Quick Question with Jeff Bakalar: Ep. 09 - Far Cry 5

disappointed in the answer i got regarding bagels.

when they gonna make u a full time duder

Take back New Jersey!

This is the best video news I've heard all day

Whoever plans all the intros for these videos is the best.

But... Far Cry 3 already featured the cast of Jersey Shore as your protagonist and his insufferable friends.

These are great

Far Cry 6: Its a Jersey thing.

Far Cry 3 and 4 had much better story and villains, but I predict Far Cry 5 will still do well, despite the story being incredibly bland with nothing to say / focus-tested to death / inoffensive to keep sales high among conservative gamers.

The Publishers will, of course, take Far Cry 5's success as proof that single-player games and story modes don't sell games.

@bemusedchunk: You should be, everyone knows it's onion and chive bagel with plain cream cheese.

Oh hey, I'm in the thing.

These are all just in preparation of video Beastcasts, right?

I feel I've missed an unforgivable amount of awesomeness since I no longer have the attention span to listen to podcasts while creating mind puzzles out of whatever I happen to be staring at. And, no, I can't listen to podcasts while doing something else because I find myself constantly rewinding because what I was doing caused me to miss something. I'm not alone. The Beastcast should be sensitive to the many with needs like mine.

Jeff is awesome

I love Jeff

These vids are great! I hope Jeff B keeps pumping them out and GB keeps posting them

please like this video, please subscribe.

Finished Far Cry 5, some solo and some in co-op, and I had an absolute blast. The story might as well not exist, and some of the forced cut scenes that will just suddenly happen throughout the game can get annoying, but the gameplay more than makes up for them. It is just such a fun shooter.

Far Cry 6: Pork Roll vs Taylor Ham.

@dryker said:

This used to be a problem for me until I realized I could just zone out from working, enjoy the podcast, and the salary payouts would continue coming anyway, soo.... yeaaaah...

I liked this series better when it was about personal questions and not specific games

I'd like to see how that Far Cry 3 re-release that comes with the season pass turned out, hopefully we get a QL.

No! Far Cry WWII, please. I feel like outpost gameplay would work well with lots of stealth elements.

@nameredacted: What should it have said? Better question what did Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 4 with the "much better stories" say?

wait, how do i like or subscribe? I mean, i did like the video, so ok, i guess i liked it? And i subscribe to nuke.com, which i guess includes this video...

My buddy pointed this out, and I have to admit that it's made me a little uneasy since, it comes off kind of shitty that the DLC ideas they landed on were zombies, martians, and Vietnamese people.

It's not that a Vietnam story can't be done in games, but it does stick out compared to their typical DLC/side game offerings of dragons, yetis, martians, and zombies.

I guess we'll see. The apparent fumbling of Far Cry 5's narrative doesn't give me a ton of hope though.

@adamalc: Sorry to chime in here, I think a lot about Far Cry 3, especially with the release of 5, so here's my two cents:

To me, Far Cry 3 is an analysis of the white savior trope and the inherent immaturity that lies therein. The game puts players in the role of an increasingly eccentric character role playing his way through rescuing an island that, in the third act, reveals was actually in turmoil because of outsiders like himself. There's a lot of subtlety to this, which is what I think makes it work. Vaas disappearing halfway through the game, though disappointing to those that enjoyed that character, I think is important to what that game is trying to actually say. Vaas is another victim of outsiders dominating this island, not the mastermind. I also think people who thought Far Cry 3's player character was the good guy probably got a lot less from the game, but I don't know how else they can telegraph "THIS GUY IS A PRIVILEGED POS" than that opening cut scene:

Also worth noting, that quote at the beginning, from Alice in Wonderland, is Alice descending to into an unfamiliar place where she'll learn to grow. The most apparent theme of that story being the developing maturity and growing up of Alice. Jason Brody coming to the Rook Islands is his fall into Wonderland. I think the moral in Far Cry 3, ultimately is, "grow up, you're not the hero you think you are." The player decision at the end strikes me as the punchline to this theme: you're either so far gone you think that this was all real or you're dead.

I don't think Far Cry 4 is as successful, but it does try to say something with lineage and what you owe to your people and culture. There's something there, certainly. They imply a lot, but I didn't pick up on some of this narrative because it was buried in collectibles. Some folks seemed to get a lot from it though, so I try not to write it off. I do think perhaps I should revisit it and pay more attention to the peripheral content.

I don't have much to say about Far Cry 5, I'm only a third through it, and it feels like it is meandering, but maybe it figures itself out later on. I can say that the format is beginning to feel derivative, certainly. And that, even if they do attempt to say something significant here, it's going to ring in a little lighter purely due to the fact that the design is so damn familiar.

@hatking: Interesting take, thank you for the first real answer to that question. I am not sure that I agree but admittedly I didn't have many positive feelings for the character in Far Cry 3. I enjoyed the mechanics, the environment and the game play but the character was a vehicle for the plot more than really participating. You go from murdering legions of soldiers and burning their corpses in on breath to getting squeamish over cleaning an animal in another. I just didn't get any growth, could just be on me. I never picked up that they were riffing on the idea of a white savior, especially with one of the ending options, as much as he just was one. If the message is everyone has a master that is "a welcome to real life" thing that I honestly could have just missed as well.

I guess at the end of the day there has never been enough consistency in the narratives for me to take them seriously. I am more concerned with what you actually do in the games than what may or may not be implied. I have done most of what there is to offer in 3 and 4 and feel they are both just exploitation pieces that pick a fictional bit of another country/culture to throw the ultra violence into. Again thank you for your answer, it was a good take.

@adamalc: Thanks! I'm glad you appreciated that. I'm not sure I can make the argument that Far Cry 3 did what I said it did perfectly, I haven't played the game since its release, but at least these ideas are what I've picked up on then and having thought about it since. I am looking forward to playing the re-release of it here in a month or so to see if I do still like it as much as I remember. I think maybe doing that will really highlight how far the design has come too.

Chris Christie makes for an easy Far Cry 6: NJ villain.

Thanks again Jeff. I love these segments

@bemusedchunk: Good questions. Also your username is hilarious, especially when read aloud.

These videos are great.