 So first off, I'm working on a video about Destiny's new Go Fast update. Get that one if you are completely finished hearing about Destiny, but for me, I simply can't look away and I find the disaster that is Destiny 2 fascinating from not only a game design standpoint, but increasingly from a business management standpoint. I'm also messing around with some writing on a few games I've been playing like Immortal Redneck, Streets of Rogue, and Valor, but I haven't figured out what I want to say about any of those yet. And in the meantime, I've finished playing Far Cry 5. Now, let's get this out of the way. Far Cry 5. Yeah, it's alright. And Bride, I mean, it's amazing, fucking terrible, and about average, all at different times. So by my completely objective reckoning, that average is out to, I, okay, bye, I'll see you next time. Nah, I'm kidding. I've got a truly stupid amount to say about this game, so today, we're going to take a look at Far Cry 5. It's setting, it's narrative, and it's politics, or lack thereof, and how those three things are inextricably linked together. We'll talk about how it looks and sounds and how it plays, and we'll also talk about what this game is, what it's been, and how it's changed, and how many more Far Cry games we really need, because fundamentally, with all the changes, and yes, there are many, at the end of the day, this is another Far Cry game. Meaning, it's about what you'd expect. And for that reason, and to get where we're going and answering the question, how many sequels does the game need, we're going to have to start by agreeing on what a Far Cry game is. What do we expect in a Far Cry game? What are the core systems and aspects that define what a player expects when they buy Far Cry? So, as always, let's get a brief history out of the way. And if you like what I have to say, or how I sound saying it, do me and you a favor and click the share and subscribe button. Also, likes and comments, I guess, I have no fucking idea how YouTube works, or how my videos are or are not seen, so your guess is about as good as mine as far as what I need. Hook me up, if you know. Thank you. Far Cry, a chaotic world. Far Cry has, at least since Far Cry 2, been a specific set of systems and aspects that, in whole, create a pretty unique gameplay experience. The original Far Cry released all the way back in 2004 and was developed for Ubisoft by Crytek. After partnering with EA for Crysis, the exclusive rights to both Far Cry and the original Cry engine were sold off completely to Ubisoft. Crytek is probably best known by, quote unquote, hardcore gamers for, but kind of play Crysis. But Crytek is also known for pushing the limit of what games can do. Both Crysis and the original Far Cry used the Crytek engine to push what was then possible in design. Far Cry featured a large open-world map and pretty good for its time AI, as well as punishing difficulty. It was a game best known for its tactical and emerging gameplay, its size, its beauty, and that difficulty. After being acquired by Ubisoft, the game became what we, today, consider a Far Cry game. And while there was a small and devoted group of gamers who lamented the change, Far Cry exploded in popularity after being acquired and developed by Ubisoft's in-house development studio in Montreal. So what is Far Cry? It's difficult, and often fools Aaron to try and to sell complex games down to only a few features, but I think with Far Cry, it's actually quite possible. Far Cry is a recognizable brand, specifically because those two words have meant a few important things. And no, I don't mean radio towers and outposts to clear, although those have always been there as well. Far Cry 2, 3, and 4, as well as their generally excellent expansions, all feature huge, beautifully rendered, exotic wilderness locations. They're all open-world games with tremendous for their time's maps. They all have charismatic villains, and they all featured a distinct undercurrent about rages, ridiculous, over-the-top chaos that was often quite funny. They also always created that fun through the emergent gameplay that resulted from the madness and chaos that players could create in the world. That I think has been the core of Far Cry. Emergent, explosive, quite funny gameplay as the result of a large map and player freedom that comes from a large assortment of weapons, tools, and vehicles to wreak havoc with. But there's something else that Far Cry has generally been about. Something that took quite a bit of criticism for over the years. Unfair criticism in my opinion. Far Cry has always been a game set in an exotic, far-off land. Far Cry has, over the years, been criticized for disaster tourism. That is, sending white American players to far-flung nations and having them save the brown people by murdering hundreds of other local brown people. Okay, so I'm a pretty politically correct guy. Mainly because I don't see the point in being a dick. It's very easy for me to not say fag or retort or tranny, and I don't, because the value of removing a few words from my vocabulary is lower in my opinion than the value of not being an asshole and hurting people for no reason. I am perfectly willing to call a gay person a piece of shit or a trans person an asshole, but I won't call them a fag or a tranny because I despise most people I meet for who they are and not what they are. And there is plenty to despise about most assholes without despising them for something they have little or no control over. Also, all organized religion is basically bullshit tailing me to make some people hate other people and I don't suffer from that particular affliction anymore. So you would think that I'm the kind of person who would be most likely to understand this criticism. But I don't. The point of the Far Cry series hasn't been that the locations were nations of color. It's been that they were failed states. The entire narrative underpinning the gameplay loop depends upon the breakdown of the rule of law. Now, we can discuss the geopolitical realities that have resulted in many of the world's failed states being home to peoples of color. Although South America has had tons of failed states and those have been ruled by European descendants banyards. But listen, Far Cry doesn't do this. A, because it's way too fucking big and complex to deal with in a game about running people over in ATV while you stick plastic explosive to another dude's head and blow him up. B, because that would probably be a pretty fucking boring FPS. And finally, C, because it would be so very easy to fuck that up and just make everyone even angrier. The game has always been about creating just ridiculous amounts of mayhem. It's managed to keep that even remotely believable because it's always taken place in locations driven by civil war where state institutions could believably be weak enough that someone could get away with driving around with an RPG in plain sight without being immediately swarmed by 2000 Interpol agents. Far Cry is also developed by Ubisoft and Ubisoft is A, a tremendous and profitable multinational corporation and B, French. Large corporations by necessity are usually loath to offend anyone. Corporations exist to sell things and Ubisoft would like to sell its wares to every single human on earth regardless of race, creed, or gender. And Ubisoft in particular is a French corporation and displays the humanist social-liberal values of the nation where it exists. This is a company who, at the beginning of each Assassin's Creed game, puts the following message up on screen. Ubisoft, for both financial and seemingly philosophical grounds, is particularly sensitive to these types of complaints and so it was perhaps inevitable that Far Cry 5 would respond to this criticism by changing the setting of the game. We're going to look at the narrative, visual presentation, and gameplay and then bring it around and try to decide if this game needed to be made in the first place. But let's start by looking at the narrative in general and some of the issues that arise by setting this game in the United States. Setting is a part of narrative. Far Cry has always been set in a beautiful and exotic deep wilderness and on those two points the fifth installment is no different. Montana is a beautiful exotic wilderness. The plains, mountains, and forests of the American West are stunning and far more wild than one who hasn't ever seen them would believe. Vast swaths of the western half of this nation are lightly peopled wilderness, home to everything from dense forested mountain to gorgeous arid deserts. America is big and beautiful and diverse. So from a purely aesthetic angle, the setting is perfect. And while the art direction is gorgeous and diverse, I couldn't help but feel a bit let down. For the first time in a while, I'm legitimately pissed I didn't buy this on PC. Now we all know that Ubisoft has a tendency to well, I mean fucking lie about its graphics in the marketing. So I didn't think the game would look as good as the commercials, but frankly I'm not sure this Far Cry looks any better than the last Far Cry. And it looks significantly less beautiful than Horizon Zero Dawn for instance. There's a disturbing amount of poppin, especially when flying and when you look out from a high place the textures can be downright dreadful. Trees in the distance look like low resolution cardboard cutouts. The lighting is good, but not fantastic. Last Far Cry's always felt like they were pushing the limits of the consoles they released on. I've had very few moments that wowed me, and then there are the character models and lip syncing issues which frankly, simply are not up to par. And of course there are the usual Ubisoft bugs and glitches we've become disturbingly forgiving of. There is a consistent issue where dialogue that is spoken inside has a terrible and annoying reverb effect that makes characters sound like they're talking in an empty ballroom rather than a furnished house. Hey real quick aside, editing this script it occurred to me that this exact problem was in AC Origins? Okay, back to the video. The cumulative effect of the graphics, textures, sound problems, bad character models and lip syncing issues mean that overall the game doesn't wow visually as Far Cry games usually do. In fact, that has generally been a big selling point for me with these games. The game looks and sounds fine and aggregate, but nothing more than that. I basically run out of trust with buying big AAA games or PC on release because there's like a 50% chance I'm going to get a broken piece of shit. Usually the console version doesn't make me regret that choice. This time it did. But the setting of a game isn't just its visual presentation. Setting is a crucial aspect of narrative in any art form. Far Cry's gameplay relies upon a chaotic mayhem in a lawless land and setting this game in America means that the suspension of disbelief required is a bridge too far. Onto the narrative. This game begins with an absolutely fantastic opening sequence. So good I was legitimately impressed and excited for the story to come. The cinematic and playable sections here are arresting and interesting and deeply disturbing. The music is perfect. The lighting is perfect. Direction, it is great. Our first introduction to Father John Seed is good enough that he seems like he's going to continue the long line of great charismatic villains in the series with one key change. It is clear right from the get go that John Seed is not going to be at all funny. Far Cry this time is going to be much more serious than previous times which leads to a whole bunch of tonal inconsistencies where you go from jokely poking fun in Americana and then going on to crazy religious cult scenes. After this initial cutscene things go awry and you're on the ground beginning the game exactly as you have each other time in the series. Like every other one you will sneak up on the first enemy. Click the right stick to take him down. I believe I punched the guy in the throat and broke his neck before getting your hands on a weapon. The game controls as good as ever outside of RPGs and the exact same stealth mechanics are in place so it plays just as it always has. We'll go into whether that's good or bad later on but for now let's dive into the story on offer. Far Cry 5 is about a religious cult. Now at this particular time in American history this seems like a bold and potentially controversial choice. A religious cult armed to the teeth in the American West is just going to be a game that deals with Christian nationalists. Is it going to take on race? Any fears you may have had about that were for naught because it never becomes clear what the cult believes beyond preparing for the end of the world. They generally have Bibles and Father John sometimes quotes from revelations but they actually never are presented as any kind of Christians. In fact they never really talk about this religion at all outside of their belief that the world is ending. So if they aren't white nationalists and they aren't fundamentalist Christians how can this cult in Montana have enough adherence to populate Ubisoft Montreal's tremendous map with people for you to burn alive with a flamethrower? Well apparently they've invented, manufactured and then begun tremendous industrial scale production of a drug with powerful mind control powers. Not only that they've been systematically dumping this drug into the water supply of the region taking over the minds of the residents and bending them to their will and apparently nobody in power has noticed this. In the United States. As a quick aside the United States happens to be a nation in which I live. And in this nation I once put up 11 feet of fencing in my backyard only to have a city official turn up and make me tear it down for not going through the permitting process first. I had to take the fence down pay the fine get the permit then put the fence back up exactly as it was. This game takes place in that United States. What I'm getting at is there are several impossible to ignore narrative breaking issues with this crucial plot point. First of all and least importantly amazingly this isn't how drugs work. There are no mind control drugs and if we're using this as a plot device the game has now veered into science fiction and I'll be needing some explanation of where this drug comes from and how it works. But this isn't the only suspension of disbelief problem I have with this particularly stupid plot point. See again the game is set in the United States. Now if the game was set in a small fictitious failed state in the Andes I might be able to believe that this tremendous large scale production of drugs and the subsequent dumping of enough of it into a county wide municipal water supply were possible. But here in the United States we have several massively funded ridiculously zealous law enforcement agencies focused on not only domestic terrorism as this is but also environmental regulation and repressing and punishing without rages draconian measures any and all drug usage. Drugs are extremely taboo in America and the second occult turned up pushing drugs on the business of Montana that cult would have nobody to recruit. More than that America is a huge bureaucratic nightmare of water inspectors FDA agents DEA agents FBI agents local zoning boards and school boards I mean you get the picture it is simply impossible for this to happen like absurdly impossible. Previous games were unlikely action movie plots but this is just a story that could not happen in a country with a government that is reading everyone's emails and arresting millions of people a year for tiny personal use amounts of a free growing plant. So the plot is impossible plenty lighten up suspend your disbelief. Okay I did that but that's not the only problem here. In previous games the enemies you were fighting were all on the opposing side of their own free will. We could argue that nobody deserves we burned alive by me for fighting and paying men's army but at least all of those people were paid soldiers who were willingly signed up to fight for pagan. It quickly becomes clear that a bunch of the people on fighting here have been involuntarily drugged into compliance. They are being mind controlled doesn't that mean that most of them are actually victims of the cult you know the kind of people who in a country like the US never would have been a part of this cult because a low level water management official would have stopped this entire endeavor the second somebody showed up with a truck full of green barrels and began dumping them into the water treatment plant. That is enough of me applying logic to the plot of a Far Cry game right? But no because there is a reason that this plot exists. There is a reason that Far Cry has to bend over backwards to create an enemy faction in Montana out of against their will drugged religious but not Christian American but not nationalist people and that's because Far Cry 5 wanted to have its game in America but didn't want to actually have its game in America and no the ending of the game doesn't solve this problem though it tries and we'll get to that later. The problem with America. So for whatever reason Ubisoft Montreal decided to set the new Far Cry in a major industrial nation but if you're going to set this in America you'd better have something to say about America. I don't need Far Cry 4 to make a political or social commentary on Kyrat because it doesn't actually exist but even so Far Cry 4 actually did try and make a political although kind of weak and hamfisted political statement anyway Far Cry 4 tried to look at two revolutionary forces each with their own methods and preferred outcomes and asked the player to make a morality judgment it ended up being a story about just how far a revolution should go before it becomes the same thing it was trying to replace. But here Far Cry 5 is aggressively apolitical. There are few lines here and there but it's clear that they made a concerted effort to not really deal with any of the political realities in the country they wanted to set their game. Now America actually has a history with white nationalist groups and with religious extremist groups and with separatist groups some of which are out in this very part of the country there are significant numbers of Americans who could be convinced to follow and fight for any number of distasteful causes but Far Cry wanted its story in America but didn't want to say anything about America. This couldn't be a Christian extremist group because that might mean some Christian groups would boycott and they'd lose sales. It couldn't be about extreme nationalists because a certain segment of conservatives would take that as assailing them and then they'd lose sales. It couldn't be about some crazy off-shoot socialist group because a, I mean America doesn't really have those and b, Europe is mostly mildly socialist. Instead Far Cry is about nothing. Even the religious extremism angle isn't explored because that would be controversial. Instead we have a religious group without any actual religion explained and one that converts people not with its ideas or by playing to their fears but rather by that always easy to use buggy man drugs. If you're gonna give us a game in America you need to give us a believable American villain and one who's reasonably capable of winning other Americans to his side. But to do that you'd have to make a political statement about at least some Americans and the last thing Ubisoft wants is anybody unhappy with Ubisoft. So what we get is a villain who could have been great and a game that could have had some really interesting things to say but instead we get some crazy story about how nobody noticed a cult in Montana poisoning the water with mind controlling drugs and creating an air force and literal special forces units arms to the teeth. Right now American intelligence agencies know about even the smallest groups of separatists and white nationalists. There's an NSA agent reviewing the contents of your latest bowel movement at this very moment. It is simply impossible. And beyond that we get a religious leader who isn't from any religion. Joseph C. Theology isn't ever explained to you beyond him calling for the end of the world. I can't even really call him a good villain because he's barely in the game and because I have no idea what he believes. The best villains are believable. They play to our fears because we believe they are possible. We see ourselves or our neighbors in them. It would have been so easy and so timely to have made this a white Christian nationalist group that attempts to create a pure white nation. They could have kept almost all of the plot beats to be honest with you. It still could have been a cult. You'd still have the narrative problem that such a things unlikely in a stable nation with robust institutions but to address that replace the game 25 years from now. Because I can believe with a little suspension of disbelief that 25 years from now America will have crumbling institutions and be ripe for a little insanity. I can believe that about any country. 25 years is a long time man. Look at where it was like 25 years ago. Far Cry could have been a game that people talked about but companies are loath to offend anyone and the narrative ends up being mostly nonsense. Gameplay. All right. On the surface it may seem like there's not too much to discuss here but indulge me because actually I think the changes made and not made to Far Cry 5 are quite interesting. Perhaps you've noticed that the amount of new game franchises seems to be on the decline. It seems like the biggest games each year are almost always sequels or sequels of sequels or sequels of sequels of sequels of sequels. If you're EA you've basically given up making anything other than sequels. PS, you suck EA. We might be approaching sequel fatigue any minute now. We all feel it and it looks like most of the big non-EA publishers feel it too. People seem to be getting sick of paying $6,200 for a slight yearly graphical upgrade. Far Cry 5 and all its marketing materials and press stories went out of its way to make clear that big changes to the franchise were in store. And I can tell you after playing this many hours and finishing almost all the game that while many changes were made none of them make the game feel much different. And for every change that was positive there was one that was negative. We're gonna have to break this section up a bit. So we'll look at the map and mission design, the campaign and enemies including bosses, combat vehicles and the progression system. A UB map. Let's start where every big Ubisoft game starts with a huge fucking open world map. Now I have criticized the map and Assassin's Creed for a long time because traversing that map is a fucking chore. But Far Cry is set in the present day and we have cars and helicopters. So the map traversal ranges from fun to innocuous. And the promotional lead-up Ubisoft couldn't stop talking about how many significant changes were made to exploration and map discovery. At the very start of this game you will need to climb, you guessed it, a radio tower. Only about halfway up Dutch, the NPC who leads you through a lot of the game says, now I never really had a problem with the radio towers in the same way I did with the sink spots and Assassin's Creed because in general, they were relatively fun little jumping puzzles that managed to break up the flow of the game. I had a problem with fucking 75 radio towers but in general, I enjoyed them. For me, they just needed to cut down on them like Horizon Zero Dawn did. But I know that that is an uncommon opinion so maybe you'll be happy they're gone. In Far Cry 5, you unlock the map by traversing it and talking to random NPCs who will tell you about strongholds you need to clear. Ubisoft seems to think this makes exploration a more dynamic and organic experience but it doesn't really add all that much. It doesn't take away anything either, it's just a, it's a neutral change, it's fine, it's fine. The map is huge and it's mostly really nice looking and easy to get around. Now, none of it looks any different than any other part of it so it does get a bit repetitive but good art direction means it never gets downright boring. A solid B if you're scoring at home. The campaign, enemies and bosses. Before we get into too much of the deals with the story, I have to say that the game ends on a twist that I am not going to reveal here. Actually, you know what, I changed my mind. I will reveal it but I'll let you know before I do so you can skip if you're interested in playing the game. The twist is interesting but how you get somewhere is as important as where you get. For those of you who've played the game through to the ending, I think you'll find that everything I have to say here is valid and isn't really changed by the ending. Either way, I'm not comfortable with an out of nowhere ending retconning a story no matter how well it's presented and above all, this game is presented very, very, very well. So there will be mild spoilers for those who haven't played but I assure you, nothing I divulge here will detract from the game and I will not spoil that twist without putting up a big spoiler warning. All right, when you start the game, you will notice that it feels very much like your normal Far Cry experience. The map is huge, people send you places to kill other people in free hostages. The enemies remain almost completely unchanged from any other Far Cry game. There's only a few enemies, your regular dudes, regular dudes with a sniper rifle, regular dudes with amazing full body bulletproof armor and a new addition of drug-addled weirdos who are literally covered in fumes and rush you like idiots with sticks and shovels. You will kill many, many, many dudes and for the most part the combat feels great. It's still dynamic, it's still fun, the shooting is good, it's just as much fun to blow 15 guys in a truck up with grenades as it always was. I only have one complaint on the enemy design. In previous games, enemies were always relatively easy to spot and three, they all had red on their uniforms and four, it was orange but these fucking guys are all wearing black jackets and beige shirts which makes it a massive pain in the ass to spot people even when they're only standing a few feet away from you. Now listen, some will say that this encourages extra vigilance and that is true. I say it encourages me shouting what the fuck several times an hour and that is also true, I hate it. You may like it but you are probably wrong. Moving on. You'll do the standard missions of kill, rescue and clear out camps a whole bunch of times until you've built up enough resistant points to unlock another story moment. These moments happen strangely. Instead of unlocking a mission, they just sort of start. When this bar hits a little dot, it happens. The first few times, I didn't even understand what was going on. There's actually some radio chatter to let you know it's about to happen but you are so constantly fucking assaulted by people talking at you on your radio that I just immediately tuned it out. Either way, each time you will somehow be captured and this was a very odd choice because it sometimes doesn't make sense. One time, this happened to me as I was standing in a major hub area surrounded by dozens of friendly NPCs. Another time, I was literally flying in a helicopter with someone sitting next to me only to have the screen get wavy and wake up in Jacob Seed's custody. Another time, I was actually in a conversation with a named NPC. Seems like the kind of thing that could have easily been avoided by only making this happen when you were alone in the wilderness but again, fine, whatever. Surprisingly, these scripted, far more linear missions are without a doubt the best content that Far Cry 5 has to offer. Maybe the best that Far Cry has ever had to offer. The missions are unique and interesting. The enemy placement feels deliberate and important and not like guys were randomly scattered around a cluster of buildings and the level design feels designed. Now, we'll get into this more later but for now let's just leave it at this. These are the best missions in the game. Once again, the map is broken into three areas with each area having a different boss. This time though, each boss has scripted linear missions all of which have their own flair and theme and eventually conclude with an actual boss battle. The first area wasn't actually all that good as John Seed is annoying and I have no idea what he's all about. He's kind of like an aging, boy band, metrosexual mega church pastor who makes polished TV ads for a cult. I don't know what this guy believes or wants or what his purpose is beyond. They could only really think of three cool bosses and then this guy. Also, his boss battle is an absolute chore. The plane flying and especially dog fighting mechanics on offer here are total shit. The planes control terribly. You can often bounce off the ground and flip upside down with no problems and just sort of like roll back up into the air. It's basically impossible to fight anything on the ground and the turning radius of these planes is just ridiculous. You can make literal 180 returns. It's disorienting and feels just totally off. Collision detection and physics in planes are a fucking mess. The enemies fly in continual loops meaning fights are tiresome long bouts of looping after them over and over and over. John Seed's boss battle is that except against a plane that is a grotesque bullet sponge. I literally spent 10 minutes in a continual deep sigh until I finally shot him down at which point he somehow survives long enough to lecture me about some shit that is ridiculous and pointless. I would have actually appreciated the freedom to immediately shoot him because he is stupid. But moving on, the second area I went to fares much better. Henman River is where Faith Seed, Father Joseph's non-sister sister rules. She's a former drug addict from a tortured past who is apparently responsible for the production and distribution of bliss, the magical drug the plot revolves around. Far Cry is known for hallucinogenic drug sequences and most of these are absurd depictions of drug use but in general, they've depicted shamanistic drug usage as beneficial or at least worthy of respect. Something I fully agree with. I am a pro drug guy. In Far Cry 4, the very best sequences were the drug induced sangra law sections. Far Cry 5 flips the script with the drug sequences being part of the main story. These are a narrative mess. Again, they begin completely without warning and while they are clearly hallucinatory, they're also apparently reality. And one, you end up in a boat with your fellow martial and are told you have to save him. I assume this wasn't really happening but apparently it is and when I finally did, I just ended up confused about what's really going on. About 10,000 times more confused than I've ever been when actually taking real hallucinogenic drugs. DMT visions make more sense than this. Now, for all my bitching here, this is part of the story that gets close to interesting but only, only close. Far Cry 5 makes a token effort at fleshing out the faith character by giving her a troubled past and trying to ask questions about whether the cult members are there of their own free will but it never works. It doesn't spend enough time, ask the right questions or actually have any answers and we happen to know they aren't there of their own free will as people are clearly being brutally hurt and repressed by the cult and this drug. This was also very fertile ground for narrative exploration and I wanna be clear, on a scene by scene basis, the writing is quite excellent. It's not the writing in any individual scene, most of which again are excellent, that's the problem. It's the overarching narrative that never decides what it wants to say. Either way, the cutscenes are pretty good, the writing is pretty good, her character is a bit of a mess but she features a quite surprisingly fun drug-addled boss fight. You beat her and then she drowns herself. I don't know, the game never really does enough to explain what faith actually believes and so in the end, her motivations are never understood. This is gonna end up being a recurring theme, interesting ideas, great writing, great cutscenes and when you look back, never actually mean anything at all. It ends up a really well done illusion of an interesting story, a hallucination of a good story and no, they didn't do that on purpose. Nobody purposefully fails at a story. They tried, it just doesn't work or not well enough. The third area starts quite strong because Jacob Seed has an actual philosophical underpinning. It's simple and easy to understand and logical. He thinks the world has grown soft and weak and he and the cult will call the herd so that after the world ends, only the strong will be left to survive. Again, many of the playable missions here are of a hallucinogenic nature. Jacob Seed also uses mind control on the cult members although he apparently has a foolproof Manchurian candidate conditioning program revolving around using a small music box that plays the platter's old hit, only you. Kind of like a mix between BioShox, Would You Kindly and the small music box in Bloodborne but several thousand times less cool because the box in Bloodborne means something and this one doesn't and Would You Kindly was a twist we didn't see coming until the end and this one isn't. Even when it's finally revealed what's going on it just isn't satisfying enough. Jacob's linear missions are less interesting only because you end up running the same mission each time. Still though, the presentation is excellent and the repetition is important narratively and even still, when Ubisoft Montreal has to actually sit down and design linear FPS levels they do it very, very well. These levels are some of the best combat in the game even after three times running through the same level the pacing and gameplay that emerges from carefully designed levels combined with strong motivation can often be more satisfying although admittedly less chaotic fun than the open world formula generally provides. This is the best writing in the game the best level design in the game the best encounters in the game. Jacob's boss fight takes place on the open map but with the long sight lines open coverless fields and huge amount of ranged enemies mixed in with wolves that chase the player down it serves to change the gameplay enough by making you have to push and constantly move it's well designed and entertaining but ultimately Jacob as a character despite the strong start and seemingly compelling backstory still falls a bit short of excellent. Ubisoft Montreal gives Jacob a tragic background but it never works it's just short of great like much of the narrative it has the potential to really make a statement about anything but it just can't ever commit or decide what it wants to say. Each character is well written fleshed out given a compelling history and stellar voice acting and cutscene rendering direction I mean that's like 90% of a great video game narrative right there but an understandable motivation is crucial for an antagonist. My last video had long sections on why Half-Life 2 works so well while Destiny 2 fails so miserably. Ultimately villains need to be understandable we don't have to like them but their motivations need to make sense and we have to fully understand how they got where they are I know why Andrew Ryan and Dr. Breen ended up who they were. To its credit, Ubisoft tries to get John Faith and Jacob there but it just never comes together because it never really makes sense in aggregate without that all you have is a bunch of great ingredients that end up being less than the sum of their parts perfect presentation that never decides what it actually wants to say. Alright immediately after defeating Jacob we go to our final boss fight with the father. The fight, dialogue, rendering and narrative twists are all excellent and presented so well. Before we do the spoilers thing I'll say this if I play a game for 40 plus hours and plot inconsistencies and motivation issues bother me nothing that happens at the end can erase what came before it's a neat narrative twist that's very enjoyable but ultimately doesn't change what came before. Okay, here's the only part that people who don't want big spoilers need to avoid. If you plan on playing this and you think that this narrative twist is important enough to stop watching please skip ahead to this part for the wrap up where I unilaterally decide whether Far Cry has my permission to continue to exist. Spoilers. So the plot twist on offer here is that right at the end of the boss fight with father Joseph several nuclear explosions go off. This sequence is fucking top notch. It's shocking. It's gorgeous and the ending voice acting and cut scene is fantastic and emotionally charged. It's great until you think about it. At first it really affected me it made me question all of my problems with the narrative. Then I got confused then I got mad. As gorgeous and interesting and well written as it is it's also cheap bullshit. At retcons the entire story and still doesn't fix all the problems I pointed out with the narrative. On top of that this ending implies that the cult was right but fuck that no they weren't. At worst a nuclear war would push society back to the stone age but preparing for rebuilding society doesn't require mass drugging people into a torture murder cult. It just doesn't stand up. It makes no sense. It retcons the game and it tries to lay a thin veneer of moral ambiguity on a game that has no fucking right to try and garner moral ambiguity about a mind controlling water poisoning mass torturing genocide inducing murder cult. The most interesting character in the game from the very start to the very end is the father but he's just totally fucking absent from almost the entire narrative. We barely see him we don't get to know him and we don't understand him. What's worse is I don't think the game understands him. We never learn what the father really believes. He veers wildly for a murder cult to make the world strong to talking about love and shit and the game doesn't even try to make us understand why all of these people were taken in by him. The ending doesn't really stand up because I still don't understand who this guy is. Like everything else in the game it's fantastic, wonderful execution and service to a plot that doesn't make sense. It doesn't earn it. It looks and feels great as long as you don't overanalyze it but overanalysis is what I do and getting pissed off is what I do even better and here my overanalysis led to a perfect storm of me getting pissed off by my overanalysis. Hopefully I've ruined any good feelings you had about the ending. You're welcome. Gameplay loop and progression system. So Far Cry 5 makes several changes to progression and gameplay that I didn't like. The gunplay is as good as ever but remember how in previous games guns were consistently unlocked as you went along? If you really wanted a gun early before it was unlocked you could spend money on it but the smart player just made do with what the game gave them and used their money on mods. For some reason Far Cry 5 makes you buy almost every gun you want and that means I ended up using way less guns than I do in a normal Far Cry game. I kept waiting for them to unlock before finally realizing when the game was almost over that it wasn't gonna happen. So I went through the whole damn game with the same auto rifle, shotgun and bow combo until right at the end when I finally bought a sniper rifle in an AK-47. Why? Were there people out there saying yeah, Far Cry is fun but you know what it really needs? Way less weapons to use. It'd be so much cooler if you used the same three weapons for all 40 plus hours. I mean, I... Why? Is it the micro transactions? I don't think so because that system is garbage. I guess it could be. I've heard people say there's more than enough money but they are wrong. I used a bow with explosive arrows for most of the game and you have to buy explosive arrows. They're quite expensive. I could avoid this by using an RPG I guess but in the universe of Far Cry 5 a rocket launcher is slower and less effective than an arrow. Watch this. The RPG is useless. Enemies can basically just slightly move and avoid them. It's insane. And this is a big fucking problem because if you buy explosive arrows and do most of the content like I did, you'll have enough money to buy the scope, magazine and silencer for about two weapons. Maybe buy two more weapons and buy one or two vehicles and that's it. This change dramatically reduces the amount of weapons and vehicles you will use and it makes the game actively less fucking fun. Again, why? I actually don't understand. Somebody please help me understand this. This isn't absolutely stupid, terrible, almost game breaking shitty change and it sucks and it is indefensible. Hunting and crafting. There's one other big change that sucks. For some reason, the heart of the crafting system has been removed here. No, not the annoying shitty busy work crafting system that doesn't really require any gameplay, mind you. I mean, you still have to craft drugs and Molotov cocktails and explosives that require you to loot things. Don't worry, we'll get into that and pick flowers. No, only the fun crafting system. You know, the one that actually had a gameplay system attached to it. Listen, I understand that crafting systems are a dirty word in games now but Far Cry's crafting was more than a well-implemented progression system. It drove a major part of the game. Hunting. With all progression now moved to a skill tree, hunting is completely irrelevant. There's simply no reason to do it outside of a small cash reward and the reward is so small that it is simply not worth it. Seriously, a bear skin is like a hundred bucks, less than an explosive arrow. To refill my explosive arrows, I need to go kill like six to eight bears, fast travel back, sell them in an annoying menu. It's useless. And if you do decide to hunt, you'll find it much less fun. There are way less animals around. I saw one fucking bison in the entire dozens of hours, maybe five bears, maybe 10 deer. I literally have seen more deer in my suburban Florida neighborhood. There are no badgers and unforgivable omission considering the series history. Animals flee at absurd car like speeds and they never menace the player. If you end up shooting an animal, it just takes off and it's so fast it's not worth pursuing. Why? In previous Far Cry games, animals were dangerous adversaries that could kill the player. Bears in Far Cry 5 die very easily and they never threaten you. And it's the same with all of the other wildlife. I'm not sure who decided that hunting wasn't a core part of the Far Cry experience but I think it is a major step back at a feature that has always been one of my favorites. Skill points and loot. All right, with progression moved to a skill tree, it begs the question of why it exists at all. I'd have much preferred the elimination of a skill point progression system while keeping and the crafting. If it's because of the story, well if there's one thing I can say with absolute confidence is that realism and believability weren't a major concern anywhere else in the design. The skill tree is pretty much pointless. You have to spend hours gaining points to carry a fourth weapon. It feels arbitrary and annoying here. Previous games did this to you too but in those you had to hunt animals to craft the holster. It got you out in the world hunting the most dangerous animals. It was fun and it had a very thin narrative excuse. What's the excuse here? Why do I have to unlock this? What the fuck? If you're not going to make me hunt dangerous animals for this, can you just let me carry the third and fourth gun because you know what? That makes the game more fun. Same with the health upgrades. Why? Why not just scale the enemies? It never feels like you actually are stronger because the enemies are getting stronger with you. It's pointless. And the others are so lackluster and dumb it's not even worth it. Chain takedowns, unlike the last games just never actually seemed to happen for some reason. They'd have been better off keeping the hunting and removing the skill tree and simply letting you get the parachute and the wingsuit from a mission. Give me a mission. We're a bear ate someone with a four gun holster and we need to retrieve it. Just get rid of the skill tree. It doesn't ever impact your gameplay. Well done skill progression systems work when they serve to slowly introduce you to new and more advanced systems or mechanics. Nothing in the skill tree here changes the game in any way it needs to go. And my all time least favorite design decision rears its head here too. Far Cry 5 has stuff to loot. Bullets, materials, money, microtransaction currencies. It's always had that I know, but here's the thing. You will be holding X to loot so fucking many times. Why? I had this complaint about Wolfenstein 2 and even they did it better. Why do I need to hold the button to loot? Fallout, yeah, I need to hold the button because there there are things I won't take but you don't have any kind of inventory here. There isn't a backpack that fills up everything you pass you want. So can I please just fucking walk over the thing to loot it? Is there ever gonna be something I don't want to loot? No? Then what the fuck, game? Why are you wasting my time? And on top of that, picking up a weapon is the same button as the loot button. So guess what happens? All the time. Yep, you'll try to loot a corpse only to drop your weapon on top of a pile of other weapons and that's been five minutes dancing back and forth trying to pick up, no, no, not that weapon, my weapon. I refuse to believe that nobody in play testing was like me and found this really annoying. It sucks. Moving on. What do you do? As for the typical gameplay loop of roaming in open world and clearing out outposts, it's still here. However, the outposts are extremely well designed this time. They don't feel like cookie cutter clusters of buildings. They all feel like real places. From lumber mills to state park to diners to satellite centers, each one feels meticulously crafted for the combat encounters they house. And there's less of them. Less outposts of a much higher quality is a big step forward for the game. Ubisoft Montreal hit it out of the park on this front. All the outposts and arenas look unique. Each one feels different and they all look cool and offer the usual very good far cry mayhem. You can do it all without getting spotted if stealth's your thing or big loud and stupid or if you're like me, all of those over the course of the game. However, the penalty and reinforcement mechanic for being spotted and alarm triggers is now completely useless. An alarm basically means like 10 more dudes show up. Remember in the previous games where tripping an alarm often meant having to flee and try again? Yeah, that's not a thing anymore. It just means a slightly more difficult bloodbath on your part. An incorrect change in my opinion. Also, there are never more than two or at most three alarms so the stealth has certainly, like in Assassin's Creed or Origins, been heavily de-emphasized. So let's wrap it up here by asking an important question. Does this game need to exist? And can it still be far cry if there's even less open world and more scripted content? A step in a new direction, but hardly a far cry from far cry. All right, so back to my original question. Does there need to be a far cry six? Here's the thing, I've played Dark Souls, Dark Souls II, Dark Souls III, and Bloodborne. And while I read several Dark Souls III reviews that said it was time for something different, I don't understand that. I am not even close to being done with what Dark Souls brings. From software can continue selling me Soulsborne games into perpetuity as far as I'm concerned. It isn't the number of the games, it's how those games work. Soulsborne still always feels fresh and challenging. The enemies, levels, and bosses are always beautiful and lovingly crafted and designed. Nothing about it has ever felt boring to me. It's still going strong. And I think the reason for that isn't the number on the box or even how many years of development it takes to create one, it's the deliberateness of the design. Soulsborne is lovingly and meticulously crafted. It feels like each and every enemy was created, designed, and placed right where it needed to be. It feels like each and every level was created with a gameplay moment in mind. Nothing feels haphazard. All right, lost isolate, but you know what I mean. But here's something funny. I only kinda sorta liked Neo. Was the combat good? Yeah, sure. Just like Far Cry 5's gunplay is good, but Dark Souls isn't just that combat, it's everything. Neo features the basic Souls formula, twisting levels, tough combat, cool swords. But nothing else about it captures what makes Dark Souls special. The loving and meticulous design. The enemies in a Soulsborne game aren't just combat obstacles. Each one tells a story in its design and placement. Neo felt like Dark Souls after it jumps the shark. Like a Dark Souls game made only to be a Dark Souls game. Far Cry 5 too often feels like a Neo of itself. And like Neo, it's got enough that it does well to not be a total waste of your time and money, but it's not good enough to be great. Far Cry 5 features many linear scripted missions that are absolutely top notch. The cutscenes, acting and story production while ultimately meaningless are very well done. And of course, the mayhem of its combat is still during each individual gameplay moment, very fun. But frankly, the open world stuff is getting very, very old. By the end of the final area, I was pushing myself through to get to the end. I did a pretty long review of Assassin's Creed Origins and I ended up saying that for all the talk about resetting the series and taking longer to make it, it still felt like a haphazard rushed product. Far Cry 5 is better than AC Origins, but I think it still suffers from the same crisis of identity and rushed production schedule. What would Far Cry 6 be like if it had a five year development cycle? Enough time to really think through everything in their story to make sure none of these annoying glitches and mechanics are in there. Enough time to edit themselves. Enough time to make more linear areas and design the open world as meticulously as they designed these linear story missions. I think that ends up being a much, much better game, a game we might need. The freedom of a huge open world gets boring real fast, faster with each installment. I don't think the game needs another one like this, but if this game showed me anything, it's that Ubisoft Montreal is capable of making fantastic, linear, narrative FPS levels. Those aspects were the best part of the game by a mile. In fact, the rest just felt as much like repetitive busy work as number four in Primal did, except this time I didn't even have hunting to distract me. If the series is going to keep going, it needs to drastically increase the amount of linear story missions and decrease the open world. Right now you'll spend 90% of your time doing the same open world shit and 10% in those fantastic handcrafted levels and it's still boring. If Far Cry 6 was split 50-50, they might really be onto something. Right now, the open world stuff means they can't spend as much time as was needed to develop the characters and story. They had to spend too much time making outposts. So the game is going to be exactly like this one? No, there doesn't need to be another. The more I play these Ubisoft games, the more I see the seams in the design and the more I see those seams, the less designed the game feels. In the end, like AC Origins, the game needs to go away for longer this time. Comeback when there's a reason for this game to exist beyond, well shit, Far Cry always sells pretty good. I understand Ubisoft is a company that exists to make money for its investors, but they need to make that money by providing a service and this service has diminishing returns if they sell us the same thing over and over. Far Cry 5 is as good a place to leave it as any for a while. But if they have the guts to really re-imagine what a Far Cry game can be, if they have the guts to actually lean into the linear narrative elements if this game proves they have the skill to excel at, then yeah, sign me up. As it stands, this Far Cry score is about as well as I would have scored the fourth game, a 7.5, I guess. Worth the money, maybe worth your time, mindless fun, most of the time, above average, but you won't remember this game three months from now, I promise. I am chomping at the bit to play the Dark Souls Remaster in May and I have played that game through at least 10 times. No one will ever ask for a remaster of Far Cry 5. Maybe that's good enough for most people and it's probably good enough for Ubisoft but it's not all it could be and that's not good enough for me. All right, bye. I would be totally stoked if you'd watch my other videos. And if you watch those other videos, it would be totally rad if you liked, commented, and subscribed. And if you do all that, Calabunga, dude. Bye.