by itself.

It's Far Cry.

Aren't the games, by nature, about how humans are fundamentally bad and there's no such thing as justice? You can achieve some good in the games but the games are all about how violence doesn't actually solve things and the majority of conflicts inevitably end up turning both sides into monsters?

I mean, at least since Far Cry 2 when the two factions both end up committing genocide and you are told that you're explictly a profiteer from them and the best thing you can do is put a bullet in your head.

Also, I have difficulty believing the Alt-Right are going to be behind a multiracial Christian cult.

[Rodan56]

This is a very specific kind of cult that these people are referencing. This is a doomsday cult built around a very clearly right leaning ideology and extremisit interpretation of the book of Revelations. Based purely on isolationism and militarist survivalist philosophy. I'm sorry, but it is very clear WHO Ubisoft was referencing. Specifically in their takeover of a small rural county and several towns. If the plan involved doesn't sound like what almost happened in Leith, brought to its terrifying conclusion, then I don't know what to tell you.

That is not a stand. That is a pure and simple attempt at lessening the impact of the message. When you make them do all these horrible things but say "at least they ain't racist" you are leaving out a very core drive of motivation. A motivation that specifically denotes what these cults are like, what many of these militia groups are like. They are motivated by race in many cases. Ignoring that will not make it go away. Eden's Gate has no defined political aspirations, economic ideology or even any tangible sense of three-dimensionality. They are crazy, evil lunatics who justify their actions because they think the apocalypse is happening. Why they think that, what motivates them to think that, what drives them to that is never politically explained or alluded to. They just do this stuff because.

It's narrative cowardice is what it is. If the new Wolfenstein games decided to tone down the Nazis' racism in the face of the backlash from Conservatives who felt targetted, I would call them out for the same reasons I state here. That was taking a stand, that was actually holding true to the message. And I hate Machine Games iteration of the Wolfenstein franchise so believe me, I hate praising them for anything. Far Cry 5 got a bunch of lip from the very same people and were quick to step back as fast as possible.

Why? Because they didn't want to damage their image or profit margins. The idea they were targetting a certain group of people of a heinous belief system was soundly denied. They backed off and the game's narrative is lesser for it, not stronger. Because now the bad guys of this game have been sanitized into just another pack of crazies you need to kill. Not alt-right, not racist, just crazy. Crazy loonies is fine, you don't have to think too hard about it because you divorce yourself from them. I'm not insane, therefore, everything these people believe is not what I believe. I don't have to ask uncomfortable questions about my beliefs.

By choosing not to depict racism on part of the villains they decide to remove it as a motivation and potential block to certain individuals buying the game. It allows them not to question anything. That's not taking a stand, that's stepping down.

Aren't the games, by nature, about how humans are fundamentally bad and there's no such thing as justice? You can achieve some good in the games but the games are all about how violence doesn't actually solve things and the majority of conflicts inevitably end up turning both sides into monsters?

The solution presented in this game is to allow a killer and a maniac free reign to keep doing what he does in defiance of the law. It is essentially saying Law Enforcement should've let Bundy and his group stay on that reservation. That the Government had no right to remove them. That America's laws and systems should be ignored in the face of a flagrant violation of civil rights and basic humanity. The plot line you described may have worked in Far Cry 2, but we're not talking about that game, or 3 or 4. We're talking about 5.

How is it a bad thing to enable the residents of Hope County to take back their home from a bunch of crazy people who have done nothing but murder and kidnap their friends and loved ones? How are they monsters for resisting very clear and present dangers to their livelihoods? How are they not deserving of being saved from people who are indeed monsters? What do they do, any of them do, to deserve this? In nothing I've seen in any of the game footage is there proof that taking on the cult is a bad idea that only leads to worse things because things are pretty worse already.

The game FORCES itself to fit a particular storyline. Nothing that occurs in either ending makes sense for a natural progression nor are either satisfying. Both actually contradict each other and make no sense in the given context of either sequence. When a narrative forces in a twist like this to fit a theme, you get JJ Abrams' Into Darkness. The story becomes a checklist that has to fit certain criteria, becoming as generic as anything else. It's just the same story with a different coat of paint. And it is weaker for following a formula that doesn't fit the context of this game instead doing something else and saying something else instead. It says something about these games that ultimately most people gravitate to the crazy spinoff version that was ripping off junk 80s VHS B-Movies than any of the official titles. Mainly because it was actually breaking the formula that was already starting to get stale, specifically because everyone seemed to hate 3's protagonist. 4 avoided it by not making him an asshole half the time. Now 5 makes you either a coward or a hapless victim.

Say what you will about Primal, at least it TRIED to be different. The main games just seem to be interested in repeating the same forumla again and again, regardless of whether or not it makes sense for the story they are trying to tell. When you try to force in this singular theme into every game, you're basically forcing in a concept that's no different than the damn mystery box. Heck, it's the same device. What's the new Far Cry game's twist on the ending this time? How does our choice end up screwing everyone over? We've come to expect it now and it is stale.

As for my final point, about alt-right gamers actually applauding this game... ugh, fine. You've forced my hand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gg6F7V0HDA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zlvEKXTzWg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NGo9n28L3M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOxGcsCCVe4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77yZpHOrQW0

There, now I got delete a bunch of crap from my history on youtube. The things I'll do to prove a point.

[CharlesPhipps]

It's repeatedly called a hippie cult.

Huntley is disgusted by its Leftist views.

It uses an LSD equivalent for brainwashing.

Then again, I'm with the people who were in the Handmaid's Tale who talked about why they chose to eliminate the racial essentialist element from the television adaptation. Depiction is very often something that feeds into the narrative of the individual who want to use the storyline for their own advertising. Take Bioshock: Infinite where Comstock, one of the most repulsive individuals in gaming history, ended up having his imagery and rhetoric actually used by the Tea Party.

Yes, OBVIOUSLY, Eden's Gate is based on the Branch Davidians.

I'm not arguing with you there....except I apparently am since Craig Cobb is not David Koresh and doesn't appear to have been an influence on the cult. However, there's no need to include their element out of the belief it will make a stand when it just will give a forum to hate speech. Drawing from other sources doesn't hurt the work I think but benefit it.

I doubt I'll convince you but I'm not a man who believes giving the racists more representation in media will weak then. I think it only helps them. Roger Ebert had a similar belief about depictions of the KKK.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-chamber-1996

Any subject, including racism, can be the legitimate material of a movie. But I am not happy when I see deep wounds in our society being opened for the purpose of entertainment. “The Chamber” is not a serious movie about anything, and so when characters are allowed to rant at length about their hatred of African Americans and Jews, repeating the most vile hate clichés, what I get from the screen is not simply dialogue but the broadcasting of dangerous language.

I have heard all of Cayhall's clichés before, but they have pretty much disappeared from general use in America, and there will be some younger audience members hearing them for the first time. How will these words affect them? In both “A Time to Kill” and “The Chamber,” the Ku Klux Klan, with its secret meetings and ghostly costumes, is presented in a way that is technically negative but could seem thrilling. The films portray the Klan as criminal, racist and anonymous, but those have always been its selling points; it is not portrayed as boring and stupid.

Re: Wolfenstein the New Colossus

I applaud the game for taking America to task for its racist past and depicting the country including large numbers of collaborators in the sixties. However, I should point out that there was never any danger of toning down the Nazi slaughter. It's just the game unfortunately became politically relevant with the sudden surge of white supremacy and Neo-Nazi apologia that sickens me.

Complaining about the cult not being white supremacists when they are a fictionalized representation of several cults (some of which were not racist) is a weird hill to die on. The choice to depict Hope County with (as in real life) black, white, and Asian farmers working together is a statement.

If a game is not ABOUT racism then it shouldn't tackle racism. Don't demean serious subjects by making them cartoonish.

Re: The Storyline

****SPOILERS*****

The story depicted in Far Cry 5 is a tragedy. Joseph Seed and his family are a bunch of broken, terrible, drug-addicted and traumatized individuals who are all slaughtered in the Good Ending. The game never says it's immoral for the people to fight back and there's a heroic narrative for the most part--but it ends in nuclear fire. Joseph Seed and you both left as the sole survivors of an atomic holocaust. The two people who hate each other most in the world now as the only people left despite BOTH of you wanting to save everyone.

You could argue the "Leave them Alone" ending is the best one and that's immoral but if you're arguing that interventionalism on the basis of moral grounds is ALWAYS justiified then that's not making an objective statement but just your opinion. The Iraq War was sold on similar moral grounds and the resulting tragedy and conflict made thimgs far far worse in the region with no sign of running around. Now, obviously, the best answer is, "Come back in a week with the National Guard versus five guys in a helicopter" and that's the same with "Fight the Iraq War BETTER" but thats another way to interpret the "not arrest" storyline.

The Far Cry games do not depict slaughtering people, even BAD people, as good things. The games are very cynical about war and the glory of it--which is not a bad message to send. Especially since Eden's Gate's cultists are NOT evil--they're enslaved and addicted to drugs as well as put through brainwashing.

Re: Jerks on the internet

Eh, fair point. They're crapping on Polygon, not praising Eden's Gate, though. Specifically, actually, they're praising the fact you're shooting the evil cultists as a bunch of rural Americans and siding with Hurk Senior who is a racist cariacture of Donald Trump (see what I mean about depiction appealing to racists?)

The Verge (a left leaning publication) nicely summarized why it was a collection of dumb talking points.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/6/17202 ... rrelevance

So the irony is the Evil Cult doesn't appeal to them because, well, it's NOT a bunch of racists.

[CharlesPhipps]

How I would have done the ending:

For me, I'd do the nukes going off but instead have Joseph reveal with his dying breath there's a fourth bunker under his church and you get a cutscene where your followers as well as the people you allied with all manage to evacuate into it.

Then you end with bliss hallucinations of the dead Seeds with Joseph saying you're the Father now.