Warning, spoilers for the endings of “Far Cry 5” follow.
It’s no secret that the Far Cry franchise is one of many long running serial style video games. While each story takes the player to a different world with new and exciting characters, what helps to make the games a strong seller is the fact that it is all somewhat based in reality. Far Cry 5 is no different.
The game takes us to Hope County, Montana, where a man named Joseph Seed has started a cult known as Eden’s Gate. The cult is based on a radical Christianity in a loose sense, where there’s basis in the Bible, but that’s about as close to actual religion as it gets.
They believe that the ‘Collapse’ is coming, which is their version of the Apocalypse. They believe that only they will survive and will journey into Eden together once the Collapse happens. Throughout the game, players must face three of the primary cult members and their groups before facing Joseph Seed.
The game offers three endings – the ‘bad’ and two smaller, almost-endings that are considered ‘good’. The bad ending ends in the destruction of the world, while the two others just occur if you opt to ‘leave’ during important conversations with Joseph Seed.
I don’t often make predictions about video games being called the Game Of the Year. In fact, this might be my first ever prediction, but from the moment I loaded into Far Cry 5, I knew that it was a different beast. I’ve never played Far Cry before. I’d heard of the franchise, sure, but I hadn’t had a chance to ever really get my hands on the games. When the trailers for Far Cry 5 came out, however, I knew this was too good to pass up.
The graphics and the setting tell you a lot about a game. If things are poorly rendered, or if the setting doesn’t even remotely match where you’re supposed to be, then you lose your sense of immersion in the game and things don’t tend to feel as real. Far Cry 5 goes out of its way to immerse you in this world.
From beautifully rendered trees and landscapes to the simplest of animal calls, you really feel like you’re standing in the wilds of Montana, armed with a gun and a trusty sidekick. The game developers actually traveled to Montana and used a series of 360 degree cameras to map out the wilds of the location, aiding in making the environment feel more real.
A fan favorite amongst the sidekicks is Boomer the dog, one of the first character companions you unlock upon entering the game. The behaviors, characteristics and movements of Boomer feel like that of a real dog. He whines when hurt, he chases down bad guys and bites them, and he licks you back to health when you go down.
Other sidekicks include Peaches the cougar, Adelaide, a woman who can deliver you a helicopter and shoot down enemy planes, Nick Rye, a down-home soon-to-be father with a plane and a penchant for dropping bombs on cultists, Grace Armstrong, a strong-willed woman of color and ex-army soldier with a sniper rifle and a hatred for those taking over her home, and Cheeseburger the diabetic grizzly bear.
Perhaps the most remarkable parts of a game are the characters, and how they interact with each other, the environment and even how they interact with the player character. Often times, villains in video games feel very stale, or stereotypical. The major difference between Far Cry 5 and other games is the characters.
From the moment I first encountered Joseph Seed, I knew he was sadistic and twisted. Everything from his voice to his movements gives you a sense that something is just not right with this man. The hold he has on his followers is terrifying. They believe in him so deeply and passionately that they are willing to pick up a gun and charge into battle for him.
Perhaps the creepiest moment I faced was the end game, where the world has been destroyed and the player character has been dragged to a bunker by Joseph Seed. He talks to you about how he was right and then stares at you as the screen fades to black, which takes roughly two minutes. As a female character, it just felt a little more disconcerting to be locked in a bunker with this cultist who just so happens to be set on the fact that he’s going to ‘revive the world’ post-nuclear bombs.
Each of the villains in the game is twisted and sadistic in their own special way, leaving you wondering how these people could have gotten like this. To counteract the atrocities of the villains, you have the townsfolk left alive that are trying to fight Joseph and his cult.
Encountering so many characters in a game would lead you to believe that only one or two would actually have a personality, right? Wrong. Each character in this game has been lovingly crafted; given voice lines, a personality, movements that are unique to them. While flying or driving through the wilds, your companions – should you choose to bring two along – will interact with each other.
They carry on a variety of conversations, and the interactions can be hilarious. From one talking to an animal, to two women boosting each other up emotionally, or your sniper getting annoyed with your grenade guy, each interaction feels fresh and amusing.
The arcade adds another dimension to the game, offering countless more hours of gameplay. Players can customize and build their own maps and have the ability to create almost anything they can think of. The way it’s set up makes it feel like a real arcade instead of just a collection of maps.
The DLCs have already been announced and will be coming soon, giving people even more content to play with. They have announced three so far, Dead Living Zombies, Hours of Darkness, and Lost on Mars. According to Ubisoft, some characters and locations from Far Cry 5 may appear in the DLCs as easter eggs.
There are many reasons you could say that Far Cry 5 deserves game of the year and all of them would be right. Far Cry 5 manages to give us a refreshing take on politics without being too political at the same time. The way that it uses satirical humor to tackle the subject of today’s political world helps to not alienate the players but also allows them to get a sense of what’s going on.
The game is a fascinating piece of work, with exciting new characters, an interesting storyline, and a whole host of things for people to do in the arcade mode.
Jeri Hensley
Graphic Designer
