Far Cry 5

Hoo boy, tale of two cities here... The Far Cry loop remains largely intact as it's been known for last several years worth of games, and for some, I'm sure that's all the review they need (whether to sell them, or turn them away). In fact, the progression has been changed in some meaningful ways, and I usually don't complain about a known franchise or property trying something new, even if it's a mixed bag of positive and negative. An attempt was made to try and steer the series in at the very least a slightly new direction, through mechanics, goals, and setting. And now that I've mentioned setting, I can no longer dance around the enormous disappointments that are the story, the setting, the characters, and just in general the themes and tone of this thing. Far Cry 5 had a chance to say something, but ended up about as silent as the grave.

Holding the final product too closely to it's initial reveal might be a little unfair, but something seems to have been lost on the journey from point A to point B. The fictional Hope County, Montana seemed like it was supposed to shine a light on home-grown, largely faith, based domestic terrorism, a stark contrast from the exotic locations of Far Cry 3 and 4. Far Cry 5 had the potential to be more than the slightly cartoonish depictions of modern day pirates and tyrannical despots that had come before it. Everything was set up for the game to finally take itself seriously, and deliver a story that was equal parts grim and thought-provoking. It did not. Instead we got the America where everyone owns three assault rifles, and no one - and I think I actually mean no one - is without a shirt that has the stars and stripes on it, usually with an eagle or wolf as well (or why not both?). Instead we got a game that looks like a low-budget Grand Theft Auto in it's parody depiction of America, except without even a third of the craft and cleverness. I'm Canadian and even I felt a little insulted by the world I just spent the last twenty hours playing in.

The elephant in the room here is of course the current American political climate. Far Cry 5 is a game that was announced (and certainly conceived) before the present day presidential regime, and everything it has brought with it as far as rhetoric and discourse, was a reality and not just a joke for late night TV to riff on, and it feels like Ubisoft got shook by this. Afraid that their fictional doomsday cult The Project at Eden's Gate (whose members are referred to as "peggies" by everyone else in the game) might accidentally make a statement, the group and their leader (Vaas/Pagan Min equivalent Joseph Seed) were filtered through so much careful political and spiritual neutrality in an attempt to make sure they offended no one that they hardly stand for anything at all other than being evil, and have absolutely nothing to say. For a game that launches from the PS4 dashboard (not to mention the box art) with an image that is a direct homage to the last supper, with Joseph at the centre and twelve of his followers around him, the fact the words "evangelical" or even "Christian" aren't used ONCE is baffling, and just a tiny bit maddening. I'm not suggesting that we needed a video game adaptation of the Waco standoff, but some admission to the background and origins of this heavily religious group would have helped to set this game in, y'know, the real world.

The set up you find yourself in is that of a local sheriff's deputy where you, the sheriff, and his other deputies are accompanying a US Marshall with an arrest warrant for Joseph Seed after footage recorded on a cellphone (vertically!) leaks out showing the true nature of the up-to-that-point somewhat creepy but otherwise non-violent members of the Project. Things go bad, you are separated from your group, communication to the outside world is cut off and roads are blocked, and you must align yourself with the local resistance and militias against the Project to take back Hope County. Even though the roads are blocked and cell towers are damaged or something, there were more than a dozen different times I thought "why don't we just use THIS to leave and get help?" that really breaks the premise, even with it's 'check your brain at the door' tone. From there you will need to take down Joseph's three generals, each controlling a third of the map, until the final assault on Joseph's compound is unlocked. These generals include a torture fanatic, a survivalist ex-soldier, and the drug lady responsible for creating the Bliss, a cloud-like drug that envelopes people with a greenish fog and makes them docile, easy controlled warriors. The Bliss feels like a really contrived way of explaining why there are so many cultists, and an easy out to explain any weirdness (of which there is a lot), but I stopped looking for subtlety pretty early on. You'll gain ground in the regions by completing missions and taking down cult structures in each area, earning you "resistance points" for those areas, each of which having a threshold needed to finally eliminate the general.

Do you remember those moments in previous games where your character gets captured? Here's hoping you're into that, as it happens two or three times in every territory, and in a way that interrupts what you're doing for this to happen. Every time this happened I was on my way to do something else, or in the middle of a mission and was yanked out of it by a fuzzy filter and a loading screen, only to awaken to a scene where one of the cult executives talked at me for a while, usually followed by what are without question the worst missions in the game. And that's another thing, you play as nameless silent protagonist instead of the distinct characters of the previous games, which is incredibly frustrating. It is impossible to believe that anyone would just sit there and listen to these lunatics monologue on and on without ever having anything to say. It give the cultists too much credit, like their ideologies and philosophies have this weight to them that they have to be given this reverence. And of course they try and pull the same garbage you're likely thinking they would, such as trying to say this is you fault and that there wouldn't be a fight if they had been left alone. Everything about how this game tells it's story is terrible and/or tremendously at odds with the basic tenets of open world games.

And all of this is made even more of a shame by the way that the game has actually improved upon it's predecessors in it's core gameplay. The most noticeable change is the removal of a traditional XP and leveling system in favor of an achievement system, a system which also largely removes the hunting system of old as well. Your character no longer levels up, rather they gain perk points to be spent on abilities and buffs after you complete certain objectives off of a literal checklist. These objectives range from performing X amount of stealth takedowns, getting X amount of kills with each weapon type, or skinning X amount of each animal type. This feels like it was put in place to try and encourage using different strategies, but even after I got the perks associated with the weapons I liked, I rarely switched off of them. There are plenty of other ways to get perks (such as survival magazines lying around the world, often in 'prepper stashes'), and there were only so many of the perks I even wanted or needed anyway. It's a good idea that's maybe a little easy to circumvent or not really engage in, but I ultimately don't mind it. As mentioned, this also replaces the need for a certain amount of skins for each type of ammo bag and wallet with perks for those things, which does take away the desire to go hunting for a specific type of animal. There are still the perks attached to hunting, but you'll be doing a whole lot less in this game than in the last few.

The best change comes via the considerably more organic way that you will learn of missions or have the details of your map filled in. There's no longer a loop of find tower, unlock new missions, clear out area, find next tower, etc., instead you'll discover things by finding local hunting or fishing maps, reading notes and messages left for others, and talking to people. This adds new points of interest on your map to go and explore, and usually each outpost (a returning staple of the series) has three or four people who will have things to say once you've liberated them. One of the most common type of side objective are the aforementioned prepper stashes, which serve as little puzzles in the world with rewards of money, guns, and often perk point magazines. These stashes function in a similar way to the tombs from the newer Tomb Raider games, though smaller in scope and more plentiful. Quite a bit more plentiful, actually, even about halfway through the campaign I'd already discovered or been told about more of these puzzles than I'd ever need. As well, I never minded finding these areas or searching through the world because the game is really good looking, or at least the natural world. People's faces are still a little stiff, and there are only around a half dozen character models for all the cultists you'll be fighting, but Montana's wilderness is striking and majestic. The pleasant country and folk music, mostly found in the menus, also helps to create a great atmosphere for exploration.

The final major addition comes in the form of what are effectively party members called "Guns For Hire". While you can recruit other random resistance members to your cause, there are nine more fleshed out characters with their own quests and specialties that you can use as traveling companions, eventually having up to two at a time. While the six human characters have a shockingly poor pool of dialogue to pull from, you can easily avoid the repetition be doing what I did and almost exclusively using the three animal companions, Boomer the dog, Cheeseburger the bear, and Peaches the cougar. Your companions can be a great help in a firefight, but can also sometimes activate groups of enemies as hostile when you're trying to be stealthy, even if you haven't been detected yet. Speaking of blowing stealth, one final note on the gameplay is how much planes suck. As you get further in each chunk of the map, more forces are loosed upon you, eventually including enemy planes, and as soon as one sees you, it will follow you to the ends of the earth unless you destroy it (which can be difficult) or just fast travel away, breaking up and slowing down the flow of the game. Going to a river and going underwater was usually the best way to deal with this, but even then it took several minutes and I just wished this game would stop getting in it's own way every time.

"Getting in it's own way" might as well be the subtitle for Far Cry 5, a game that seems like it tried it's hardest to be as bland as possible after it was committed to this idea and setting. Being disappointed with what could have been is one thing, as the speculation I put into what the possibilities were is beyond subjective, but even without those hopes and dreams, what is there is just... bad in several places. Joseph Seed and his family are just about the most cookie-cutter villains you could make in this day and age. The fact that all the men have beards and moustaches makes it simply astounding that none of them ever gave those bad boys a twirl, because these clowns are Saturday morning cartoons at best. Only the biggest Far Cry fans might be able to find anything of value in here, and I thought myself to be a fan until finishing this one. I'm especially glad I never got around to playing Far Cry Primal, because then I really would have been done with this whole thing. They'll probably make another, and who knows, maybe I'll play it too, but right now I know I'd sleep soundly at night never thinking about another Far Cry for quite some time.