Far Cry 5; All-Out War, Just Cause

Come on everyone, turn to the West, get on your hands and knees, and praise Jeebus! That and have a long prolonged holy war in a fictional piece of America where there are lots of guns, beards, and not a lot of showers. This game is not a political jab because it is poking at both major political denominations, apparently. Ok, let’s get to this, as Ubisoft’s whole thing for the last few years has been to say “we’re not political” while jumping up and down on political tropes and themes as if there is candy inside.

They even set a game in Washington DC as a virus killed hundreds of thousands of people (that will never be relevant!), and you could walk right up to the White House. You could even storm the Capitol building’s steps, though the doors were closed and there were a few warnings for you to turn back (until the final mission), so you didn’t breach it. Is that too on the nose? Ok, so a major part of Far Cry 5 is the theming of the villain, or rather villains, a Manson family-like cult built around one bloke who just won’t wear a shirt and thinks he’s a shaman.

Right, joking aside, these villains are steeped in every single bit of the county you are aiming to liberate in the 12th game of the nearly 20-year old Far Cry series. Some (including myself) only learned of the series with the 3rd game’s release in 2012. It was an excellent game let down by a bit of a naff story and the (spoilers!) proper villain being capped off halfway through the game. Personally, I’m not a fan of the 4th game, as those eagles can burn in hell! Though I did end up returning to Africa in the 2nd game.

Right, so why are you talking about all of this? Well, Mike wrote a bit of an editorial thing a while back about how Far Cry 5‘s enemy AI is a “problem…” It’s not. Let me explain: In Far Cry 2 everything is out to kill you. Within the first hour you’ve got malaria, sneeze and you are dead, trip on your shoelace and you’re gone, and there is no way to proper safety without killing everything in Sub-Saharan Africa. That game is out to kill you and it does it in the best way possible; making you overwhelmed on purpose. While in shootouts with waves of men, your gun can jam, something the rest of the series has forgotten. I don’t know why, it’s a great way to keep a battle tense.

That tension is something almost un-matched. I love the stress and anxiety of not knowing what will happen next. This is the reason Far Cry 3‘s inclusion of very smart-(ish) animals all making sounds off in the distance is fantastic; you don’t know if it is a tiger, a bear, or a chicken. The number of times I’ve been attacked by Keith Harris, Rod Hull, and their little mates, makes me astonished I’m not dancing on each man’s grave right now. That tension is balanced beautifully in each game, and I love the two of them.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a mountain of issues with Far Cry 5. I’m not bowing to the prophet of American cultist-killing simulators. However, I do love that quite a bit of Far Cry 5 for how it feels like an all-out war with the cult. If you stand on the cross-section of any major road in the game, you’ll see a car every few seconds. Does it fit the rural setting? Not entirely, and I can see why that is a bit of an issue.

Is it a typical Far Cry game following 3? No, and I think that’s why I like it. It is a bit more of a Just Cause game; your main course of progress is to destroy and liberate. That is similar to the previous games, but now progression is different. The destruction of property, fighting the AI, and saving people from the cult’s “punishment,” or as it is normally called torture, helps you to progress. In the vein of a proper sandbox, you can do missions in any order. It’s not the type of game where a slow a methodical approach with a bow is best suited, unless you want to play the entire game far too slowly and avoid any kind of action.

The fun is more or less coming from the hectic nature of the loud and chaotic gunfights, so you want fast-firing automatics and lots of explosives. It is strange to say it, but while 3 and 4 tried to stay fairly straight-faced for all of their gameplay and story (ok, 3 did have the big lady with her breasts out), 5 isn’t about that. Honestly, the plot of 5 and the idea of it curtailing you back into it all the time is awful. It’s not a fun story to experience and it’s not enjoyable in its writing either. The story, more or less, can get right in the bin alongside those eagles from 4 and the idea Pagan Min is over 32.

Far Cry 5 is a stupid game that is built around co-op. It is meant to be played as an open-world war machine, as you and one or more friends take on an armada of religious cultists with hipster beards and people of color. Could the story have been something? Yes, it would have to be a touch more serious and understand it needs to be written well, but that isn’t going to happen. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a good example. The game asks, what if Far Cry was set in the 80s and it’s on all the cocaine? It is canon and referenced a lot in gameplay. Every boss (three mini-bosses and the big one) all share the same personality. Unlike some, it does have an ending, but you don’t want to get there at all.

It’s the same formula as usual: liberate, plunder, rinse, repeat. However, that chaotic Far Cry 2-esque war that you and you alone (kind of) wage against the fanatical (and often suicidal) AI is exactly as it should be. For all that you start liberating at the start of the game, you’ll soon get heavier and heavier patrols on the hunt for you. I love that, it fits the little story your character has as the lone law enforcement officer (of lady shape or the other one). You are unable to make much of a foothold without being dragged into a full-frontal assault trying to stop their murder of everyone else. It benefits them as they outnumber you.

I get it, some might not like that form of thinking to the game design, seeing it as a weak way explaining away why you aren’t a god. One of the biggest issues I have with Far Cry 3 was how quickly you’d become a Rambo while the story had you pegged as a timid mouse. Technically you can be Rambo in 5 if you want to buy microtransactions, for all the good that is (it’s not). I honestly don’t see the issue with a game putting you in the heart of this type of fight, it’s something we don’t often see in games.

You have to employ guerrilla tactics to take on the almighty force that has baked itself into the surrounding area. Yes, the plot does inform that sense of how they got there, however, some of it is too focused on explaining itself. There was a mission with Jess, where she explains in detail how one character fed children the toes of their parents who would be bleeding out, then burned them all alive. All of this is to explain why some bloke you instantly kill is called “The Cook;” which isn’t needed and ultimately made me lose interest before I even found him. The story is a mess, but the gameplay is fine.