 It's been a very difficult week for old Pliny, and he's got Back for Blood and Destiny 2 content involved to get to, and frankly, I'm not feeling particularly diplomatic this fine day, so I might sound harder on Far Cry 6 than you feel. But, I gotta tell ya, Far Cry 6 sucks, people. It's very rare I find myself unable to finish a game I spend 60 bucks on, but here we are. Far Cry 6 sucks, after the logo. Time for a reboot. I'd meant to keep this short because I have a bunch of in real life stuff to do, and frankly, because Far Cry 6 might be the least interesting game I've played in ages, but there's a ton to say about it because it's got so many problems. It continues the trend of recent Far Cry games, meaning it's just like the last one, but slightly worse in every way. When we talk about the Far Cry franchise, it's important to recall that the first two, while being great games, are very different than the last five. Far Cry 1 was a major leap forward and should be remembered mainly as a proof of concept for the modern open world shooter. Many of the people who made that game ended up making the Crysis series, which ended up being a different flavor of the Far Cry formula, while Ubisoft Montreal took over the franchise and moved it in its own unique direction. It was with Far Cry 3 that the final form of Far Cry was fully realized. It's interesting to look at how two franchises that started as one ended up going in pretty different directions. Crysis was similar to Far Cry 2 in structure, but Crysis 2 and 3 ended up being far more linear experiences. Lots of fans of Crysis 1 didn't like the more linear focus of the second and third games, but looking back, I think they actually have some of the best gameplay in the series. The story got stupid, but the gameplay managed to keep the open-ended feeling of the combat without sprawling lack of focus of something like Far Cry. Far Cry as a franchise went in the opposite direction. From Far Cry 3 onwards, each game has gotten less and less focused and linear in every aspect of the design. Far Cry 3 is still a great game, because every system in it reinforces what that game does best. Far Cry 3 used the setting and the map and tied all of its progression to those things. The open world was how you crafted ammo and upgrades. Weapons were unlocked by climbing the radio towers or unlocked early by using money that you got from hunting or looting. Progression was earned by completing missions with massive boosts in XP for taking down outposts without being spotted or at least without letting anyone pull an alarm. Far Cry 4 took the same formula and just polished it up so that it ended up being a better version of the same exact game. And Primal took that game and made it feel different by setting it 10,000 years ago. But then something happened. Ubisoft started collapsing all of their franchises into one mega franchise, where Far Cry 3 and Assassin's Creed 2 were totally different games. By the time Far Cry 5 arrived, almost every Ubisoft open world game was instantly recognizable because the structure of the games are so similar. One of my earliest reviews was about Far Cry 5 and why I thought it was a good place to leave Far Cry for a while. After Far Cry 6, I am positive there's nothing left to do in the formula and it can only get worse from here on out. The reviews I've seen of Far Cry 6 have mostly said, well it's not that great, but it's more Far Cry, so if you like that sort of thing then here it is. But here's the thing man, it's really not just more Far Cry. Instead it's simply a shittier version of it. We'll touch on the truly miserable story in a bit, but the most important thing is that Far Cry 6 is both boring and bloated. I'm going to quickly run through why Far Cry 6 sucks, but at the end I'm going to help Ubisoft by very clearly explaining how to fix this series gameplay. Right off the bat, Far Cry 6 suffers from a total lack of interesting places to fight. In my 25 hours of playing there was one memorable outpost that made for interesting gameplay. Far Cry 5's one bright spot was a nice collection of combat arenas and linear story missions, but 6 is a massive step back. About halfway through there's an offshore oil rig you're sent to for a mission that requires you to hit and run and use stealth to take out multiple alarms. It's one of the best locations that's ever been in one of these games and shows how Far Cry still can be a wonderful experience. The problem is how rare those moments are. Once again we have a huge map that's mostly just a collection of bland combat arenas and gas stations and fucking farms. The sad thing is there's quite a few fun little places to explore, but everything good is so spaced out that most of the time you're playing it feels like you're just sleep walking through it. Far Cry 3 and 4 had this figured out because so much of the progression was tied to the open world exploration and the hunting and crafting system. So even though those games had the same spread out map it still kept you going because everything you did in between missions was critical to your progression. Far Cry 5 broke this system by making progression tied not to exploration, but to things like getting 25 kills with a shotgun. And Far Cry 6 doubles down on that. Radio towers are still gone, which I just fundamentally do not understand. The problem was never that climbing radio towers was annoying. The problem is they were too many of them and they weren't interesting enough. Nobody on earth complained about climbing a dozen massive robot dino giraffes in Horizon Zero Dawn because that's fun, where Far Cry 5 had the stupid system of filling out the map by talking to bland NPCs. Far Cry 6 just fills it in as you walk around, with NPCs tagging points of interest for you. Then there's the combat arenas themselves. They're just totally unremarkable. Almost no effort went into actually making sure there was a wide variety of places that are fun to fight in. Weapon variety is pretty poor and even the gunplay feels like it's taken a step backwards. Far Cry 6 seems very excited to now have a Destiny style super mechanic called Supremos, but they are utterly useless. They're so pointless I would consistently finish fighting and then think oh right I could have used my superpower. The Supremo mechanic is the perfect example that Ubisoft doesn't even understand the game they're making anymore. I don't mind that they wanted to add a mechanical wrinkle, that's great. The problem is it doesn't fit in the combat sandbox they have. Why does the super mechanic work in Destiny? It's because the entire game is built around that system. Enemy variety and encounter design makes using the super feel great and often needed. You can't just throw a mechanic in without changing the rest of the game. If Doom 2016 had had the dash dodge and grapple hook it would have been pointless because the game isn't made with those mechanics in mind. And playing Doom Eternal without the dash dodge and grapple hook would be a nightmare because every enemy encounter in the game is designed around those tools. Putting a super in Far Cry is as stupid as Bungie deciding they're going to put stealth takedowns in Destiny 2. Aside from very rarely realizing I could quickly blow up a helicopter with it, there was literally no other reason to ever use the super. If you want to change the combat sandbox of Far Cry, it requires changing how the game plays. Which means changing the enemies, changing the story, everything. The most disappointing thing about the supremo mechanic is the developers have the right idea. Far Cry needs something more now. They just didn't have the guts to do what's actually needed. Progression. Far Cry 3 had a well designed progression system that tied into everything the game did well. The game's main focus was exploration, hunting, crafting, climbing radio towers, using stealth to takedown outposts, and finishing story missions. That's the game. All progression was directly tied into those systems so that playing the game naturally allowed you to progress through unlocking weapons, crafting stuff, and getting skill points. It was simple, focused, and satisfying. Far Cry 5 changed this and made everything worse. Far Cry 6 is a half ass garbage RPG with all progression tied to an incredibly weak ass gear system. Instead of unlocking skills, you now just buy armor. Are you interested in being able to sprint a long time, but also move quickly while crouched? Well, fuck you, because instead of unlocking skill points, you can now either wear shoes to let you sprint, or shoes to let you move quickly while crouched. Crafting is basically gone, aside from the totally pointless settlement building mechanics. Guns are no longer mainly purchased or unlocked by completing missions. Instead, it's a pointless grind of looting shit from boxes. But wait, wouldn't the ability to pick up a dead enemy's weapon break that looting system? Well, yes, but don't worry, they solved that problem. You can't pick up weapons that are on the ground. Is there a reason given in-game for why you can't pick up enemy weapons? Nope. Far Cry 3 and 4 had an absolutely perfect weapon system. You could pick up mid or late game weapons by taking them off of dead enemies. Or you could unlock specific weapons by taking down specific outposts. Or if you really wanted a weapon early, you could loot and hunt for money and buy weapons from shops. It was all about freedom, which perfectly fit with the core of the Far Cry design. Ubisoft has turned themselves around so much, they've forgotten what this game is even supposed to be. Its progression is downright terrible. Boring, random, stupid. It is objectively worse than Far Cry 5, which was clearly worse than Far Cry 4. If there's one thing Far Cry doesn't need, its weapon rarity, perk sets, multiple copies of different guns. Making Far Cry a looter shooter is 1000% the wrong direction to go with the franchise. The Division is a very good loot focused game. Assassin's Creed has for some reason decided to become a loot focused game. They decided to make Ghost Recon a loot focused game. Not every single Ubisoft title has to follow the exact same design principles. If every single one is a massive open world collect-a-thon with light RPG mechanics and loot-based progression, then none of them feel like new games. Far Cry suddenly feels like a first person mod of Assassin's Creed. And frankly, if Ubisoft wants to take Far Cry in the direction of loot rarity for progression, then they're gonna need to put in the effort required to make that fun and interesting, and have the combat actually be balanced around it. In its current state, it feels like someone at a board meeting said, you know what people like these days? Loot. Make sure to jam some looting in there. It is stupid. Story The first three Far Cry games had stories. Far Cry 1 had a story, and Far Cry 2 had a story. They were bad, and nobody cared. Then Far Cry 3 had another bad story, but a really fun villain. Then Far Cry 4 had a blow average story with another fun villain. Then, for some reason, Ubisoft decided they wanted Far Cry to like be about stuff and things. Which is stupid. Because Far Cry is about blowing people up in a jeep with C4. Someone decided it was kinda gross to have every Far Cry game be about all the terrible problems in third world countries. So some genius thought, hey, let's have a game in America, and it could be about American problems. And that guy got a raise. Then, a few minutes later, everyone realized it was impossible to make a Far Cry game in America be about real stuff without making it about very, very, very controversial stuff. You know, stuff like white nationalism, Christian terrorists, stuff like that. That wasn't gonna happen. So they made it about nothing instead. This made it one of the stupidest fucking stories ever in a video game. Now remember, the first four Far Cry games were also stupid, but they benefited from not trying to not be stupid. Far Cry 5 was garbage, because it pretended it was gonna be about something, but instead, all of its creative energy was used trying to figure out how to be a story in America about America without saying anything whatsoever about America. They weren't gonna make that mistake again. So instead, this one is in Cuba. Nice and easy, right? Oh wait. Actually, very few issues are more contentious and complicated than Cuba. The only fucking place you can make a game that would be harder to deal with would be putting it in fucking Palestine. Once again, the idiots at Ubisoft wanted to make a game about a contentious issue without having any balls at all. Listen dude, just take a position, okay? Just say something or don't. Don't say something and make Far Cry 3 again, but don't say half of something and pretend it matters at all. Far Cry 6 is about how revolutions are good unless they go bad, but then the next one could be good, except sometimes they can also be a little bad. Revolutionary movements are actually a great place to tell a story. The actual Cuban revolution is a complicated thing, and this game would have been a thousand times better by simply telling that story in a Far Cry game. Just read one of Che's books and boom, there's your story. Instead, the game doesn't want to piss off leftists by saying the revolution was bad. Sure as hell doesn't want to piss off rightists by saying it was good, and it's not nearly smart enough to chart a course between those positions. Instead, you're dropped in Cuba after Castro is replaced by his son, who is elected somehow, and then after being elected, they invent a cure for cancer, but this cure for cancer is actually grown on tobacco, and the tobacco is kind of toxic and carcinogenic, kind of like tobacco is on its own naturally without the cure for cancer. And the government grows the cancer curing tobacco by enslaving its own citizens and making them pick it. This is so insanely stupid. It sounds like it was written by a six year old, but I promise you that is the story. This isn't even worth pointing out, but I can't resist. Any country that invented a cure for cancer, which is impossible by the way, because cancer isn't a thing. It's a word for like 350 diseases. But anyway, any country that invented a cure for cancer would not need to enslave its citizens. It would have more than enough money to pay its citizens a ton of money and outfit them in protective gear. And if you pay enough money, people will risk anything anyway. You don't need to enslave people to work in fucking coal mines, man. They do that on their own. They don't care, because money. Saudi Arabia doesn't need to enslave its citizens. It doesn't give them any political power. It does give them all a shitload of money because oil is worth money. Why wouldn't you make the game about the dictator of Yara, I mean Cuba, giving all the citizens a ton of money, but still being a dictatorship? Then you could ask actually interesting questions. If everyone has a job and is doing well financially because you've cured fucking cancer, is it still right to fight a revolution? Is political freedom more important than stability and wealth? Is it right to kill people so that you can vote? Is voting more important than everyone having a job and being wealthy? Shit, why even have the stupid fucking cure for cancer tobacco? Why not just have it be oil? It's not hard to ask interesting questions about revolution, just like it's not that hard to ask questions about white nationalism and Christianity. Just pick an idea and write about it, but instead Ubisoft is just miserably garbage at writing these stories now. They want the cool setting, but they don't want to take even the tiniest risk of pissing anyone off. The story in Far Cry 6 is so stupid and makes no sense 80% of the time, and the other 20% of the time, it's offensive because it won't even try to take a position. My god, it is terrible, man. Just terrible how to fix it. Traversal is a core mechanic of Far Cry and Assassin's Creed, but there's no gameplay involved in the traversal anymore. The joy of the first two Assassin's Creed games was the parkour system felt fresh, and it seems like it would be expanded upon. Instead, it has become less and less of a gameplay mechanic to the point that climbing in Valhalla is pointless. Ubisoft needs to spend the next three years making the actual map traversal a gameplay element in Far Cry. This isn't some Herculean task that requires them to reinvent the wheel. There are a ton of games that make movement a gameplay mechanic. A mixture of Destiny 2 style FPS platforming or Mirror's Edge parkour stuff, and Breath of the Wild stamina management climbing is all it would take to make climbing radio towers and traversing a huge wilderness map a gameplay system. If Far Cry is going to have you running up and down the side of a mountain and running all over the place for 20 hours on a huge open world map, that needs to be a gameplay system with mechanics and interesting things to do, like Zelda. There's even far more room for emergent combat in Zelda than there is in Far Cry because the map isn't just a big annoying level to walk across, and Zelda's combat is bad. Many games have map traversal being an integral part of the gameplay loop. This is the easiest thing that Ubisoft could do to make these games less miserably tedious to get through. 2. Settle on a progression system and flesh it out so that it ties directly to what a Far Cry game is. That means a heavy emphasis on tracking and hunting animals, crafting with the things you get hunting, and taking on outposts. Or listen, if you really want to do the loot rarity thing, then do the fucking loot rarity thing, but don't half-ass it. Go talk to the dudes making the division and ask them how they make a satisfying loot-based progression system because they're doing it and you are failing. Make the progression fit within the vision of the game. That means not just randomly selecting progression systems from other popular games and jamming in toned down versions of it. Not every single game needs a settlement building mechanic, Ubisoft. Why on Earth is the same exact mechanic in the Division 2, Far Cry 6, and the new Assassin's Creed games? Don't port systems willy-nilly over to every game you make. Decide what Far Cry is, and then design progression systems that fit in Far Cry, hunting, crafting, stealth, exploration, outposts. That's the core of Far Cry appropriate progression. Get back to it. 3. The setting. Here's one of the other big pieces of the puzzle to Far Cry. It's time to really think about what is essential and what is not. A large wilderness is needed for a Far Cry game, but does it have to be modern day? Why wouldn't Far Cry in space work? Why wouldn't heavier survival crafting elements work? If you want to shake up the combat, eventually you'll need to shake up the enemy variety. We're still fighting the exact same goons we fought in the second game. Why not Far Cry 2324 on an alien world with robots, alien fauna, and totally different enemies? There is no difference between playing Far Cry in Cuba, Montana, and Myanmar, because they all boil down to playing in the same biomes. Yarra's mountains are basically the same as Kyrat's mountains, which are the same as America's mountains. If one of the most important aspects of Far Cry is fighting in a wilderness setting, we're going to need to expand the range of biomes on offer. 4. There's only one other big thing that needs to happen in these games. Far Cry should be more like Crysis again. That means more linear crafted experiences within the open world. Crysis is a linear shooter set within an open world map. If there's a game that Far Cry would do well to rip off, it's Metro Exodus. Exodus features several big open world maps rather than one massive open world. This splitting of the game allows huge diversity in the biomes and mission and encounter design. Crysis gives the player a feeling of an open world adventure while still having a ton of set piece action elements. The one thing that was truly excellent in Far Cry 5 was the linear set piece missions you got during important story moments. Far Cry 5 showed that the Far Cry team is more than capable of making badass linear FPS missions. Far Cry wouldn't work as a corridor shooter obviously, but it could easily make sure that each biome had three or four linear set piece elements. Design major story encounters around sprawling instance levels that allow for careful pacing and encounter design. These moments would make the pure open world freedom all the more interesting because they would act as something to break up the monotony of pointless walking. Each Far Cry game needs to be designed with several interesting biomes first. They need to have 25 spectacular outposts each as good as the offshore oil rig that is the highlight of this game. Then they need 10 really great linear story set piece missions. After you design those, decide where we are, what the story is and stitch together the open world around these things and not the other way. Far Cry 6 may have sold well, but I promise you this game is about to crash and burn. There is just nothing interesting left. Call of Duty can go on forever because the multiplayer is excellent. Far Cry doesn't have that. It needs a total reset and that reset needs to focus on these things first. Traversal needs to be gameplay. There needs to be some linear designed action. Maps need to be more diverse and progression needs to not suck. It needs to tie into the game's best systems, not fight against them. If Ubisoft took four years off and starts over from scratch, maybe Far Cry can be saved. But a Far Cry 7 is the same boring shit in yet another stupid place with yet another nonsensical mess of a story? Sooner or later, other people are going to start noticing how bankrupt this shit has become. Ubisoft can do better and they need to really start thinking about what a better Far Cry will look like. Alright, Backfoot Blood will be next or maybe how stupid it is to fucking Destiny 2 is Sunsetting the Forsaken campaign. Thanks for coming. I'll see you next time. Bye.