A Look Back at Far Cry 5
BLOG
Andy
3/31/202510 min read
A Journey Back to Hope County
Years have passed since the release of Far Cry 5 in 2018. When the game was first released, it received mostly positive reviews. People have praised the game for its graphics, gameplay, and soundtrack. However, it had some controversies, particularly with its story and characters lacking any depth.
After 7 years, it is time to look back at Far Cry 5 and see if it has aged well or not. Are the visuals still good? Are the characters and the story still lacking depth? We will explore many more areas and uncover the truth.
The Story and The Themes
In the story, the player plays as Deputy or also referred to as Rook throughout the game. As Rook, he or she must liberate Hope County from being ruled over by the cult led by the Seed family. In the Seed family, there are four family members which three of them rule over one region of Hope County. Rook must go to each region and complete activities to liberate the regions from their control. And while completing missions, players get to learn more about the Seed family and their themes as well.
Each family member has their own unique theme, making their character and region more unique. Jacob is all about survival and being the strongest of all. Faith is about taking a drug called the Bliss. Last, John does not have a theme that stands out completely, but he tortures people who are against the cult. His theme is to be considered as having a mask, but torture others if they step out of line.
Looking back, why were the characters still lacking depth and why their themes did not carry them so far?
Not Enough Character Development
Overall, the Seed family and the cops had little character development at all. There is not much to talk about these characters such as players cannot dig deeper about them along with their past. A single paragraph describes all the characters, lacking the depth for players to understand them better. The big driver is that each character contained their own unique theme:
· Joseph Seed is regarded as the messiah and bringing faith back to the people.
· Faith Seed is all about spreading her drug, Bliss, around Hope County.
· John Seed tortures people while acting innocent. Jacob is all about survival and culling the weak.
· Jacob Seed is about survivalism
The story did a poor job at developing the characters, offering a backstory on who they were and why they started the cult. Instead, all of them appeared one-dimensional that believed in one certain aspect of life and needs to spread their cult around Montana. The Seed family are portrayed as being an excellent family that is simply opening people's eyes and follow their faith.
However, players will see them as mentally deranged people that are completely out of their mind. The characters could've been written better if they were developed more such as their motivations could have been developed better by relating it better to the rest of America. They could resonate with players while being incredibly deranged at the same time.
For example, Jacob Seed is all about survival and that the strongest are above all. However, killing innocent people for simply being weak appears completely deranged and nonsensical. It could have delved deeper into why people were completely weak and why other solutions do not work whatsoever.
For John Seed, his character is nearly nonexistent and players do not understand what his theme is all about. Players tries to get an idea what his theme is about. John Seed's theme could be about deception due to him putting on a mask by being friendly but torturing innocent locals for not following the cult. However, his portrayal shows him as an insane person torturing people for crazy reasons, and this portrayal turns people away.
The Seed members' horrifying contributions to Hope County include drugging people with Bliss, torture, and the culling of the weak. However, it should make you question if they are right or wrong, since the player will deliver judgment on Joseph Seed at the end of the story. Obviously, they are sick and causing issues with the local, requiring intervention by the U.S. government. Still, the whole point of the entire journey is for the players to learn more about the Seed family and decide if Joseph Seed should be arrested or not.
Delivering Judgment on Joseph Seed, or "The Father"
Joseph Seed, or "The Father", is essentially the messiah of the Cult preaching lessons that are influenced by the Bible and people must follow the religion. While it may sound deep, Joseph was not a deep character, where players can learn so much about him. Every time he shows up, he preaches the same thing, portraying himself as an innocent person while causing mayhem in Hope County.
Since the story informed the players will make a choice at the end of the game, the story and its characters did not help influence players' decision. This led to the final judgment to be predictable and very one sided for players to make. If a Montana cult harms and radically disrupts the safety of locals, then common sense dictates that the Seed family must be taken down.
There are three endings, which one of them is a secret ending. For the two main endings, players must decide again whether to arrest Joseph again or walk away with the others. After going through everything, it is common sense to arrest Joseph instead of leaving his cult alone, allowing more harm delivered to the locals. Either way, the endings make little sense, leaving a sense of dissatisfaction and the choices are one-sided, favoring The Father either way. The choices are:
1. If they arrest The Father, a nuke detonates, and then The Father captures Rook, taking him to a bunker as the blast occurs.
2. If not arrested, the Rook is activated by a song played on the radio, showing Rook murders the other sheriffs. Either way, the players will not get a good ending. It is a bittersweet ending or some crazy ending with a nuclear blast occurring.
The endings are more bittersweet and the choice to make will be not be too obvious. Players will have to think about their decision and decide which is the best choice to make.
Gameplay—Main Gameplay
For the gameplay, it covers the basics, but it does not innovate much in this area. Far Cry 5 has all the elements that are included in open world games such as liberating outposts, driving vehicles, and sneaking inside outposts. However, they are the same as several other video games released, making this game lacking any differentiation.
Liberating Outposts
For outposts, they are easy to liberate, especially the enemies, being very dumb by providing defense. Enemies won't detect the player and will think that it is just the wind that made the noise, not gunshots. This leads to another issue with liberating outposts is gun customization. In this game, players can customize their guns, especially by adding suppressors to their guns. What this means is that guns do not produce any noise, allowing players to clean out outposts with little resistance.
If a player has already played previous open world games, they already know the formula making liberating outposts easy. Typically, players can just hide in bushes, take out enemies with silenced guns, and complete any objectives needed to free outposts. The developers innovated little in this department by changing up the formula or adding drastic changes.
Hunting Animals
For hunting animals, animals aren't too different from the cultists. The wildlife in the game is just enemies with four legs chasing or running away from players. Wild animals such as bears are just roaming around the map and offer minor challenges to players. The worst part is that the developers haven't integrated the animals' skins somehow into the gameplay. Instead, the developers made the skins useless and only sellable to earn more money.
However, this contrast with what the franchise is about. In a franchise like Far Cry, players expect to use animal skins to upgrade their equipment or find some other use. Far Cry 5's perk system, however, is just completing challenges to earn perk points, which are used to unlock perks to increase stats. The perk system doesn't emphasize survivalism and focuses too much on improving statistics.
The developers did not integrate the wild animals well enough to where players must hunt them to survive. Instead, wild animals exist in the background, making the environment somewhat alive. While it is nice for wild animals to exist in open world video games, because they make the world more alive. The developers should have taken a step further by integrating them into the perk system and weapon customization.
The Far Cry Formula
The developers offered minimal gameplay formula innovation. It is the typical action-adventure, open world game which exists in nearly every Ubisoft franchise. With Far Cry 5, it has the typical Ubisoft gameplay included such as:
· Enemies occupy bases requiring liberation
· There are animals to hunt down
· Guns are customizable with the expected attachments and camouflage skins
· Players can drive vehicles
Is the gameplay terrible? No, the gameplay is not terrible. The game covers the basics for an open world game. However, a lot of the areas go little further than the basics. If someone is looking to play just another game, then Far Cry 5 fulfills that aim. Otherwise, Ubisoft did not change up the formula and kept the core elements of a Ubisoft open world game.
Gameplay–Survival
The Far Cry franchise's theme is about adapting to the new, exotic area. The franchise is all about the area pushing the players to their limits and trying to survive in a foreign environment. It is against either combating hostile threats or combating natural threats. Each game throws players into an exotic environment where they must survive against these threats. The core gameplay is about utilizing a variety of weapons and tools to overcome these threats.
In Hope County, survival is not a thing thanks to players not required to put in much effort to survive in Hope County. Developers toned down the core gameplay from previous entries, toning down the survival theme is nearly nonexistent with the threats easy to overcome. The region does not push players to their limit and players can coast throughout the game.
Hostile threats like the cult are manageable because of the AI's limited complexity and the forgiving nature of the gameplay. If a player liberates an outpost, then the AI won't do much to deter against the player. Players can easily equip suppressors on their guns and take out enemies one by one. If a player is experienced with playing shooters, then freeing outposts is a breeze and can be liberated within a couple of minutes.
The environment presents minimal survival challenges. Diseases, for example, do not exist in Far Cry 5. Its exclusion is strange, because diseases are one of the gameplay mechanics players expect to exist survival games. With diseases being nonexistent, players do not need to worry about getting sick or needing to recover from facing wild life.
Wildlife exists, but it remains largely in the background. They do not threaten players and if they do, they rarely present themselves as a danger to players to get out of an area immediately. The upside with their inclusion is that the wildlife adds immersion to Hope County, such as animals grazing grass or bears attacking the locals. Hope County is at least not barren, with no wildlife.
Some players might enjoy this change, because it makes the gameplay simpler, making the gameplay more enjoyable. If someone is searching for a new game that is more relaxed and does not push players to their limits, Far Cry 5 can fill that spot. Inconveniency such as wildlife attacking players and getting infected by diseases is not a worry at all.
This will disappoint fans and certain players expecting a video game with deep gameplay mechanics with much depth. But for casual gamers and other players, Far Cry 5 is still an option that is enjoyable to play.
Perk System
Far Cry 5 introduces a perk system that enhances the gameplay by allowing players to tailor their abilities and skills based on their playstyle. Players can earn perk points by completing missions, challenges, and finding specific items. For the perk system, it has its pros and cons.
One of the major pros of this system is its flexibility, allowing players to focus on certain playstyles. Players can focus on stealth, aggression, and survival playstyles depending on their playstyle. While playing the game, players get to experiment with different tactics and try out different playstyles when taking on challenges. Thanks to the perk system, players can experiment with the perks and decide how which playstyle to pursue.
One major con is that players unlock the perks by grinding challenges rather than hunting animals or gather resources to upgrade their gear. This detracts from the survivalism theme the franchise has by moving towards grinding for perk points to survive. This detraction ruins the immersion and exploration that the series is known for. Far Cry series is all about being in an exotic, foreign environment players must survive in and overcome challenges.
Animal skins, for example, are unnecessary to tackle on missions and challenges. They exist to be sold for money and are not used to upgrade gears. Players will find this upsetting because it detracts from the experience of surviving in an exotic environment. It is not about going to a forest and hunt animals safely. Instead, players just need to grind to earn perk points and use them to unlock new perks or upgrade current ones.
Ultimately, the perk system in Far Cry 5 serves players by allowing them to tailor their character's abilities to however they'd like. There are several perks provided to focus on certain playstyles, such as stealth and survival. However, players argue that this perk system is flawed, because its drawbacks disrupt what the franchise is all about.
Conclusion
As we wrap up this journey through the world of Far Cry 5, the question remains: has the game aged well or is it a product of its time? In 2018, the game introduced players to the chaotic setting of Hope County, Montana, dominated by a cult. Players must confront the cult and survive in this world.
This title has left a lasting impression on both gamers and the gaming industry. It has explored societal themes and provided beautiful landscapes that have still looked great years later. There were some setbacks and downgrades in certain areas, making the game less challenging and streamlined. Survivalism has been toned down in this game, removing one of the core elements of the franchise.
This revisits the question: Does Far Cry 5 remain excellent?
While Far Cry 5 nails what every open world game had, it did not innovate and even strayed away from what made the franchise special. This game is completely fine for people casually playing video games and not worried about innovation. However, Far Cry 5 lacks innovation, hindering its longevity.
Looking back, there are certain issues with the game preventing it from being an excellent game. To make gameplay easier for the average person, the developers downgraded or removed some features. The game wasn't very creative. As mentioned, Far Cry 5 nailed the basics, but it could have experimented a lot more while retaining the survivalism theme.