So what happens when a group of armed, law-abiding Americans suddenly decide to break bad? Far Cry 5's answer is a familiar one: you stop them with.the help of another militia. For all intents and purposes, Eden's Gate isn't just a cult: it's a militia, one that has spent years doing what real people in America do: arming the populace with the means by which they can slaughter multitudes. There's a disingenuous both-sides-ism to just about every idea the game puts forth. Instead, they're brainwashed with a drug called Bliss, some to the point where they no longer have brains and go feral, becoming zombies called Angels-all so you can kill them indiscriminately and not feel bad. But then it's revealed that few people you encounter actually are believers. People could conceivably get behind that, because they more or less already have in real life by supporting Donald Trump. Joseph Seed's message of a forgotten middle class is believable, on some level. When you think about why, though, it all falls apart.Īfter presenting these ideas, it then puts most of its considerable energy into undermining them. It's fun in the way video games are, in that it gives you guns and a plethora of ways and reasons to use them. You can fly planes and helicopter, drive semis with machine guns strapped on glide wearing a wingsuit and command snipers, cougars, and attack dogs to watch your back. Far Cry 5, like most of the Far Cry games before it, exists primarily as a chaos engine built to power your first-person Rambo fantasy of taking on armies armed with a lot of guns and a little ingenuity. That's only the spine of the game though. Take out all three, and Joseph Seed himself will re-emerge for a final confrontation. Wreck stuff in a region for a few hours and that meter will max out, leading to a final confrontation with the region's lieutenant. Rescued by a doomsday prepper named Daryl, he tasks you with the job of kickstarting Hope County's fledgling resistance.įrom here, Far Cry 5 stops being a story and starts being a video game, as it swiftly and succinctly introduces you to the way things work-namely, you complete missions and take out cult property in order to build a "resistance meter" in three regions-each controlled by one of Joseph Seed's lieutenants. The game begins with your mission to arrest Seed going immediately awry, as an Eden's Gate plant within law enforcement cuts you off from the world and the heavily-armed cult takes your team captive, and you barely escape alive. Just prior to the game's start, his cult has become hostile, abducting locals and brainwashing them with a drug called Bliss, closing off Hope County in a Cliven Bundy-esque standoff with the rest of the state.
Now, it's on you to fight back and build a resistance-the result of which is a masterwork of contradiction and tonal whiplash.įirst, the cult: The Project at Eden's Gate is, on its face, a church led by the charismatic Joseph Seed, a man who believes the end of the world is coming and has begun amassing followers who will ride it out with him. Only that slice of Real America is in the throes of a religious doomsday cult, one that has taken over the region by force and trapped you, a lone deputy cut off from the outside world, within its borders. Hope County is a fictional region that plays like a greatest hits collection of America's heartland: soothing rivers, scenic mountains, idealized farmland framed by dense forests. Where previous games cast you as action heroes on tropical islands or Himalayan villages in the throes of violent conflict against despots and dictators, Far Cry 5 is set in. Far Cry 5, the latest in Ubisoft's long-running franchise about cathartic first-person chaos across exotic locales in the grip of charismatic villains, wants to tell you that it's swinging big. Every once in a while, a video game comes along that reminds you how thoroughly craven the medium can be.