Far Cry 5: Review

We'll meet again, don't know where don't know when.

What is it with Ubisoft games, huh? I keep playing them, mocking them for the same shortcomings as last time, and than discarding them at the end of the day in disgust of ever having played them in the first place. Why oh why, did I ever buy into Far Cry 5? Well, the answer actually comes from a third-party exchange that I shared with my grandfather. (Whom I've only ever met 4 or 5 times in my life due to his general disinterest as far as his grandchildren are concerned.) You see, the man's an artist and a bit of a gamer, (he is the grandfather who oversaw me first playing Metal Gear Solid, if you've read my bio) and somehow through my brother I heard about him praising the Far Cry franchise. "Yeah" I thought, "You know the stories and characters may be lacking but that Far Cry 4 was beautiful at times, I can see where he's coming from." Only for the other shoe to drop and my older brother to tell that it was Far Cry 5 he was so enamoured with. At that point my course was set, I'd sworn off of Ubisoft games but if this was the kind of game that won over my Grandfather than I guess I don't really have a choice, now did I? For a man I hardly knew it might behove me to at least see his taste in modern games. (As his classic games taste in on-point, obviously.) And what was my ultimate conclusion? Eh, Grandad could do better.

Far Cry 5 is the Seventh entry in the long-running Far Cry franchise (including Far Cry Primal and Blood Dragon), but the fifth since Ubisoft entered this weird temporal loop of making and updating upon the same games and concepts forever. Far Cry has been lucky enough not to be struck with Assassin's Creeds lamentable 'one every year or two' launch cycle, (A cycle which has effectively assassinated any potential that series' storytelling ever had) but the games are still regular enough for the teams not to have enough time to reinvent the core gameplay. Ever since Far Cry 3 set in stone the foundations of running around clearing outposts, hunting animals, and doing the odd mission to spit in the face of some iconically crazy villain, that has been the identity of Far Cry, which is a shame because the games weren't always like that.

The original Far Cry isn't a game I've every played so I can't really talk about that, (Whenever I try to think back on it all my mind manages to conjure is the thought "Wow, Crysis doesn't really hold up like I thought it did.") but Far Cry 2 was on another level entirely. Built to occupy that vastly underexplored space in shooting, hardcore FPS', Far Cry 2 was a gruelling experience that told the tale of a mercenary in the middle of a struggle between African Warlords, all in the pursuit of a mysterious American Armsdealer called the Jackal who was playing both sides. As soon as you land you manage to catch Malaria and get spotted by your mark in the space of 10 minutes, making the goings forward very difficult from here on in. What follows is a series of back-and-forth loyalty switches as you follow the Jackals two-timing footsteps in hopes of finding more information about him, you amass a network of fellow foreign Mercs to your cause, as well as some pillars of the local community, go through some substantial loss, and eventually reach a satisfying pinnacle by the end. I'll save the specifics for later because, believe it or not, it actually does have a baring on review I'm about to write.

In the modern day, however, Far Cry only keeps to it's namesake by changing locations, and even then one has to wonder how long they can do that whilst keeping this tenuous running narrative that they seem to want to tie in, whilst not wanting to commit to it at the same time. For those who don't know, the name 'Far Cry' in relation to this series is meant to imply a scenario which is a 'far cry' from your ordinary life. (Which could be the case for any game out there, but at least now you know this series' mission statement.) This could be any situation from being stuck on an island full of mutants, getting stranded in the middle of an African civil war, getting captured by pirates, assuming the role of a resistance fighter against a tyrannical regime that has consumed your birth country or just saddling up to a typical American mid-western nowhere State only to find it ruled and controlled by a doomsday cult. (That last one is the plot of Far Cry 5, by the way.)

Now before I do get into what the game actually contains, I should probably address the elephant in the room which, in this case, would be the man in charge of greenlighting Ubisoft games. Apparently until very recently every single Ubisoft game would have to be overseen by this dinosaur of a man who was very particular about the games he liked and would kill a project dead if it didn't align to his supremely narrow tastes. This was the excuse that Ubisoft have rode behind to explain their years of copy-and-paste games and circumvent accusations of being complete hacks, and until I see significant evidence otherwise I'll believe them. (Even though there are times when I wonder about how his influence infected things like, basic character development. But we'll see.) In the years to come, with him no longer in the company, the hope is that things will be better; although now his job has been split up and divvied to a group of his peers so, maybe not then.

Intro

With that in mind, let's talk Far Cry. The game kicks off with the player being introduced as a local deputy who has been recruited by the state police to apprehend Joseph Seed, leader of 'The Project at Eden's Gate', a doomsday Cult who vaguely preach of the oncoming 'collapse'. The story tries to establish what a cruel man Joseph is by having him- gently hold a man's head to death? (I've watched that scene twice and still have no idea what happened. His hands even came away bloody- what the heck?) That sense of foreboding is better felt, however, once your helicopter lands in the middle of his compound and you start seeing his heavily armed 'flock' (>Cough< Army >Cough<) eyeballing you all the way to his church. At this point you get to meet the man himself, surrounded by his family for the only time in the entire game, and you start to see his prevailing character trait; Preaching. Oh, does our boy like to preach, to the point where all meaning and menace it might have imparted starts to dissipate to impatience as you just end up wishing the arse would get to the point a bit quicker.

And in typical Far Cry fashion the event go thusly; Deputy Rookie here (you are interchangeably referred to as 'Deputy' and 'Rookie' throughout the game which makes me think that the team genuinely couldn't decide when they were writing this game) cuffs 'The Father' (because of course he calls himself that) and tries to march the man back to the helicopter. The flock become increasingly agitated at this and soon start hurling themselves into the helicopters blades in order to send it crashing back down to earth. (These guys get real dramatic, huh.) Miraculously everyone survives and we are treated to perhaps the most genuinely effective and creepy moment in the entire game. As you radio goes wild with Dispatch begging to know if everyone is alright, Joseph Seed saunters over to your cockpit while you're still dazed (and hanging upside down) picks up the radio and announces that everything is fine. To which you hear Dispatch say "Thank god, bless you Father." A really great moment that makes the player think 'oh god, just how big and influential is this cult?'

You may have noticed, at this point, the way in which I've so far never referred to the player character by their name, and there is a reason for that. You see, Ubisoft seems to have gradually gotten the memo that their protagonists are some of the most boring and forgettable characters in the AAA industry, and thus have steadily started stepping away from them in their latest titles. Assassin's Creed is moving to an RPG structure to let the player decide the character's personality, Ghost Recon has abandoned character building altogether and favours stoically 'gruff' military stereotypes, and Far Cry 5 opted for an impressively mediocre character creator system for an apparent AAA game in which it is genuinely impossible not to make your protagonist look like a Redneck. But then the fictional state in which the action is set, Hope County, is the kind of place for Rednecks so I suppose that's on purpose.

From this point forward in the storyline if you've played literally any Ubisoft game in the past 5 years you know exactly how the game is structed. You have three lieutenants who occupy 3 different regions of the map and the player must systematically take them down before getting a chance to aim for 'The Father.' The one change that Far Cry 5 does make to this system is making it just a little more freeform in the way you take those leaders down. All regions start with this bar that represents the amount of chaos you've been causing in their region, and as you hit certain milestones along that bar that lieutenant will force you into story events (which are oddly formulaic) and up the danger of the ambient enemies you find in the wild. How that chaos is raised is where Far Cry 5 really shows of it's promise.

Completing main missions contribute the most to that bar, obviously, but side missions do so as well; and so do ambient missions which pop up in the wild and the capturing of outposts. What Ubisoft did with this title was actually make use of their endless objectives, which typically makes their worlds so unbearable, and twisted it into somewhat meaningful progression. In the eyes of the optimist this makes it so that the player can engage in any activity and still contribute to the main story, whilst for the pessimist this takes away a lot of the impact that events you perform have, outside of scripted moments. For me, however, I've taken to see this as a positive direction for Ubisoft titles going forward, because I'm sick of clearing out countless gang hideouts for no other reason than to see that completion bar tick forward. (It's demoralising.)

One element of the gameplay which hasn't changed, although perhaps that's for the better is the gunplay and general action of Far Cry which is solid, as ever, for this entry. Shooting feels great and can even be exhilarating in the right scenario's with enough enemies fighting at once, (Although you'll not often find a good number of enemies to gun down like you might want) and the addition of a very casual crafting system for throwables means you're more likely to be chucking Molotov's and remote explosive in the knowledge that they can be easily replaced. Vehicles have had a little bit of an overhaul this entry in that many of them come with weapons attached, and they feel like a lot of fun to play around with. I especially liked the planes which felt genuinely tense during the odd dogfights that you could become dynamically embroiled in thanks to the escalating ambient threat level. My only gripe was that it feels certain measures were taken to pull back on some of the takedown abilities that previous Far Cry protagonists had, to the point where it's really difficult to pull off chain takedowns in order to clear out an outpost. (And they straight up removed the impressive-looking vehicle takedowns from Far Cry 4.) But overall the game is a blast in the raw gameplay.

Exploration is another aspect to commend when it comes to Far Cry 5, for whilst this may arguably be one of the most boring locations that we've ever been greeted to in a Far Cry game, actually traversing it and discovering it is a lot more fun. There's an abundance of vehicles and traversing tools at the player's disposal, and your reward for exploring, especially the caches, tends to be more skill points so that the player feels like they're progressing simply from the act of going off the beaten path. Talking about those stashes, I appreciate Ubisoft's effort in making each one a little puzzle to get to rather than just have it laying out in the open. It meant that there isn't as many of them (as Far Cry games are usually littered with useless containers) and that you get some enjoyment out of collecting them, however small. (The puzzles can be insultingly easy at times.)

In fact rewards in general are a lot better in Far Cry 5 than they've ever been for Ubisoft games. Some of the side quests award cool weaponised trucks or planes with bomb chambers attached to them. And if fact, some side quests reward your other pursuits aside from killing, like allowing the player to easily craft hunting aides or giving you new fishing poles. Oh that's right, there is fishing in this game and it is about as fun as you'd expect from modern day titles. It comes across as a casualised-version of Red Dead Redemption's and Final Fantasy XV's fishing minigames, with not really any point where you actually feel challenged but it's still a decent amount of fun to waste some time on. I feel like this world, as opposed to other Ubisoft worlds recently, more successfully marries the gameplay and vision so that you don't even feel stopped from doing something you want to do by the constraints of poor world design. (Which was one of my biggest issues with AC:Origins) That being said, I'm sad to report that the special collectibles which you get throughout the game are uniquely pointless. None of them reward anything unique apart from the Records which allow for more music to blare on the car radios that you probably don't even listen too all that much anyway. (Several missed opportunities there, Ubisoft.)

Another big change comes in the 'guns for hire' system which echoes the companion system last used in Far Cry 2. (Although back in that game your companions could die permenately whereas in this game they shake off that multiple rocket launcher blasts with just twenty minutes beauty sleep.) The way it works is that the Deputy will happen upon different prominent folks and animals with side quests that can be done to unlock them, afterwhich they and their special abilities will be at the player's disposal. There are companions who are best for stealth, those that work best in firefights, some who pilot air vehicles and one who is a Bear. But what they all share is that they will risk life and limb to revive the player when they go down. (Which is nice.) Additionally, you can hire random folk off the street to be your companions depending on their weapon of choice, although there isn't a great amount of thought put into this particular system as they all feel pretty generic and underpowered. (I get the feeling it this was tacked on at the end)

The Story

As the narrative of the game is split into the different regions and the member of Eden's Gate who run them it would probably be fitting to follow along that trajectory. So let's start with John Seed, the man the player is encouraged to pursue first. Just like all the other lieutenants he becomes a target after he's placed in charge of one of your police friends from the helicopter crash, but seeing as how none of them really have all that much character and personality to them, the story quickly tries to give you personal reasons to hate these fellows as well. For John's sake, it's that he is chief of propaganda and indoctrination, which means that it's his job to take resistant folk and convince them that they are sinful beasts in desperate need of redemption. A task which obviously translates to him carving the name of your 'sin' on the body and cutting that flesh off. (Symbolic, I guess?)

His is the most straightforward relationship with the character in that everytime that a milestone is tripped he'll kidnap you and try to indoctrinate you again, only for it not to work in the slightest, rinse and repeat. Thus starts one of my real pet-peeves with this game's story, in that every major narrative event is activate by the enemy kidnapping you through a scripted event, meaning the protagonist get's rendered unconscious and kidnapped no less than eight times in this story! Never once are they just killed. It's beyond James Bond levels of stupid by the end of the game, and the act of being at the mercy of you enemy wears off by kidnap 2. By the time you square off against John not really much is learned about him besides the fact that he was physically abused by his parents. I suppose that counts as character building, albeit it's revealed just by Joseph telling you about this after he's already dead, so there goes the agency of the information as well as any hope of an effective portrayal. (I don't want much, Ubisoft, just the bare minimum.)

Jacob Seed is a lot more interesting of a character just through his nature as a war veteran who's obsessed with, in his words, 'culling the weak'. It's his job to take charge of the kidnap victims and indoctrinate them into the Eden's Gate army through brainwas- wait a minute this is starting to sound familiar... Jacob is all about this idea of strength and his events all revolve around this idea of forced hardship and sacrifice as the only means to progress. In fact, in the grand scheme of things this is the literal only character who's actions seem to gel with the overall message of the cult. They fear some sort of collapse that will send mankind back to their caveman days, and Jacob is trying to 'toughen' people up for that world, albeit in very a very sick, Clockwork Orange-esque way.

Oddly, his rule of the area is given a direct foil for the player to work alongside known as the Whitetails, who seem to be a collection of survivalists that resist him. (As opposed to the other regions wherein the foils are just ordinary folk) Even stranger is that Jacob appears to really hate these Whitetails, labelling them cowards despite them literally fitting the bill for 'tough, live off the land' folk like he was trying to forge. In a better written narrative I would argue that this was a purposeful hypocrisy in order to highlight the paradoxical nature of his world view, but given that there's literally no fuel or weight behind that I merely conclude it was laziness in order to allow Jacob's plotline to occur. Although to be fair Jacob's plotline is the best realised in the game so perhaps it's a little worth it in the overall.

Jacob kidnaps the Deputy at every milestone then has them run through kill-gauntlets to train them into being a solider. (Despite the fact that, at this point they'll have killed literally hundreds of his men so there really is nothing to prove.) The Whitetails are the player's savour form this training, although there's slight talk of  'mental programming' being an aftermath of Jacob's sessions and how you 'can't be trusted'. By this point you'll likely have figured out where this is going but Ubisoft think they're geniuses so you have to be kidnapped a least two more times before you end up going through that gauntlet again only for the final target to be the Whitetails' leader, Eli. (Who could have seen that coming...) So Jacob's master plan was to kill the Whitetail's leader, big whoop, but that's immediately proceeded by a teeth-scrapingly tedious boss fight in which Jacob is killed. (So, guess that's a net-loss for the Seeds, huh?) What really bugs me about this end to his ark, however, is that it concludes with Jacob rambling about how he 'doesn't give a crap if he dies' and how 'you're just proving Joseph right' which literal conflicts with his entire survivalist mentality! Why is this guy the ultimate doomsday prepper who's raised an entire army if his ultimate philosophy was 'Oh, I'll throw it all away just to get a potshot at Eli for really vague reasons, I don't care about surviving really.'? Once more, a potentially good villain falls apart because Ubisoft just can't make up their minds about what they wanted to do with him.

Finally there is Faith Seed, and hers is certainly the most visually interesting of the plot threads. As every Ubisoft game must have at least one dream sequence, (literally all of them) she is the villain who peddles in hallucinogenic drugs and specialises in indoctrinating folk by turning them into drug addicts. Wait a minute- are all of the Seed family indoctrinators? I mean, these games usually have each lieutenant focus on a different element of the regime so that the player can pretend they're having an effect on the world when they take them down one by one. (Because Ubisoft couldn't have there be actual consequences; that'd be too hard. It's not like Crackdown did exactly that over a decade ago.) I just find it a little odd to have all three people serve practically the same function to Eden's Gate, but maybe I'm just being a stickler there.

At her milestones, Faith has you drugged and bought into her world, which is one of the most visually arresting depictions of The Garden of Eden that I have ever seen. Seriously, if these weren't linear scripted sections I would love to explore this spot. In fact, I think there could be some apocalyptically amazing boss fights here if this was handled by the kind of developers who could handle that like FromSoftware or Ninja Theory. As it just so happens The Garden in this context merely serves as an analogy for Bliss. (Which coincidentally happens to be the name of the drug that she peddles) Her narrative is without real surprise, unless you count her resounding optimism and inconsistent southern accent as surprising. The final bout against her is an especially bad boss fight, which becomes genuinely infuriating at harder difficulties. Someone really needs to tell Ubisoft how to end a plotline without a bossfight, they suck at them.

After all that is said and done the Deputy is clear to shoot for 'The Father', but there's one problem; upon arriving there you discover that Joseph Seed has used the Bliss to brainwash your companions and re-kidnap the police officers that you've literally spent the entire game saving from his lieutenants. (Talk about a one-trick pony) At this point Jacob gives you a choice to either walk away or keep fighting, and I'll admit this was the first time I thought the game actually had the balls to put a weighty choice in my face. Here were the people that I battled alongside, literally on the floor with guns to their heads and I had the chance to save them or sacrifice them in order to take down Jacob. I mean sure, I didn't really have a close bond to any of them but the prospect alone was enough to make me excited. Only to find out that I was wrong, Ubisoft have no balls, why did I ever think they did?

Once you turn down his offer, rather than gun down your companions it just activates a boss fight wherein you have to 'save' them from the Bliss by, get this, shooting them down and reviving them again. (Bossfight Design 100) Yeah, the entire finale is shooting your friends in the face in order to make them on your side again, I can't even appropriately formulate how stupid and boring that is for the final boss! Not to harp on the way that ever single boss encounter in this game sucks, (Apart from the John Seed fight which is a dogfight in fighter planes, that was pretty cool) but I'm astounded at the way the team actually, probably knowingly, saved their worst idea for last. The fight isn't challenging, introduces no new tactics, builds upon nothing you've already developed, doesn't make any remote sense, isn't fun and, worst of all, squanders a moment of genuine ethos that the game could have had.

At the end of Far Cry 2 you are met with a similar moment, which is why I dared to hope for Far Cry 5, only back then it seems that Ubisoft still had a backbone. At the end of Far Cry 2 (big spoilers) it becomes apparent that the war between the African warlords isn't going to end well for the locals and so it's placed in the player's hands, by the Jackal they've been hunting all this time, to secure these locals' passage to safety. One means of this is by finding a crashed delivery of blood diamonds and using it to pay for their passage out of this country. Upon reaching the diamonds, however, you find every single Merc friend you've made already there and sitting on the haul, ready to take it for themselves. At which point the shoe drops. None of you are good people, you are all just paid killers who came to this land to exploit the hardship for financial gain, the fact that you as a player are even going out of your way to help the locals is an anomaly. (likely spurred on the malaria that you are certainly going to soon die by) Ultimately, the only thing you can do from that point is kill all the people that you battled alongside in order to secure the diamonds for the locals, putting this real weight behind the wrapping up of the story and spurring this moment of self reflection about the kind of person you've been all this time.

Far Cry 5 doesn't have time for that level of introspection. No, Far Cry 5 just wanted to bring all the characters together to have a Smash Bros. style free-for-all where nothing makes sense and nothing has any consequences. I cannot tell you how genuinely annoyed I am at Far Cry 5's writing staff for lacking the integrity to follow through, because it just knocks all the wind out of the story's sails and really makes it hard to care about the events that follow. If you didn't have what it takes to kill off the Cops and force me to execute my companions, then why literally put those characters on the floor with guns to their heads and brainwash the rest of them? It's like they were taunting us with some level of narrative weight just to watch us flounder. Needlessly to say, this cost the game considerably in my eyes.

The only saving grace for the story comes after the Father is beaten. Just as it seems everything has come to a wrap, Joseph Seed resorts back to his most overused tool in his arsenal; preaching about the impending end of the world. (Yawn) Only this time: The End of the World begins. By that I mean, Nukes start to blow off all over the state and the epilogue of game is characterised by an incredibly cinematic race through Hope County as it's ravaged by nuclear fire like this is Fallout or something. (Despite that fact that you are in direct eyeline of like three different Nukes which should render you three time over blind, but lets not sweat the details.) It's an unexpected twist that is deftly set-up, foreshadowed and executed. I'm amazed to say it, but Ubisoft's writing staff did a good job with this one. (Even if I knew it was coming because Ubisoft literally told everyone the ending at the start of their next E3. Way to go blow the surprise for late-comers like myself!) The story ends after the getaway car crashes and Joseph Seed, immortal that he seems to be, climbs out the car and drags the Deputy, and only the Deputy, into a bunker to wait out the nuclear holocaust. He ties you to a bed, announces that you are to be his child and he your father (Very creepy there, bud) and then stares you down until the credits. Effective, surprising and, dare I say it, even a tiny-bit poignant.

Conclusion

There was a lot of controversy surrounding this game in the months after announcement and even after release. It started as a condemnation of the way the game portrayed religion, (despite the fact the game was really portraying cults; Christianity, though implied, is never explicit mentioned once in the game) and evolved into complaints about the game tackling politics. Now in my opinion there is nothing wrong with game's tackling controversial issues and even contemporary issues, and though I recognise how some people like to argue that games should be purely escapism; I respect your opinion but storytelling always roots itself in the world around us, and commentary can be a natural product of a story told right. Although in this instance in particular, people who complained about politics in Far Cry 5 really need to get their act together. Far Cry 5's references to politics are ludicrously anecdotal and flimsy, with the most substantial piece of commentary being a tired parody of one of the most parodied political figures on the planet, (Three guesses who that is) I honestly wish they had gone in a little more as that would have naturally lent a little more heft to the narrative.

Speaking of: just like usual, the story of Far Cry 5 is it's weakest component and the gameplay is the strongest, although that gameplay is also so derivative that you could probably get the same amount of enjoyment from another playthrough of Far Cry 4. Whereas Assassin's Creed still has the odd interesting character or standout performance to lean it's narrative on, Far Cry 5 doesn't even really have that as none of the character's feel fleshed out and the villain, though acted competently, feels excessively one-dimensional. That being said, I enjoyed my time with the game enough to go through it a second time, although that was with skipping by all of the cutscenes (Which I never do, by the way) and it was on the highest difficulty which, quite notably, was not balanced. (That intro turret scene almost made me uninstall the game right there.)

Far Cry 5 is not a bad game by any means, it's just oppressively average; which sort of sounds like my review of current Ubisoft in general. I suffered about 8 crashes in my time, 4 bouts of severe audio issues and a couple crazy lag spikes, (on console, by-the-by) but when I spent almost 6 days of playtime in the game (I'm 90% most of that is in pause menus, in my defence) I can't really call the thing unplayable. Far Cry 5 is the sort of game that I wouldn't really recommend to anyone who already owns a Far Cry game, or even someone who's interested in getting into FPS', but I suppose if you've never played a Far Cry and are desperate to try one than this is technically the best rendition of that franchise's formula. And whilst in all fairness this game does, through merit of it's gameplay refinements, earn the ever so slightly above average label of a C+, I personally am someone who puts great stock in storytelling and that cop-out at the end really did upset me. In fact, it's with great restraint that I attribute a C grade to this game and not any lower. (Because if I did go lower than I'd just be vindictive at that point.) Given the news of the ousted toxic Ubisoft game head and the boon of Giancarlo Esposito being in the lead, I have hope that Far Cry 6 could be a new dawn for the franchise, but nowhere near enough hope not to wait several months until a heavy discount to find out for sure. Until the next Ubisoft game...