I was looking at a release calender and noticed that Far Cry 4 was up for pre-order but Ubi had changed the art from the original announcement to exclude the man holding a grenade.

With all the headlines the original was grabbing, I wonder if they felt the need to change it or if this was what the cover was going to be all along. Do you guys think the change was necessary?

Thats the world of politically correctness we live in today.

Well now he just looks like an extravagent gun-running businessman.

Boo.

Hooray, now everybody is happy.

Pretty sure that's just the limited edition box art

Boo. As I said in the Worth Reading thread, him being racist is fine, since he's a bad guy. You are supposed to want to kill the bad guy, which the original did a lot better. The new one just has him looking baller as hell.

They're both pretty awful, so...

It was a bad cover anyways. To change that fast means they already had an alternate cover, the first cover was put out to stir controversy Both covers are stupid.
That team has gotten full of themselves. It looks like a Saints Row cover.

Doesn't this make the cover just non-sensical. Imagine you look at that cover without knowing what the game is about at all. What would you think ? Without the obvious notion that he's the villian you would assume he's the protagonist and it looks like some crazy attempt at bringing your traditional FPS to a new level where you play a fashionista going on a murder-spree in the Himalayas.

Why was this an issue? My fuck people are sensitive.

That was grabbing headlines? Why?

I refuse to believe that's the case, unless Amazon was ever selling a pre-order with a different box. People just assumed that the first promotional image was the box, without Ubisoft ever saying so.

Another possibility is that the limited edition has this cover, and the standard has the other cover.

And yet another possibility is that you are correct.

Booooo!!

At very least, from a composition standpoint, the new one is much better.

Far Cry 4 box art.

Far Cry 4 box art never changes.

Man, he looks so sad now his friend has run away and stole his grenade.

seriously.

What i find so interesting about this whole thing is comparing the FC3 box art to the originally released FC4 art and seeing the parallels:

He's still got the pink suit, which apparently people were upset about as well.

But seriously, no one will remember any of this in a few weeks.

The only reason I don't like it now is because he looks way too stiff when comparing to the previous cover.

Boom....it's official!

The limited edition always used this art. From the announcement (bottom):

@mb said:

Boom....it's official!

Those are all limited editions. Hopefully the box art for the non-limited edition has remained intact.

Also, if it is true that it's the limited edition and literally nothing has changed I'm looking forward to the people decrying "political correctness" all taking back their statements.

Oh sheesh .... another one for the "political correct" peeps.

Edit: So apparently I was mistaken with this being the cover for only the day one release..... well my bad but then why the fuck every one including Patrick made a fuzz over the other cover art if it wasnt or...????!!!! Fuck it , I still stand that this is getting way out hand with the criticism before game releases , which I also fall into :(

What was the issue? I honestly didn't even know there was an issue, just one or two twee click-bait articles that had some axe to grind (which I didn't bother to read).

It's kind of dark for a video game cover, with the guy holding a grenade and all, but not shocking or out of the ordinary.

Remember how people really talked about how Remember Me had a strong, non-sexualized protagonist?

Remember how people talked about exactly how big Laura's breasts should be or how gross everything about that game was because the media apparently said so?

Good news doesn't make nearly as clickable headlines as bad news does. I'm all for the sort of movement that Patrick so often writes about - equality, tolerance, respect. At the same time I think gaming is getting dangerously cornered by these very same attitudes. When a developer working on a game where the player will engage in countless acts of murder and violence thinks it's pertinent to change the box art on that very same game because some people think it's too "this or that" then I began to get worried about where this road will lead us. Although maybe thats just some dying rebellious instincts flaring up in me from days long past - from a business standpoint I can see how they might see the negative headlines and simply yell across the hall for the graphic guy to alter the art, sidestepping a potentially sales-reducing situation.

The deluxe version cover was always different.

It wasn't problematic in-and-of-itself; it just got people to bring up the problem in the previous game of a bunch of white people deciding the future (killing or saving) the native coloured people. After Far Cry 3 had quite a lot of people getting annoyed at the latter half of the story, it just seemed like the writers had learned nothing when going into the Far Cry 4. Every sane person who brought it up mentioned how it wasn't necessarily bad (and it would ultimately be down to implementation in the final product) but it was a warning sign that many had a problem with. No one was actually asking for the cover to change; they just wanted to preemptively point out that if the sequel makes the same mistake as the previous one, they can't argue it was oversight or totally unintentional (which was the basic retort that the head writer made after they were asked questions about the ending of Far Cry 3).

@zornack said:

The limited edition always used this art. From the announcement (bottom):

It's just that every advertised copy is "limited edition" now.

Oh for fucks sake.

I like the original art more.

Why is everyone taking this at face value? If the box art has been changed then I will be disappointed but so far we've only seen limited edition covers showing the same thing they've shown all along.

Was anyone actually calling for it to be changed? My first thought when I saw the original art was "Man, that seems racially charged," but I still found it evocative.

This new one is racist because it depicts no black people.

Fucking Americans. So fucking dumb. There's some real racism for you.

Aww man. I really liked that cover.

@heyguys said:

@mb said:

Boom....it's official!

Those are all limited editions. Hopefully the box art for the non-limited edition has remained intact.

Also, if it is true that it's the limited edition and literally nothing has changed I'm looking forward to the people decrying "political correctness" all taking back their statements.

All day one games are usually limited edition so that sucks

This 'new' case was revealed at the same time as the original. It's just the limited edition artwork. Why is everyone ignoring that simple fact?

With all the headlines the original was grabbing, I wonder if they felt the need to change it or if this was what the cover was going to be all along. Do you guys think the change was necessary?

There wasn't a change to the Far Cry 4 box art.

I think it's unfortunate how people are spreading this around as though Ubisoft pulled the fastest 180 ever while also making no statement regarding it. I guess I'm at least glad that someone brought this up here just so that the record can be set straight for fellow GB members.

This is the cover of the game that was originally sent to all stores upon the game's announcement. The "Limited Edition", which might as well be a "Launch Edition". What people considered the cover was just a promo image for the announcement. Likely an alternative cover that they didn't end up going with.

This is the image which has been on their website from the beginning, and it appears this was the originally-intended game cover. This isn't an instance of Ubisoft changing the cover of their game within a day of its reveal. It's some gamers online misunderstanding that this was going to be the final cover when it was not.

@gunslingerpanda: @vuud: There was a group of people that were "outraged" because they thought the original cover depicted a white man dominating over the weaker, dark skinned man, and to these people this was racist. However, the man in the purple suit isn't even white, he's Asian, same as the dark skinned man. It's especially stupid to think people were outraged about this because if we look back at the cover of Far Cry 3, you see the roles reversed, and no one said a single word.

This industry has no balls.

@truthtellah:

Well, now... The more you know!

To all the idiots crying that political correctness is ruining everything: You don't know what you're talking about. Please shut up.

Good luck getting people to listen, it's much more fun being angry.

wait, the kneeling guy is black? Both dudes in the origional box art look asian of some sort to me.

Like were people calling racist on this? Im confused? I'm admittedly ignorant of the whole asians racist against other asians thing, i know it exists, but what?

Even if this was the KFC colonel lording over chained up morgan freeman, i'd be into it. I mean the whole downtrodden underdog coming and beating his oppressor? thats a timeless story that appeals to everyone.

Now its just some douche in a suit. Lame.

You know, that's probably just the limited edition box art.

But hey, don't let your hatred of faux outrage stop your own faux outrage!

It's not "ruining everything", and I'm pretty sure nobody ever said it was. So I think maybe you're the one who doesn't know what you're talking about. Please shut up.

LOOKS LIKE IT'S TIME FOR ANOTHER UNINFORMED DISCUSSION ABOUT POLITICAL CORRECTNESS ON GIANT BOMB DOT COM

There were always two box arts, stop being so offended over something as meaningless as a box art change.

Amazing how many conclusions were drawn based off box art. Who knows if he is racist? He is obviously just a bad dude who controls the area.

I was more offended that his suit color made me keep initially thinking it was a Saint's Row game.

A giant "meh" from me. It is just like the Wolfenstein changes where I am not sure it is worth getting upset about.