Well, at least people seem to care about the premise of this game.

Unlike Far Cry: Primal

Previous Far Cry games were set in fictionalized locations. They could have avoided all these questions simply by setting the game in the fictional territory of Mountainia in the Federated Empire of Amerika.

@prestige: It's still a fake area. There is no "Hope" County in Montana. I mean they could have gone the GTA/Red Dead route of just making up a state but doing that would just make people pissed about that for some reason.

You're mixing up story/narrative with gameplay. All of those points stay unrealistic in favor of a better, less-frustrating, gameplay. Suspension of disbelief.

The questioning about the army not stepping in or the lack of communications with the outside world are related to the story and world-building of the narrative. That's why they were questioned. And that's why other similar questions came up, because they actually got in-world answers to those first set of questions.

I don't care about the realism in this game as long as there's an abundance of huckleberries and huckleberry-related foods. It wouldn't feel like Montana without them.

Kinda stunned how much people seem to care about the "tangible" setting of a Far Cry game. These are games where your character is hand-sewing wallets out of animal hides while taking cover from gunfire...

You guys should checkout a documentary called 'Welcome to Leith' which is based in a small North Dakota town that was taken over by white supremacists.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/welcome-to-leith/

@dudeglove: If it's like the other games you'll work for some CIA Spook type and he will be a bad crazy guy too (with probably something weird and rapey going on thrown in) and that'll be that. It's like none of these people played Far Cry 3 or 4.

For me those games are as grating NPC/dialogue wise as Borderlands 2 is for many (including me). It was always the worst part of the game.

Eh, not really. Technically, the armed forces aren't allowed to be used for internal policing, but the Insurrection Act is broad enough that a situation like they appear to be depicting in FC5 would be more than enough to justify sending in troops.

Whatever, people are taking this game waaaaaay too seriously.

@frytup: That's fair. At the very least, I think it's conceivable that any type of organized federal response would take at least a little bit of time to organize, and the game could take place within that time frame.

Man, there really are a ton of interesting old laws on the books that we don't really think of having any real-world application today. So now we get to have interesting conversations like this. Thanks, Ubisoft!

And finally, yeah. That was really the point of my post. People are taking this just-announced game way more seriously than the franchise deserves. I'm thinking we'll see a new thread about this game's TOTALLY UNREALISTIC PREMISE every two months until release.

Thanks for pointing out my error in oversimplification.

Somehow the 'obviously the Army would step in' idea that everybody else seems to have doesn't really seem that likely to me.

Can I pre-order the Army DLC?

@bladeofcreation: Yeah, there's been a lot of that surrounding this game. It's very much a case of "Well, yeah, that's because it is about these other people somewhere else but this is about people like me and are here." I wonder what the Venn diagram of people complaining about FC5's premise and people decrying complaints about sexist/racists/ "problematic" content in other games would look like.

The common counter-argument is that previous entries have been set in fictional places which is spurious. The series draws on very real cultural identifiers so that while the serial number has been filed of whatever country they are representing it is easy enough to identify. These complaints would be happening even if it was set in the Allied States of Amarico or some fictitious state.

Anyway, there is little to do at this point except wait for some longform reveal of the game or the game to be released. Hopefully it is fun and full of the kind of wackiness that the best of the series has delivered.

It's kind of a weird thing to get hung up on. Using that logic no video game could exist in the United States if you want to know why the Army wasn't called. Why is no one questioning the logistics of GTA?

Better climb and repair those towers.

"Call someone, maybe?" applies to a lot of games. It's a video game. It's a Far Cry game. Sure, they could have set it in the past or something and wrote in something about them controlling or cutting the land lines, but does it matter? Like the other games, they're dropping you in a murder playground. There will somehow be thousands of cultists to murder in this small area, and I'll have fun doing it without thinking too much about why.

I didn't give the slightest hoot how Montana could be taken over by a crazy cult until I saw the beginning of this thread. Now I'm moderately annoyed about by it. This is not because the justification is bad, nonsensical, or illogical. Nope, I'm more annoyed that someone wasted their time writing up that drivel. I'm a firm believer that sometimes it's better to leave things unexplained beyond "Fuck off, it's just a game", and frankly "everyone is a prisoner here, and all of everything is controlled by the baddies" is just dumber than saying nothing until release.

GTA isn't that good of an example. GTA takes place on a normal functioning city, not on a state closed by some group. When the player does so much crazy shit to the point of the maximum wanted level, then the Army starts showing. Same thing happens on GTA's story. As far as narrative goes, they usually have it pretty realistic (besides some over the top stuff for satirical reasons, of course). The only compromises they do on the realism is in favor of a better gameplay.

I have to imagine Far Cry going to Montana is about being topical a lot more than being realistic. It is a bold move, and I respect that, but it is one that puts the writing team in the spotlight a lot more than when it was in a random island in the pacific or a fictional Himalayan country. Needless to say, they have to work harder to justify why in a first world country in the 21st century (with satellite imagery than can see your breakfast), the state doesn't just put a blockade on them or doesn't notice a huge section of land suddenly going dark. A lot of it would make more sense if they set it in the 1920s or didn't specify a real state but, then again, being topical.

I mean, world building and justification are some of my favorite aspects of new game settings, so I can appreciate that they at least tried, but it is so paper thin a justification I kind of wish they didn't (it also dips into "the evil guys are omnipresent" justification, that is so dumb and common of Ubisoft narratives), and we were just left with a setting that is "in some backward corner of America" instead. Also, it is Far Cry, a setting where someone shrugs off a bullet with a knife and a little alcohol, tataus give you powers and a photograph can throw knives over 30 feet with the precision of a circus performer without any training, so it is not like they were doing a great job justifying the game before, but they wrote themselves into a corner with this one by setting it in modern America.

I am honestly surprised how many people here on GB are quick to dismiss any narrative concerns with "it's a videogame" platitudes. By that merit we would not be able to criticize any videogame story ever. Sorry that's not good enough. We should be looking at games to move forward and improve in their narratives (and in fact many have done just that these days) instead of falling back to that bullshit excuse when they start making no sense. Especially for games set in more contemporary and relatively realistic settings.

I would also like to quote this which is very much relevant for some posts here:

Indeed. Accepting contrivances for the sake of good gameplay is one thing. Questioning flimsy narrative setups is quite another.

Now I am not saying Farcry 5 won't be able to make good on it's setting, for all we now it could be a brilliant setup, justification and narrative. But based on previous entries I have my doubts about Farcry developers being able to handle complex topic with any semblance of depth (Farcry 4 as prime example) or sense.

And that's not to say that we can't have silly fun narratives aka Doom or Saints Row, but those kinds of games specifically embrace that tone to make it work; Farcry series has been so far moving away from the silly direction and more into the try to take our narratives and actors more seriously side of things, going from 3 to 4 to Primal. I can let you take me for a fun ride of absurdity, but you can't make me take anything you do seriously at that point or try to add realism to your plot or characters, it doesn't work that way. At least not very frequently, it takes one hell of a set of cohones and actual skill to pull both of at the same time well.

People here getting upset like this is some bullshit justification. Well, it is a bullshit justification and it shouldn't matter. And it's not just a bullshit video game justification. We've seen plenty of bullshit justifications like this in movies and tv.

My main concern is the game not embracing the genre piece trappings of this premise and instead use it and then be very grave and serious with the rest of it. Hopefully they go over the top with it and give us a ridiculous "hero defends their home from the crazies" story.

*edit I also hear writers (in all sorts of media) talk about how hard cell phones have made it to write stories--take out cell phones and this sounds way more plausible.

I absolutely do not agree with this. That's the crux of the thing with a lot of this discussion is Far Cry has been stupid and absurd for a while. It's cartoonish representations of insanity. It's gross and usually every one is a bad guy. There was an NPC you had to do missions for in Far Cry 3 that was raping a captive and it was completely pointless and gross. I am not a squeamish person or averse to anything dark but it was completely offputting and went nowhere. The series actually was most serious in 2. In 4 you are traveling to the fucking spirit realm and stuff come on.

I do no think the question in itself is bad. I do not think serious topics are bad. But the last thing I could possibly want to hear is a portrayal of racism from a dumb Far Cry game, and then questions of how realistic it is just get silly. Yeah, there are separations between gameplay and story but those are still factors that add up and when they are in a game like Far Cry it's all working together.

So far we have seen little of 5, but one of the images was a man ringing a church bell by bashing another man's head into it. Far Cry has not been subtle or nuanced and there's no reason to think it will be now.

In the end of this, caring about how they justify it is pretty far down the list. When things become more absurd in a game, that occurs. That's why I disagree with @johnymyko's post on GTA as well. In V this is a game where you are winching things around with a helicopter things for heists, rolling around with a squad of guys with miniguns killing hundreds of cops, blowing up helicopters with RPGs, stealing chemical weapons, sinking ships, stealing submarines, taking on PMCs. With GTA it does get to "Where is the army or a national manhunt?" territory if you were taking it seriously very quickly (actually the police don't give up in real life if you dodge their search radius) but it's so wacky those questions start to fade, just like they do for a Far Cry game.

That's the difference. It's really not a dismissal overall. I don't need good justifications watching an 80's action movie like I might a serious bank heist movie and then further, a historical drama. It's not "oh it's a videogame", it's "oh it's a dumb videogame". Same as watching Fast and Furious.

You don't?

I'd say Farcry 3 was quite silly and leaned towards unrealistic fun. From the very start of those kids having fun to a dumb song to your mushroom friend to Vas with his tirades.

What does Farcry 4 start with? You trying to cross a border to handle your moms ashes and the entire van getting gunned down by an oppressive militia and your guide tortured. Then they try to paint a story of 2 different revolutionaries, one who is all into religion the other one trying to use drugs to fund them, and trying to setup a decision between them that falls flat because both of their approaches are just so hamfisted. And the drug trips became trips to the spirit world. It didn't work precisely because they can't do that kind of serious content well, but they sure tried.

And now we have 5 which they are setting in an even more close to civilization and harder to justify the siliness in setting.

(and funny aside about FC3, as someone who lived on a closed set of islands of a very small nation for a third of my life I can also say for sure that closing them off and taking them over without the world interfering would not be all that hard, so ironically that part is fairly believable)

@tennmuerti: In the end it was "both sides are bad" basically, you just chose one or the other. It has the same CIA bad guy. The stuff with your character was not delivered on in some mature way. The spirit world stuff was just a drug trip sequence like 3 had more or less because it went nowhere. It was still has a cartoonishly insane villain. You are going into silly gladiator arenas. Still had all the absurd qualities of Far Cry.

The basic premise is less absurd (and also less interesting) but it didn't do anything different beyond that. They added Yetis in as DLC that were mutated from humans! It's a dumb game.

I'm amazed that people find this premise so wildly unrealistic. Remember when a bunch of sovereign citizen weirdos took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and it took more than a month for authorities to do anything about it? If anything, Far Cry 5's story is ripped from the headlines. I think it's pretty hard to underestimate the competency American local, state and federal government at a time in which millions of Americans don't even have access to safe drinking water.

@artisanbreads: We aren't really disagreeing really on FC4 being unable to deliver on mature themes, but I'll just say that I do believe there is a definitive "tries to take itself a little bit more seriously and stiffly" tone I felt when playing it that soured me on it a bit.

And I think we can agree that the more Farcry 5 leans into the absurdist fun angle the better.

@tennmuerti: Didn't Far Cry 4 have two lunatic Australians pretending to be Englishmen pretending to be gurus, who doped you up constantly for drug-trip missions? Oh, and a main villain who openly wondered what B tier celebrities he could recruit for parties, ultimately settling for Justin Bieber over Dennis Rodham since the latter was already spoken for by North Korea?

I don't think Far Cry has been leaning anywhere near the serious. From my perspective, Far Cry: Primal actually embraced the absurd even more-so than 3 or 4 by making you a prehistoric BeastMaster (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083630/) whose best friend collects ears and who breaks up an endless festival of axe murdering with long draughts of drugged out blood-paste from a skull bowl. I think anyone expecting Far Cry 5 to be a more polished Ghost Recon: Wildlands equivalent is going to be in for a surprise.

@lazyimperial: I'm not saying FC4 didn't have those elements too or that it was all serious, just that it was trying to be a bit more so then FC3 imo, especially the more main narrative bits.

@artisanbreads: To me, all that seems like Ubi trying to have their cake and eat it too. They had hijinks and dumb elements that come from the sandbox gameplay, but they also tried to ground a lot of it on a serious (as serious as they could muster) portrait of their characters. I think Far Cry tried to be mature in content (remember, this was the game that started an E3 demo with a sex scene), if it failed it was mostly in execution. Outside of Blood Dragon, they never commited to a fully serious or fully cartoonish style, and it just was easier to pull of with a fully fictional setting.

I don't think it is fair that Ubisoft makes a politically topical game (everyone that covers it has pointed out the focus they give to its resonance with current events), but when they are asked about the plausibility of the setting they get a free pass because they never worried about it before.

Don't get me wrong, I welcome Far Cry's attempt be more grounded than the previous "shooting gallery in remote, exotic locations." I think it is important that a big company gets a chance to be topical and move the setting closer home for a lot of people, without being restricted by the chance of some people getting offended. But I also think they have raised the bar higher by doing it and they seem to be aware of it, so the tone of previous games should not be enough of a justification.

Um, have you played the GTA games?

That's a perfectly acceptable thing to do. We do it all the time in all forms of media. If you're telling a fictitious story, you almost always take liberties with reality to make it more entertaining. It's not black and white, you can still criticize the story and accept the premise that doesn't quite hold up to a real world comparison. Look at something like the Last of Us or The Walking Dead. They both try and tell a realistic story, but hey, zombies exist. If you can't accept zombies, the game wouldn't exist. If you can't accept Montana being that isolated, the game wouldn't exist. Being able to say "It's fiction" is pretty vital to enjoying fiction.

@tennmuerti:I agree I hope Far Cry 5 is absurd and I do not have a problem with that or what they do in theory, I really find it grating though in execution. I mentioned it in another post but to me it's similar to the reaction people have to Borderlands 2. I can't stand the NPCs. I actually forgot about those terrible two guys who drug you @lazyimperial mentioned that were just awful to listen to. I think they have maybe more serious intentions in the main story yes but it's just as silly thoughout.

@hermes: Yeah I don't mean to discourage anything trying that. I think Max Payne 3, LA Noire, and Spec Ops: The Line are an example of dark games doing more with their story and are saying a bit more. I just think we need to look at what Far Cry has been and what Ubisoft puts out. I do think they are grounding it some but I just expect absurdity again, I just hope it's pulled off in a better way.

@hunkulese: I have major problems with and have critizised both the Walking Dead and The Last of Us for their naratives. More so the Last of Us for it's setup (TWD more for execution). :P

reality =/= sense

I enjoy fiction that makes sense, even if it's own sense internal to it's world. Simply dismissing bad narrative setups as eh it's fiction is not good enough in my book (,movie or videogame). There is good fiction and bad fiction and everything in between.

Finally you are kind of hamstringing your own argument:

It's not black and white, you can still criticize the story and accept the premise that doesn't quite hold up to a real world comparison.

It also works the other way around. The narrative setup is part of the story you can criticize, exactly as some have done here.

Especially so when the writers are deliberately setting up the game as close to the real world as possible, with all the parallels that entails (like reaping the marketing rewards of the being "topical").

The only thing I have pointed out is that saying: "it's a videogame, so eh" is the most shallow and lazy of dismissals of said criticism or bad writing or bad narrative setups. (tho I feel like a lot of us are jumping the shark a bit here Farcry5 is not out yet so we are just all jumping to conclusions based on a tiny bit of info, including myself)

That's a lousy comparison. Taking over an unpopulated wildlife refuge is much different from taking over the government of a county, which appears to be the premise of FC5. No citizens were actively threatened by a bunch of idiots sitting in a cabin on government land, and the federal government made the decision that sending in an assault team would do more PR harm than good. So they surrounded the place and let the idiots tire themselves out, then arrested them when they tried to leave.

If some cult extra-legally subverted local government in a rural county and federal/state authorities were aware of it, a response would be both called for and necessary.

@frytup: Those idiots also got off practically scot-free, by the way, despite their rampant and blatant criminal acts and the fact that this is the second time in the span of a couple of years that they'd gotten headlines for doing this sort of thing. But, OK, I'm sure it's crazy make-believe to suggest that consistently choosing not to punish that sort of people could ever lead to any kind of escalation on their part, and it would defy all suspension of disbelief to suggest otherwise in a work of fiction. So much crazier than the idea of North Korea successfully conquering the United States via land invasion or the Super Islamic Caliphate blowing up the world with nukes in the ultimate suicide bombing attack or whatever other kind of scenario you would find in a video game plot over the past 10-15 years.

So, OK, how about large swaths of the American south 50-100 years ago where a large portion of the population was terrorized by the KKK and everyone, local, state and federal authorities included, just kind of pretended nothing was amiss? That's something that happened in real life America that is every bit as bad as what is being portrayed in a larger-than-life work of fiction, and far more widespread. If reality can get away with Jim Crow, surely a video game can get away with what Far Cry is doing.

Maybe commander in chief who controls the army is an asshole? Seems believable enough.

Maybe the army should step in. Maybe Ubisoft should take a look at the premise of the series and fuck things up a little. Does Far Cry always have to be about being isolated in a wilderness area with bad shit going down? I dunno. But since this game doesn't have the exotic virtual tourism element going for it, its gotta do something different. Its like they didn't learn their lesson after Assassin's Creed 3. Montana...Zzzzz.

They could've set it in Alaska, I'm sure there's plenty of places there where no one would notice for a decent length of time; though it might be too visually similar to Kyrat I suppose.

So i stumbled across this post while and i thought more people knew the answer to this question, so the answer is in the game in a mission, a side mission to be exact, one of the characters explains how before everything happened lots of people noticed heavy aircraft activity leaving chemtrails in hope county and that the government is well aware of everything but they are trying to cover up the incident so it is all due to chemtrails making people go crazy i know it sounds a little far fetched but its in the game. Ill inform later as to what mission it is

So I'm pretty sure you have to spell it "kemtrails" for the crazies to know what you're talking about

there are couple radio news report inbetween radio songs, they kinda tells you what's happening outside the county

from what I can remember, no idea what the chronological order is:

-there's a peace talk in middle east, but it ends with a bomb attack and a bunch of ambassador and press died

-Kremlin getting bombed, no mention of the casualty or who did it

-homeland security advice people living in San Francisco and Washington to take shelter and stock up food

-government advice all citizen out of country to return to US

I'm guessing the army/national guard/whatever are busy with what sounds like a world war 3?

it's a bit far but I guess it kinda explains why nobody come and check?

but then it also means whatever you choose the nukes are still coming, that's pretty depressing...

I totally missed all of the radio reports that discuss this, but it is the most believable answer given how the game ends.

Your answer is at 1:40 basically the very beginning of the game, it implies that Joseph Seed has influenced higher ups on the outside.

Doin Bliss and not caring about consensus reality

Also I am having a hard time liking this game, but I am about 2 hours in, hope to change my attitude.

Maybe some more Bliss.....

Also, using Datura for a euphoriant isn't very real either.

Far Cry in incredibly dumb, lowest common denominator shock.

I don't want this to be read in a way that sounds like I'm replying to any statement in particular, but

It's fiction. Clear and simple. If your the type of person that desires clear definitive lines drawn between what could be and what could not be - then just understand that when approaching any type of creative medium, the creator will generally denote whether or not it is fictional. This sounds like a dickish response to what could just be fun speculation, but I constantly hear people around me in person and online asking very surface level questions about plots in movies, games, etc. and it's kind of annoying.

Far Cry 5 is set in a fictional town. With fictional characters. So ANY questions regarding the reality of the scenario presented falls into the answer that it's not real and not intended to be real.

That's an easy way to stop yourself from watching films and saying, "well why didn't they just..." or playing games and saying, "well how could that even..." out loud, and just internally asking yourself what the creator(s) have chosen to make.

That said I don't want to sound arrogant and I understand that sometimes things are "so ridiculous" given the material presented and it shouldn't be frowned upon when someone wants to discuss their interpretation. I just wanted to offer a simple solution to people who find that kind of scrutiny irritating and would rather avoid it.

Just re-read this and it does sound dickish. So sorry for that. I also read some of the spoiler blocked stuff in comments and now I'm coming to the conclusion that I misunderstood the topic....but whatever.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Wow. Thanks for sharing that, I'm in Texas and I haven't traveled much around the U.S so it's really interesting to get a clear present day perspective of that part of the U.S.

@voshinova: In a lot of ways, Texas is probably the most comparable state to Montana, apart from the size difference in our major cities. Rural Texas strikes me as practically mirroring small town Montana, especially mirrored against more liberal and culturally-impaced areas (in our case, Bozeman and Missoula). Montana's not a bad place to live, but it's certainly a bizarre one.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Main difference is that every small town here in Texas is relatively close to a city of 100k plus. We also have pretty good cell reception everywhere, even when i drove from San Antonio to Texas tech in Lubbock I get 4g the whole way even deep in the sparsest population areas of West Texas. Since we have 6 cities of over a million most Texans live in a city of over a million and most of the others live close to a city of a million except in West Texas, but there we have Lubbock,Midland/Odessa, and Amarillo which see all well above 100k.

Just looked it up we've got 38 cities larger than the largest city in Montana.

@kmagaro74: Hah, yup. We have a tiny population. At one point we had more cows than people. Not sure if that's still true or not, but I think so.