Far Cry 5 tries very hard to not really be 'about' anything. So is it?! ---- This episode was made possible by generous support through Patreon! / errantsignal ----
@@granola-approach Yeah I don't know much about the state to be honest, and I get that Yellowstone isn't going for an accurate portrayal rather than just using the state as a backdrop.
The saddest thing about Far Cry 5 for me is that the audio work is really terrific. The voice acting is excellent, especially from the lead cultists, and the music and sound effects are best in class. I’ve watched that bit from the ending where Joseph asks you to walk away a few times now, and the tragic swell of the violins and the note of deep sadness in Joseph’s voice combine to very nearly sell the vacuous nonsense the game’s pushing. I know as I’m watching that the moment is desperately stupid, but it still gets me on an emotional level. That’s all down to the audio (and maybe the facial capture, to an extent), because the writing is mealy-mouthed garbage made worse within the larger context of the game. It depresses me to see excellent work go into a fundamentally soulless project.
Far Cry 2 could afford making statements because 1) it took place in a place in the world that had basically zero potential customers, and 2) games were not maximize-mass-appeal-or-bust "live services" yet.
Shroomy in that sense it is awfully misplaced hope to believe that the fifth installment in a growing and highly popular franchise says anything useful. But it’s still true. Edit:...says anything “useful “ - because as Chris pointed out it of course did say something utterly messed up.
then why make a game that takes place in a country in the usa? that's why i didn't buy the game. I litterally knew that a lot of farcry players would come from the areas discribed in the game and as such the game would make no point whatsoever. It doesn't make sense to chose this setting from a marketing point of view.
Cults exist in the states and they can control entire communities. This was the best setting for a cult like The Project at Eden’s Gate. Sure, it’s not quite how Montana is usually, but that’s the point.
Also FC2 is anything but consistent in that statement. The ending with your friends betraying you comes after they risk their lives for saving you after the first half and not getting paid for it. The gun system is cool and brings that image of chaos but you can get any weapon brand new from safe houses when you have unlocked them and they will jam only if you use them for hours. Malaria is only a problem if you didn't do this "Bring papers to that guy" a hundred times and you basically have so many pills that you never run out of it. The mechanics are nice on paper but meaningless in practice.
That isn't a deer it's a rocky mountain elk from what I can tell deer have more uniform color while elk have a darker neck and head and the antlers are far too large to be any deer
@@awsumpchits He did not. (See edited time stamp) He shoots it right in the top of the skull as one is drinking water and it bolts only to take 2 (one going through the body, I assume not registering as a hit) more shots.
Here's the thing...Any time Seed and his goons tried to make be feel like it was "my fault" anything happened, I laughed in their face. In say, Spec Ops, even though they force you to use violence and commit war crimes, it ultimately makes sense when the game goes "None of this would have happened if you've have just stopped". It was a teachable moment about intentions and how the fog of war can make you misunderstand the situation and make things worse by trying to force things to get better. In Farcry 5? The villains aren't some nebulous force that's maybe pulling strings until you realize the truth. The villains are a cult of nutcases who do fun things like tattoo sins on your chest and rip them and the flesh out, or do some kind of crazy brainwashing on people, or turn people into drugged up zombies, or talk about how they murdered their own daughter. The evil they're doing is right out there in the open. Even before the feds piss in the hornet's nest at the start, the cult is already kidnapping and drugging people. That's not something you can just shrug and leave alone. To blame the player (who is law enforcement, let's remember) for trying to arrest these people is hilariously silly. Considering the shit they did, I had no regrets taking them down in self-defense (and then pouring a few extra shotgun shells and a molotov into their bodies just to be sure...And to vent a little). When Seed was giving his speech at the end about how right he was and how it was all my fault, I was there imagining that I was cutting him off with "You may have been right about the collapse, but you were dead wrong about everything else. If it weren't for the kidnapping, the drugs, and then the flesh-ripping, the brainwashing, the brain-dead drug slaves and the multiple murders...None of your people would have died. Your bunkers would have remained unbreached and you'd have been able to ride out the collapse just fine. I'm just the bullet. You and your family are the ones that pulled the trigger." Hell, I felt I was showing RESTRAINT at the end. I went to Seed's island with the intent to take him out. But when he was all "You can't solve everything with a bullet!" I paused, nodded and then decided that yeah, you know what, I'd rather arrest this sumbitch instead. Lemme read him his miranda rights and cuff him, game! Honestly, the end of the game would have made more sense if the final choice wasn't "arrest or walk away" but rather "murder or arrest". Either you stick to your duty as law enforcement knowing he had friends in high places that might get him off the hook, or you take justice into your own hands to make sure he can't hurt anyone again. THAT would have been interesting. Heck they could have still had the nukes. Make it so that if you kill Seed, you end up alone in a bunker with just Dutch (or even alone) for years on end, and if you arrest Seed you can use his fingerprints to get into his own personal bunker with your friends. That would have been neat. Or even invert it and have sparing him get you stuck in the bunker alone with him at the end, and killing him gets you stuck in the bunker with Dutch instead, if you wanna have a total downer ending! But nope, instead I'm just going to have to imagine that either the whole nuke thing was a hallucination because of the Bliss, or that my deputy spent the next two weeks grinding down the cuffs on the bedpost until they broke, and then snapping Seed's neck like so many of his goons, and then just stewing alone in the bunker not regretting anything other than letting the other deputies take him WITH us instead of, I dunno, Grace, or Boomer, or even nobody if it means we don't save the lunatic cult leader!
Aegix Drakan Yeah, I agree, I always laughed at their claims, Joseph Seed wasn't "right" in their murder and pillage, their use of violence wasn't frame as legitime, so you can't turn around in the end and say "surprise, we were right, you destroyed everything", hell, when we first come to Hope County to arrest him, you watch a video of Joseph Seed tearing a guy eyes out for bringing a camera, Faith is drugging people to oblivion, Jacob have the worst "kill the weak" militaristic philosophy and John Seed is a grade A psychopath... you can't show these things and cultists kidnapping and killing people left and right and then turn around and say "we were doing our things in our own corner of Montana and you came here and started the apocalypse", they were doing batshit crazy stuff before the "reaping" begun. I agree we should have been able to kill him in the end (or arrest him).
@Patriot Cat No, not for pointing out the obvious, but for making a bitingly pointed and very well received joke. You are familiar with humour, no? Perhaps not, judging from the tenor of your witless reply.
@Patriot Cat Irony? Does it have something to do with getting really stroppy and upset because you got criticized on the internet for being a douchebag? Tell me more.
Honestly, I don't agree with you about Far Cry 2 condemning guns as much as it's condemning the weapons trade, which I feel is a different beast entirely. The entire game you use guns as a means to an end and 99% of your problems are solved using them. What is being critiqued are not the weapons, but the people who buy and sell them to perpetuate civil wars in unstable regions. If this becomes a whole big argument I'll try to explain this better at a later time.
I think when he says FC2 condemned guns it was more of a relative thing compared to modern video games tacticool fashion accessory fire arms. Farcry 2 presents guns in many ways as just weapons. They can break, jam or be busted. You don't customize your gun and use it as part of your persona. It's just a tool and a good one at that but it's not mythologized in any way.
The fact that the guns are unreliable and even firing them can put you in danger (the rocket launcher) speaks to that angle, me thinks. They're the only solution you have in the game, but you wish you had a better one.
they are the way you solve problems because it's a limit self imposed by the structure of the game, they "condemned" guns but the game needed to be a trigger happy shooter (so trigger happy you pretty much only meet people who wants to shoot at you).
To be honest the conversation on guns in America has been pushed so far into the extreme that anything that's against the glorifcation of tacticool accessory-laden power fantasies is in effect anti-gun.
The Far Cry series is a really interesting one to look at regarding the Entertainment Vs Art argument of video games. Where a game like Far Cry 2 feels designed from the ground up in it's story, mechanics & presentation to make an artistic statement (whether or not it's a worthwhile statement or it's executed well is definitely debatable), Far Cry 3-5 feel designed from the ground up to be FUN to play first and foremost, with their stories & ideas taking a big backseat to the players entertainment & empowerment. This creates a dichotomy that fuels both sides of the argument of what games are intended to be & capable of being. On the one hand, Far Cry 2's commitment to it's artistic vision willingly sacrifices player enjoyment with a lot of it's mechanics, particularly the respawning outposts & malaria symptoms, leading to a game that many appreciate in retrospect, but few people actually finished upon release. Almost everyone I know who has played Far Cry 2 loved the setting but never finished the game & had mixed opinions on the game as a whole. Whereas Far Cry 3-4 were much more praised upon released for their very fun, convenient & addictive gameplay, but in my opinion have not aged very well.. especially considering how many modern games have VERY similar sandbox action mechanics. The series over the course of one game, from Far Cry 2 to Far Cry 3, went from a flawed but deeply memorable game with uncompromising artistic vision to a mass market bubblegum action shooter with a story that is in no way supported by the mechanics. I say Far Cry goes back in the experimental direction after bombarding us with 4 straight games of essentially the exact same mechanics
This nonsense happened because game developers decided to stop making games and start making half-baked movies. There's no reason these narrative parts should exist in a game, never mind that they're bad.
It's making me think of Bioshock Infinite. It starts out talking about one topic and seems to enter that conversation swinging, but then changes gears at the very end.
I never expect to laugh at a Errant Signal video but holy hell that Battlefront gag got me hard. Also Mark Brown's Game Design Toolkit has a pretty good take on the same subject (FC2 vs FC5) with a particular focus on player empowerment. :)
You should try doing a critical review of arma (2 or 3 or both or all). There aren't any critical reviews of any of the games so it'd be nice to see one
I'm so glad you made this. I saw a RU-vidr made a video celebrating its vagueness bc it allows FC5 to be "classic and remembered years later." I was not happy with this mindset of all. Such a casual celebration of video games with no point of view and "keep your politics outta my video games b/c I just wanna have fun" BS.
Not evey game needs to say something, on fact it's better that many of them don't, considering most developers Don't know how to say anything intelligent, and those who don't are often just pandering, additionally if games making statements became common place it will devalue the act of making a statement, now if we want to talk about clever game mechanics that's a different story.
Yeah, but in the game your allies are also "the right". The good guys are all law enforcement, ex-military, pastors, business owners, patriots and preppers.
Why is it that I have never heard anybody say anything good about Far Cry 2 until Far Cry 5 came out and now it is suddenly the best game in the series?
Yeah, quite honestly Far Cry 2 wasn't very good as an actual *game.* Beyond what statements it made, it just didn't work as a game. Getting chased by cars literally every time you drove past a checkpoints or the gun jamming thing just gives me memories of FC2 being frustrating, tedious, and unenjoyable more than anything else.
It always seemed to me like a game that had a lot of interesting ideas but ultimately didn't work. I never played it myself though, that's just what it sounded like to me from how other people described it. The fact that outposts get repopulated after you clear them out makes me not want to play the game. I like to feel like my actions are actually affecting the game world, which is also why I don't like the endings to Far Cry 5.
Campster has a video on it from SIX years ago. it's a pretty common thing in a lot of game crit circles, and comes up again every time a new one comes out, and often elsewhere. Lots of people brought it in comparison to breath of the wild's more systemic elements, for example.
I’ll be honest, I’ve spent a lot of hours into FC5 (about 5,000 last I checked, half of which was spent in the story mode), and I enjoyed it and have fond memories of my first play through. It’s definitely on my top three favorite Far Cry games and one of my favorite games of all time. But I have to admit your right in many ways. The NPCs you save throughout the game always tout on about how “The second amendment saved us and gave us right our guns”, but never talked about how it also (to a degree) gave the peggies their guns. Joseph always talks down to you like it isn’t literally your job to enforce the law, and granted, you pretty much never spare a cultist outside of Joseph and the one defector, but again, your JOB is to arrest Joseph Seed, and by the start of the game it’s quite clear the cult’s isn’t going to participate willingly. The game always tries to gaslight you whenever Joseph and Faith always talk about love and how they’ve built a humble community, only for said community to execute, kidnap, and coerce the civilian populace whenever there is so much as a minor qualm how the cult handles themselves. Jacob Seed in particular doesn’t even feel like he belongs in the cult. Sure, he’s violent, a blood relative of Joseph, and has an affinity for guns, but he’s also an unapologetic Social Darwinist who has a sort of power fetish for his ideas of strength and the warriors of old. His ideology has no semblance of cohesion or likemindedness with what The Father preaches; and to be fair, John Seed is also a hypocrite, but his mantras still fit in with the perverted ideas that Joseph tells us. John preaches love through violence, and Jacob preaches violence for violence’s sake, and he somehow feels faker for it. Jacob has no place in the cult, and yet he’s a leading figure with as much power as the games other three villains. I really hate to say it, but the game gaslighted me and many others and doesn’t seem to have a really consistent stance on much of anything. As someone else pointed out in the comments of this video, it gives you as much freedom as possible to dispatch and hunt down every unarmed and unimportant cult member as you want, but as soon as you’ve done too much killing you get kidnapped no less than NINE times. You’re a federal agent of the law who gets critiqued by literal domestic terrorists for “bEiNg tOo ViOLeNt”, simply because the game never gives you the chance to lawfully arrest anyone, or at the very least, your hand was forced by literal DOMESTIC TERRORISTS who have proven to be uncooperative with the Federal Government, in any capacity, and have more than a couple violent tendencies and human rights abuses. I’m not about to be schooled on ethics by the likes of the Project at Eden’s Gate another goddam time. Personally, I’d be fine if the cult’s hypocrisy was handled in an intelligent way, but it rarely is, and as you said it, the only good ending, is the one where you walk away.
I would recommend watching Tehsnakerer's video on Watch Dogs Legion sometime, as he goes into a thing about Ubisoft's lack of ability to stand for anything, because they don't care. It's a thought provoking part of an essay on how that company uses the iconography and social commentary around certain things to drive attention and sales of their products, but doesn't actually believe in anything it says, always ready with an apology, to the point where they apologized for Far Cry 6's story before/without anyone really going of on it as it was just dull and uninteresting.
Hey at least they didn't change the fact that you catch fire faster than a scarecrow doused in gasoline. I mean jesus christ my biggest pet peeve of the far cry series is how God damn easily you catch fire like oh there's a controlled fire in a barrel next to next to the entrance of an outpost, spontaneously combust into flames if you get within 3ft of it.
Its been a while since I played Far Cry 2 so correct me if I'm wrong. Don't the guns only jam and break if you scavenge them. I though purchasing the guns gave you an indestructible version that you could lose and pick up at your base later. Actually I have more to say about the Far Cry 2 comments. I think looking at engine limitations (The respawning enemies at bases) and attributing to it some enigmatic idea seems a bit cheap. The idea wasn't going for the futility of your actions it was just because the cell would reload enemies once you left it. There were actually a few times where I was getting shot at before leaving the base I had just cleared. This breaks the immersion and doesn't give the player the idea of "Ah yes, how futile my action was," but rather acts as a nuisance. To me the ending of 5 gives the futility angle a little better. The cult being correct makes the player ask the question "am I a bad guy." One thing that bothers me is people saying the game forgave and vindicated the cult. To me it may have proven their teaching true, but if you think the game forgave the cult it means that you as the player perceive the cult as forgiven. I see it as the cult was proven right, but because of their actions most of the family is killed before they even have a chance to witness the end times. They have been judged. Now our sheriff kills most of these people, and now that they've been proven right, can you honestly say to yourself I am the good guy? Why is it that we create the futility angle to make up for FC2's errors, but declare the futility angle a weak line in the sand in FC5?
Funny, I finished Far Cry 5 yesterday and had the same thought. They clearly went above and beyond to make to offend no one. Far Cry 5 might even have less meaning then your average COD.
I cannot explain how many times I have been ran over I'm far cry two, I tried to replay it this year and I had to go through a field, at some point I had to cross a road and every single time I came by, there was a car just around the corner that would chase me and run me off the road, 2 hours I tried to cross this road and once I finally did, I got to my mission and died of malaria and had to reload a previous save so I could get pills. Far cry 2 wasn't "thoughtful in it's storytelling through gameplay" it was senselessly difficult to artificially extend gameplay and above all, it just wasn't fucking fun!
Far Cry 2: you are proficient in guns to a degree that you can reload a gun in seconds, unjam guns without tools... but you lack any skill in maintanance to prevent missfires that are not even shitty ammo, which would have been a much better explanation? ok.
The walk away choices make no sense in this game but the one at the end easily could of if they framed it as letting your friends die to get the villain or letting the Seed go to take them home, it was already set up for that to happen and would of made a much better commentary by asking what the player cared more about when playing through the game.
I know I'm late to comment but I finished this game yesterday and it turned out to be the first Far Cry game that I actually hate rather than being one with problems I could dismiss as "well it's just a fun power fantasy anyway". Which I was ready to do with this (even though it kept testing me), but the ending ruined it all. The one time the game didn't thrust a white saviour complex on me and the villain was someone with an (almost) relevant ideology is the one time I don't get the satisfaction of beating him? Where does that fit into the power fantasy?
I see "saying nothing" as making literature rather than propaganda. Literature is written to explore ideas. Propaganda is written to make a point. The author of literature doesn't know what point she's trying to make when she starts writing, she just explores the ideas and sees where they go. The author of propaganda knows EXACTLY the point she wants to make, and directs the whole story to make that point.
I ended up not finishing the game. The mechanics were solid but overall it was just poorly done. Have you thought about doing a video on Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice?
Ubisoft has a long history of taking a political stance without it percolating down into the game itself, since it is one of the constraints AAA games have to take into consideration when it comes to doing business. The outcome is a game which while having a breathtaking scope on paper, has nothing but shallow gameplay and design hooks intended to attract the widest possible audience in order to indulge them in satisfying bouts of power fantasies without alienating them on the basis of their political views. The first thing you were greeted with when you loaded up Assassin's Creed in 2007 was a message which goes like " this game has been made by a diverse and multicultural team, yada, yada, yada" which has fuck-all to do with the anything in the game itself. Why do they have to preface their game with a statement like that? Because they're dealing with history and architecture? Well, the novels of Dan Brown also use those elements to cater to a wide-ranging audience but do you see them prefaced by statements like "this book has been made possible by a diverse and multicultural team of publishers and marketers", in spite of the controversies some of them have caused, which dwarf the so-called controversies from political incorrectness in the gaming industry? Ubisoft and other AAA publishers, have been on a downward spiral for the better part of the last decade and Far Cry 5 is just another product of the factory of the AAA publishers who churn out these games with short shelf-lives intended for the sole purpose of recuperating the millions of dollars of investment as quickly as possible.
Far Cry 5 is definitely one of those games where the favorable reception will tank with time. Lot's of people high on the honeymoon phase are claiming Far Cry 5 is the best game in the series... yeah... Everyone's a critic, as they say, it's just that most people are highly unqualified and bad at it. >__>
Sounds an awful lot like Far Cry 5 was just made more fun, getting rid of the annoying elements like firearms going to crap within a few magazines or random malaria with no rhyme or reason. Far too many 'time wasters' to artificially extend gameplay. Also fire propagation is different for obvious reasons. The world of Far Cry 2 was full of dry brush which easily ignites. Your examples in Far Cry 5 were at the edge of the road where there was almost no vegetation whatsoever, and not all explosions will spread fire (as an inherent shock of pressure, and not a movie 'fuel explosion').
Wolf99555 Nope, he just pointed out that the core point is stupid. Why in the fuck should a game about shooting people need a deeper narrative, when the people playing it are far too busy shooting shit for them to care? Games don't get designed around a deeper meaning, they need to make a setting that can realistically include all the gameplay elements. This necessitated the weapons trade in far cry 2, the mysteriously modern Japanese soldiers in far cry 3 and the oddly non-communist arsenal of Kyrat (boi, Longinus really saved the day on that one).
The only thing that bugged me about it was the enemies spawning out my ass every two seconds it got too annoying, the game is very much like Far Cry 3 and 4, you can formulate your own view on things it doent bash you over the head with politics and thats awesome
It's called a moral grey area. No one is right or wrong, there will always be consequences. Sort of like Farcy 3 and 4, there is no good ending besides not interfering with the play of things.
I´d love for Far Cry 6 to be a mixture of FC2 and FC3. Have the realism, immersion and roughness of FC2, but have a working stealth system and an entertaining story and characters like in FC3.
Its's just a video game. There is nothing wrong with a game just being a game. Not everyone and everything has to make a statement - or a statement you agree with it.
I just want _one_ Triple-A release that I can point to and say: "They made something thematically resonant with satisfying gameplay." As long as we treat "fun" gameplay as something that overrules everything we get vapid toys.
1:22 you say that they avoid hinting or name dropping towards specific ideologies. However, before you liberate the valley region, John seed says “'If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain” obviously referencing Islam. I don’t think the edens gate cult is a rip off of radical Christianity or Islam, but rather a culmination of many different ideologies from around the world thrown into a big pot, but uses Christian symbolism, prayer, and other common American church practices. In my opinion, instead of remaining ambiguous, they should have gone full bore and called themselves A sect of Christianity. As a normal Christian, this would not have offended me. Just a thought, thanks for the video. Really did enjoy this game and I still play it a lot.
Farcry wants to and is expected to attack the kind of people they realized they had to entertain and shill to, making the kinds of people they wanted to attack integral to their survival almost like the games ending "say something political" and lose everything or don't and lose the argument. looks like they chose both
You have a problem with the game (one I'm not impressed by either) not being explicitly about anything, and you point out that the game has an implicit message anyway. Okay. The question is: if this message was made explicit would you be satisfied at all? It seems like, despite your protestations, your real problem is that the game has a right wing message per se. If the game was more explicit about that, and wasn't lazily written trash, would that really change anything at all for you? "It also can be read as an argument that you maybe should mind your own business and let folks believe as they will, regardless of the harm it may cause others. It's really not subtle the way the game suggests that the most important thing you could do is ignore David Koreshy sovereign citizen types no matter what." If it's really not subtle... then where's the issue? If the game was an actually well written argument for some right wing prepper ideology (of course that would require acknowledging that the Branch Davidians and sovereign citizens are two different things), I'm sure you'd be complaining about that instead of complaining about it being vague and cowardly about it. "And to be clear I'm not saying the game is bad because its politics are right leaning" Ironically, I think you do the same thing in this video that you accuse Far Cry 5 of doing; I'm simply not convinced that this is the case. You want your explicit message to be that the game refusing to take an explicit stance is then defined implicitly by its mechanics, but it's not really clear what's wrong with this, unless your argument itself is implicitly that it's bad because of _what_ it becomes defined by, one way or another. This is evident to me from your point that the games sincere juxtaposition of dissonant elements should really be parodic. To satirize and make fun of preppers and redneck militants is itself an implicit ideological stance. I suppose a hypothetical openly pro-prepper game could satirize soft city folks who don't have nuke resistant bunkers and an arsenal that rivals a small country, but then the narrative would be unintelligible to you anyway, because it would be coming from a frighteningly alien ideological stance. I don't think there was a single way for Far Cry 5 to "win" with this subject matter.
@Jonathan: No actually Forward Synthesis is right. You should not just listen to what hes saying but also look at the video in the back ground as hes saying it. When Errant Signal is complaining about games being vague and not sticking to their political guns he shows clips from the games Mankind Divided and Bioshock Infinite. Both of those games are famous for having a progressive ideological slant in their story and they are also somewhat famous for having to abort that slant halfway in to the story because it did not fit the overall plot or world building. Something that Errant Signal, who liked that kind of messages, are judging them for. He believe that they backed down to avoid losing mass market appeal. I personally think its because they did not anchor it properly and it risked turning the plot in to nonsense if they weight too heavily on it.
You are assuming he's going to complain about the game if it takes a right-wing stance. And that's not the problem, the problem is that by being so inoffensive and afraid of side, it ends up accidentally picking a side of pro-prepper, pro-freedom, kinda libertarian belief. It says "It's your fault that people are getting murdered for the cult" when the cult is shown in-game to have already brainwashed and murdered people. That's a straight up contradiction. Or that by stopping the cult, it turned out they were the right people in the end and you somehow ruined everything so what the cult was doing was...good? It's incredibly baffling and poorly written.
I'm going to ignore most of this comment to make what I'm responding to really clear: it's not the difference between explicit and implicit that matters, it's the difference between intentional and unintentional. By trying so hard to say nothing, it accidentally supports the people it could have criticized, but explicitly didn't. Ignoring the game entirely, this is a really interesting and important point, that can apply to a lot of different things in real life. But you'd rather criticize a video game youtube channel for how _you think_ they would have responded to a game that doesn't exist, so go ahead and keep doing that, I guess.
I feel like the campfire thing can be interpreted any number of ways. It could be showing how things like violence become so frequent and common that it dulls and numbs is to it and could be showing how many Americans or just people in general are unaffected by the violence right next door. I haven’t played the game personally so I wouldn’t know if the dead bodies always show up either but they kind of looked oddly placed almost like they were ragdolled into existence so it could have been one of the games systems messing up and the friendly npcs killed some enemies before going into their little dance thing. Idk probably not or someone would have pointed that out right? I think that honestly most of the game sounds like something that can be interpreted a ton of different ways. From your general description of a ruling villainous power using brainwashing and mind control juice I thought of conspiracy theories about the upper elites controlling working class america through media and goods and that kind of makes the game seem a little different. Again, haven’t been able to pick this one up yet so maybe I’ll rethink that after a play through. The endings do sound kind of odd to me, maybe it’s setting up a larger story in farcry the next one maybe it was just to get shock value.
Your comparison of Far Cry 2 to 5 points an actually great juxtaposition between the two games. While I don't like the lack of mechanics in Far Cry 5, they make sense. The vegetation catching fire isn't as much of a concern in a more hydrated area. That guns seem so reliable when you can purchase them new, high quality, and with support. The citizens seem so gun-ho because they from a culture of freedom and responsibility along with the smaller community influence.
It's so absurd that the game spends several days detailing the cult's sins and yet chastises you for passing judgement (or considering you're a deputy and not a displaced tourist like the last two games, YOUR GODDAMN JOB)
Because the option to walk away is essentially turning the game off. Unlike FC5 the actual game world and metanarrative is peppered with suggestions that what you are doing isn't worthwhile, and it's a clear statement of the developer's intentions rather than a token attempt to recreate the Easter egg ending of FC4.
Surprised when he was mentioning other cults he didn't also mention Rajneeshpuram where a cult actually did take over a neighboring town's city council, they actually had their own police force too. They engaged in a large bio terrorism attack on people in the surrounding county and had a string of failed assassination attempts too. Although that cult wasn't right wing or Christian it's a fascinating and frightening example.
The Rajneeshees only went crazy when the government proved itself too corrupt to deal with normally. Don't get me wrong, they were fucking weirdos, but they were following laws before they weren't allowed to vote. Then the real insanity happened.
>Although that cult wasn't right wing or Christian it's a fascinating and frightening example. Well, honestly they were a prime example of a fascist ideology. Just hits too many fasho marks
One of my biggest complaints with this game is that it can't really decide what ideology it wants the bad guys to represent, because on one hand they're all extremist Christian fundamentalists that are insanely nationalistic and patriotic, but then they make the enemy groups ethnically diverse and give them man-buns and hipster beards, which are things commonly portrayed as stereotypical on people of the left. It doesn't help that the trailers exclusively showed Joseph Seed and his army as a bunch of white people hunting down people of color. It can be best summed up with this Yahtzee quote "Well, actually, while one might get that vibe from the premise, in practice, the politics are more even-handed; yes, the cult are all religious fundamentalists to whom gun ownership is more important than basic personal hygiene, but they're also very racially diverse psychedelic drug users sporting hipster beards and man buns"
You're projecting the insanely nationalistic and patriotic thing. They never actually say that in the game and if anything they're anti America (John Seed being a disenfranchised veteran) preaching an inevitablr collapse. So in a way, you are guilty of what Yahtzee said in that joke.
I'm getting dozens of requests to cover it but it really just a mish mash of tipped toed around ideologies. I really can't add anything to the argument other than what you've just said. It's going for escapism, not meaning... or at least, it has the illusion of meaning.
Arsene Lupin What you just said explains perfectly why this game is so frustrating. It doesn’t make any sort of judgement on anything so in the end some really ridiculous points of view come across as normal in the game. And the game preaches these watered-down political stances at you all the time but there’s nothing behind it because the game has no conviction. It may as well just left current politics alone since it wasnt going to make any meaningful observations, but they had to sell copies of this game by making it seem topical and controversial, so.
Really by the end, the story is a quagmire of contradictions. You the player have been leading a resistance that basically just wanted to live under US rule (in Montana), every place you liberate raises the US flag and is dripping in Americania; through most of the game it has this vibe of Red Dawn with the Soviets replaced with a cult like the Peoples Temple ran by Jim Jones. Then at the end it all falls apart, the game gives the message that you the player, had no right to try and stop the cult with violence and should have just let the cult take over Montana, because of a WWIII non sequitur thus America was going to end anyway.
Bartosz Szafarz, not really. The story is such a mess that all meaning within the story's internal logic collapses by the end. As the "meaning" can be everything from God is evil (God is actually backing Joseph Seed thus started the WWIII to stop you from arresting him) to you never defeated Faith Seed thus everything past that point in the game is a hallucination. The ending sequences destroyed what threads of logic were still intact in the story, leaving the player with no reference point to make any sense of the story. As one has to ask if you don't arrest Joseph Seed, does that mean the US will still be nuked or was the nuking hallucinations or a supernatural event, each of these interpretations gives the game different meaning yet none are compatible with themes of rest of the game. The struggles of Hope County is pushed aside as the player has to try and parse out what is meant to be real within the story.
So based off the endings, the only way to beat this game and get the best possible solution is to never play the game as to not get stuck in a mechanically locked optionless story. Sweet another game i can say ive finished
See, it's odd that you should say FC5 is all about empowering the player, because playing it I felt extremely *lacking* in power. Sure, I could approach outposts in absolutely any way I wanted and rain down fire and destruction like some primordial god of death, but as soon as I'd got enough Good Boy Points that the local boss decided they wanted to talk to me I'd just get hunted down by an unavoidable OHKO and dragged to their lair because the story had to progress. The most ridiculous example of this was when I was in the northern territory with the hunting boss (I think his name's Jacob?), where the OHKO is that you quite literally take an arrow to the knee. This happened to me while I was *flying a plane*. I want to meet the archer who was able to land a shot on me several hundred feet up through the metal cockpit of my plane - he must have one HELL of a draw. Possibly he used a ballista. And then somehow managed to pull my unconscious body from the plane before it nosedived and killed me. It's like the game was pointedly reminding me that I get to play with guns in this big open playground of death ONLY for as long as the game wants me to. This is reflected in all the 'choices' that aren't choices: just to see if I could I messed with Faith's interactive cutscenes (not quite 'Press F to pay respects', but nearing that level) by staying where I was or going in the wrong direction and of course the game simply doesn't progress until you do what it tells you to, looping the same state until you comply out of sheer frustration and boredom. It's empowering in all the wrong ways - yes, I can kill these random thugs that I don't care about in 57 different and extremely cruel and violent ways, but when it comes to things that actually matter like main characters and story choices the game just shrugs and says 'follow the script'. As a side note: I liked FC4 despite its flaws because it had Pagan Min, a villain who was so goddamn charming that I chose not to shoot him when presented with the prompt and therefore got rewarded with more story. In FC5 I didn't even get the choice to kill John Seed (Like seriously, why did no-one just headshot him while the bombs were dropping? Ain't like due process matters in the apocalypse.), not even one of FC5's famous 'choice that isn't a choice' kind of choices. By the end of the game I was yelling at the screen 'YES I KNOW I'M NOT A HERO YOU SMUG BASTARD I NEVER CLAIMED TO BE ONE' and fantasising about beating John Seed's face into a bloody pulp with a rusty spade just for the sheer cathartic joy of shutting him up. I'm not a psychopath, I swear.
I did think the whole 'villain is able to kidnap you automatically" thing is kinda corny, but it seemed to be a way to force the story to give them screen time and explain their motives. One small issue: The villains name is "Joseph Seed", not John Seed. John is one of Joseph's flunkies and the guy who keeps talking about "the power of yes".
Sorry to respond to an old comment, but i just want to point out that Jacob's hunters are so skilled that they can kidnap you even after you kill them!
Mattchester Yes, he did. Thank you Lieutenant for educating this youth. Without people like you this young lad may have very well been on his misguided way towards joining the rebel scum. Glory to the EAmpire!
not just the first two, the first 3, not the ea 3rd one, but the handheld renegade squadron game is apparently pretty good, elite squadron, not so much
I remember playing for hours and taking out one of the cultist leaders and just feeling NOTHING, which is where I stopped. Nothing the cult was doing made sense, they didn't stand for anything, most of them were trying to do what Vaaz did in Far Cry 3. The game felt so utterly toothless it bored me, it mastered the art of "using lots of words to not say anything". Things like diversity makes a lot of sense for the resistance but the CULTISTS? Pff, sure, let's just not tackle the racial angle that WOULD ABSOLUTELY HAPPEN IN SUCH A SITUATION. It was almost the exact same gameplay as far cry 4, except Far Cry 4 actually had something to say, specifically about the nature of revolutions and just how dangerous the follow up to dictatorship can be when lead by egos, it was a message worth hearing especially at the time with things like the Arab spring going on. Revolution in the face of dictatorship can be inevitable but it must be done carefully and in consideration for the consequences or it can go horrifically bad (see also France directly after the famed French Revolution which was a period literally called "the reign of terror"), even policies like sanctions that push for revolution probably won't have the effect of a new liberal democratic government, but just another form of dictatorship. We have had decades worth of media always showing the resistance as "good guys" with no grey areas and ultimately bringing about peace and super duper happy times, even in "realistic" games and stories, it was sad yet important to see something like Far Cry 4 to me, knowing that I wasn't crazy noticing all these grey and dark aspects of revolution that most people never for one second consider and I really appreciated it. I honestly enjoyed the arcade in Far Cry 5 more than the actual game, no grind, pure gameplay and not pretending to be anything else.
While that's an entirely valid point to make, and position to explore, I see so much more of the other stance. Detailing every potential or imaginable excess of a revolution, without proper consideration of the inhumanity of what it replaces. The cost of doing nothing, so to speak. Real-life revolutions the world over have been judged by this. Or from a way better writer: "THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror-that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.” ― Mark Twain
Why would Joesph be racist lmao? He literally has 0 reason too cultist or not. His goals aren't about who's racially pure or not. Jacob's moto is literally about strength, and he clearly doesn't see strength in race John's is saying yes and clearing sin which still, no race as John focuses more on the seven deadly sins. And faith was about having faith, which no race still.
One thing I do have to praise the game for: Those two dancing by the corpses? They looked like pretty normal Americans. I mean, their bodies. The animation models weren't based on supermodels or grotesque caricatures or cartoons or anything like that: Just a man and a woman who aren't in great shape but aren't particularly unhealthy either. I haven't been playing a lot of new games lately, but that seems like a bit of a rarity. Kudos to the character designers, if nothing else.
Agreed, though there is a comment by one of the characters that despite raiding everyone's homes, none of the bad guys thought to borrow a razor. Despite everything, the 'baddies' (mostly) remain beard-wearing fanatics ready to take over your land & ruin your day.
I'd say this though: those are "pedistrian" level character models -- you know, the background thingies. Why'd they be modelled after super models? I haven't touched a single western AAA titles for quite some time, but I still remember in GTA 5's singleplayer mode, the peds you find in the countryside are very often unfit, on the heavier side. Perhaps that's just how the public sees the people in the rural areas? Like "o' greesy trucker joe and that rodunt divorcee Gertrude as getting a 'lil sweet on each other"
@@lcmiracle Keep in mind though, most anything GTA *is* parody. Its not supposed to be an accurate representation of people, its a lot of creative liberty and even more stereotypes.
@@lcmiracle Yeah, contrast that with witcher 3, where every random peasant girl looks like a supermodel. I do like looking at some beautiful ladies, but why are they all like that?
My absolute LEAST favorite kind of story; is the one where the villain/s is/are insane and condemns them from the outset, but ends with them being correct. It always comes out of nowhere and, even when it is set-up properly, it comes off as a shit-the-bed type ending and never gives any kind of narrative satisfaction.
You're Never Going To Read This But: The gun loving crowd actually enjoys Far Cry 2 more because it emulates the actual conflicts the firearms were used in. The major gripe is how they're modeled and how the jamming animations play out, but otherwise the consensus seems to be that Far Cry 2 is just a magically perfect snapshot of how grimy, wretched and miserable fighting in the Congo or other African conflicts was and the fleeting romance of being a gun for hire would be. Far Cry 5 just came across as too slick, and too videogamey for anything to have the oppressive weight and misery of a gunfight in the middle of nowhere would be.
Yeah, 21:18 at that point is where the story completely lost me. Felt like they tried to quickly hammer in a spec ops the line type of twist to the whole story. Try and blame you for all the deaths but totally forget how the cult was framed for the full game with them killing innocents, torturing them and brainwashing them even before you arrived. Still, driving while the apocalypse was happening was pretty cool which somes up the whole reason to be attracted to playing this game.
Yeah, seriously. Game should have ended with "Arrest or murder seed" instead of "Arrest or walk away". To turn a blind eye after all the shit that Seed did is just not right. As law enforcement, you can't turn around and ignore that kind of horror.
@@AegixDrakan personally I would've liked all three. Arrest him, murder him, or simply leave him. The nukes were entirely unnecessary. The leave option should've left him in his filthy pit of a burning outpost with the vast majority of his entire cult dead--lieutenants and all. The other two are obvious.
Funny thing is Far Cry 2 has always been known to heavily take inspiration from "Heart of Darkness". A story Spec ops the line also takes inspiration from.
@@jeremylim2421 before I begin: major Spec Ops: The Line spoilers in here. Spec Ops vilifies the protagonist for doing something they didn't really have a choice in doing. Adams says it himself that they didn't have a choice--their descent was their own the moment they chose to invade Dubai, and you (as Martin Walker)'re the one paying for it. You go deeper and deeper into shit that stinks more and more and realize that there just aren't any good sides. It's an apocalyptic scene that is met with apocalyptic morality. Atrocity after atrocity is committed while you try to contemplate what you're even doing there anymore beyond surviving inside the storm wall, your mission all but gone. Far Cry 5, however, does not have this same moral dilemma. Far Cry 5 shows blatant villains and gives them almost the protagonist treatment, as if to have that whole "we're not so different" trope pulled over your eyes for no reason other than to stir up some vague reaction from the players. The problem here is that the protagonist doesn't have a character arc like Martin Walker and his buddies, and the only real moral dilemma you have is righteousness and it's not even really displayed in any meaningful manner. It's as if Far Cry 5 wants to punish YOU for making the wrong choices, not the protagonist of the game. Imagine if Spec Ops had the same dilemma... it wouldn't be held as this beloved piece of game-art that it's seen as. If anything, it'd be seen as Far Cry 5 lol
Honestly I never saw any of these issues when I played Far Cry 5 originally, I didn't know any of it was supposed to be taken serious. I thought the beer commercial America was the point lol
So let me get this straight. This game has a scene in which a white guy plays a Leadbelly song while a couple, one of whom is wearing what's basically the equivalent of the Punisher American flag t-shirt, slowdance in front of dead bodies. And not only is that not satire, but we're in fact supposed to think of these people as good guys?
It is a classic Ubisoft thing, having their cake and eat it. As in Watch Dogs 2, they want the games to feel current and contemporary on release, while avoiding as much controversy as possible doing so.
That was Watch_Dogs 1 (with internet privacy and information control). Watch_Dogs 2 is like a parody take on that, but turned into a fun playground with cool hack-y gadgetry
Yeah, watch_dogs 2 is a direct response to the fact that they did a terrible job at writing a tragic cyberpunk vigilante or supporting it mechanically in the first game. So instead they just stepped back and made it focused on fun and technology as a power for disenfranchised groups to express themselves. Which honestly made for a stronger game because it's harder to fuck up.
Mmm, when you have Fortunate Son blazing on the soundtrack while blowing up rigged voting booths? (Yes, that's an actual moment in Watch_Dogs 2.) I wouldn't call that "avoiding as much controversy as possible."
+WhiplashGames God forbid you have art that tries to make a positive change to the world and challenges your views. You types only complain when it's left-wing politics inserted into a work, if a right leaning story came out you'd all be jerking iff and defending it with "muh freeze peach".
It's funny, the game tries so hard to be utterly inoffensive, but inadvertently creates the most anti-theist game I've ever played. The only logical conclusion you can get from how the endings differ is that, yes, God genuinely does endorse this murdering, torturing, brainwashing cult leader, and he will smite both you and all of mankind for daring to defy him. Because the only way the three endings differ is based on your choices, and yet one of them contains a nuclear apocalypse. All of Joseph Seed's prophecies come to pass, too. He genuinely does seem to be touched by the divine, and yet he's blatantly a horrific person. My main problem with the game then, is that the big question about Joseph Seed is constantly framed as "What if he's right?" in the sense of correct in his prediction rather than morally right. So when you choose to try to arrest him anyway at the end of the game, you're framed as a big dumb-dumb for not believing him when, for a lot of people, I'm sure the feeling was more like "I refuse to turn my back on the suffering you have caused." And I know that it's... Probably not what they intended, but for me this feels like the inevitable conclusion you get when you link the plot points together. God hates you.
The "vaguely Christian cult is the child of a cosmic horror" theme is something I've only seen come out of Japan, so it's interesting to see in an Ubisoft game.
Well with Bliss being involved, you could argue that the nuclear ending isn't real. But either way, I think they were trying to make the whole thing feel hopeless, like no matter what you did you were destined to fail. I'm not sure if that is necessarily related to religious belief, but it seems they unintentionally made it seem that way.
When a game critic calls FC2 their favourite in the series, I know that it's worth paying attention. FC2 is a work of genius, I don't know whether that was by design or by accident or both, but I'm glad it exists in the form that it does.
Huh. I heard the endings were rather sad prior, but now that someone actually explained them in context; its just shock value. The nuke ending turning on you and saying its your fault is a striking image, but theres very little its actually trying to say with that horrible depiction of thousands of innocent deaths. It all depends on the build up; the white phosphorus works because it was used against you and then Walker made the choice to use it against them and spec ops has some mechanical quirks that also support the lead up. Here we just played hours of a empowering shooter and then bam "massive casualties are now on the players concisious". How shocking.
Peter Grauer It isn't your fault though ? It was about the villain getting the upper hand and if you didn't have dismantled his cult it would have been extremely powerful if not for your own involvement.
Peter Grauer The white phosphorus scene doesn't work for the soul reason you can't skip it. it feels extremely artificial. If spec ops the line had stronger gameplay and less "forcing you" to do shit it would have had a point but it doesn't.
Finally, someone who feels like i felt, i felt no "omg i did wrong" in Spec Ops the Line because the game itself is far too liniar and little to no choices actually exist, in fact the only choice i recall was "these 2 are hanging from a lamp post, you are given the choice to execute one of them, if you dont these snipers over here will kill them both" and in my sense of "Fuck the rules" i shot the snipers directly, also the Phosphoros scene was terrible in itself but again you had no fucking choice in the matter, even taken storywise they were outnumbered and outgunned what other option was available ?
I'm sorry to butt in but you completely missed the point of SpecOps. As self destructive as it was to the game as an idea the whole choice to do stuff was there - you as a player could have stopped playing the game. The whole final bit was Konrad speaking directly to the player. If you didn't want to use the white phosphorous you could not do it and just stop the game theoretically. It was all about putting the spotlight on the player with his need to "feel like a hero" being more important then his own morals. Far Cry 2 did address the issue of fetishising war a bit but never to the extent SpecOps went.
Fun fact, the nuke ending wasn't your fault and anyone who thinks otherwise should take a long look in the mirror. Literally a death cult, he would've had to use them sooner or later.
Seems to me like someone greenlit the premise of Far Cry 5 *before* realising it would critique their core audience. And then they ended up with what we ended up with, an attempt not to offend anyone too strongly by portraying the antagonists cartoonishly.
FC4 spoilers ahead: I know its still a little different, but I feel like this argument (both here and in the video) about them running away from religious right wing stuff is a little weird when we just had a game where your traditional conservative caricature buddy turns villain in the end, not to mention their idol literally murdered a baby. Then in this game right here, FC5, there's hurk's dad who is practically a southpark style image of conservatives, fussing about obama and libtards with a massive cigar in his mouth, and a constant attitude problem. This stuff isn't exactly avoiding the right wing, it's just not going super hard on the exact names some want to see (like as stated in the video, he was expecting it to go against christians or mention jesus. But... its not necessary in the slightest, and many cults do in fact move towards their own images and elements. What references are there, could be either from the devs being too lazy to get creative, or the devs ironically wanting us to see the reference to get a clearer idea (last supper is still on the box, sends an easy religious vibe despite alleged 'too scared to do it' conversation we're having), or the idea of cults still taking influence from real religions) The game also makes the same guys shout about corporations and greed taking over traditionalism, which would anger some right-wingers, while actually mirroring others. Its all still there, just not with the name some are looking to be criticized.
"This sounds like a great idea for a game!" "Yeah, it sure does!" "...Wait a second, if we make this game critical of patriotic, religious Americana, then basically anyone sympathetic to the American Right is going to feel insulted. That's about half of the American consumer base. We can't afford to lose that many customers!"
I think the issue is that the Far Cry series had been being critiqued as a "brown-people murder simulator" for its tendency to send a white protagonist on a killing spree in a non-white region of the world. Yes, this isn't a particularly deep critique and there are a lot of counter arguments to it but I think it was still partially responsible for the decision to bring the game's setting to the U.S. From there, I do agree with you. There was no way they could create a credibly believable villain group within the U.S. without some group identifying with it and creating a fuss. I mean, that very thing happened when they released the "Last Supper" image and people started complaining that the game was an attack on Christianity.
You mean Majora's Mask of the series. Complete with the mechanics that alienate a lot of people but manage to set a tone through its gameplay mechanics alone. I'm of course talking about the timer. I mean it's always been that but just like Majora's Mask it is only now getting recognition for what it does right.
Does anyone know how close those explosions would have to be to make mushroom clouds that visible? I have a dumb fan theory that thinks Jacobs set those up to go off to make it appear the world was ended, just so he can maintain what leadership and control he can, no matter how small. Maybe this is just my brain trying to make this make more satisfactory sense.
If you listen to the radio in-game, it's implied to be a retaliatory attack for a recent nuclear attack on Moscow. The degrading political arena (and now literal annihilation happening on a global scale) are part of what Joseph is referring to, but that's not made entirely clear about the "outside world"'s current state until you hear that tidbit on the radio (which, to be honest, I didn't hear until after my ending). Then, it makes somewhat more sense why nukes would "suddenly" go off in the U.S.
Here's the biggest why of that. The politics of it are...sketchy enough...but what the heck does this mean for future Ubi games in terms of setting? Are we talking an actual divided timeline, with Walk Away leading to the future present day Ubi games and Resist to Beyond Good and Evil 2?
I almost expected that this take would be an analysis of the mute player character - Saying nothing while the foundations of a peaceful society is being demolished around him, and subverting the duty that she/he is bound by ( An agent of federal law enforcement ). And also staying silent while casually slaughtering hundreds of fellow human beings.
I watched this review before I played the game, and I had some of its points going round in my head while playing. What is all the violence amounting to, and what is the game saying, if anything, by its constant dodges to tell a cohesive story with real world messaging? I kept thinking, though, and I began to wonder if the dodging and apparent lack of real world messaging was maybe the point. Don't get me wrong, it's still a far from meaningful game, but I honestly think their message was delivered and it's "America is doomed." Compare the loops of resettlement in every other game prior to Far Cry 5, and how the villages and settlements return to normality is shown through a relaxing of violence and the threat of violence. Meanwhile, in Montana, everyone goes back to violent activities, or prepares for more of it. From the very beginning, the story is set out in front of you, that there are already cultist infiltrators in the government; that creates a feeling of futility that's very familiar to how things are right now. It creates a feeling of "Just how much can I change here, and is it even worth anything?" That said, the three clans have such little synergy between them that any cohesive story that's told in a straightforward way is just about impossible. It's still a dumb as heck game, but the air of futility is what America feels like for the most part. Where we can't really stop this train we're on, so we might as well go fishing or whatever, you know?
Far Cry 5 had that "walk away" ending mostly because Far Cry 4 did. But in Far Cry 4's case, it was presented differently. In Far Cry 4's case, you have to sit there for ten minutes ignoring the screaming of a tortured man, upon which Pagan Min returns, makes some quippy remarks, helps you take care of your mom's last wish, and then the game ends. Pagan tells you to sit still and wait for him to come back, but it's your decision not to that leads to a bunch of people getting killed and the nation being destabilized. And you don't wait for him to get back because. . . well, it's a video game. And as the short ending even says, "This could have happened if you decided to just walk away. . . but is that really fun? Restart the game and let's go shoot some guns." Far Cry 5 didn't EARN the short ending. You don't defy game tropes, you don't defy the game's orders, you don't even have any motivation NOT to arrest the cult leader except that you're afraid of their followers. It didn't make any sense, except that people were expecting a short ending, so the game gave it to them. I personally feel like a better short ending would have been if you don't put the handcuffs on the cult leader. . . and after a few minutes, the doors behind you burst open and you die in a hail of gunfire. And then the cult leader makes some comment about, "Did you really think it would turn out some other way?" as the game turns to black. Kind of like what the iddqd code did in Heretic, as opposed to DOOM.
It's pretty ironic to make an entire video about how something that attempts to take no stance takes a stance anyway, and then finish with a conclusion wherein you attempt to take no stance but then take a stance anyway.
I remember reading someone complain about the things that made Far Cry 2 what it is. He went as far to use the usual argument of, "If you want realism, play ARMA." No words can express my disappointment in that argument and view. When we and people like you point out the problems inherit to games like this, people somehow get offended. As if they are somehow personally attacked by such observations. As if a games themes and story somehow is only just window dressing and not something worth analyzing. That it can't and should not be analyzed and critiqued. Somehow we are being political and not the game. As if the marketing and obvious attempts to avoid stepping on toes is being apolitical. These games could be so much more than just a power fantasy and yet they aren't for the reasons you have so aptly pointed out. The power-fantasy gameplay never intersects with the story and the story is just full of the stereotypical depiction of the things it talks about. And they wonder why video games are not taken seriously as a means of story telling. A fantastic video, I am in complete agreement. Edit: that does not mean that power fantasies can't exist. Or that a studio wanted to make a statement but did not due to to fear of loss of revenue. But that does not absolve the game (any game really) and its creators from scrutiny.
Cannonfodder43 You do realise these kinds of games are usually made to be a sort of cash cow to feed Ubisoft the money it needs to stay afloat and to be able to make its more inventive games. Sure it is not art, but bot everything is and nor does it need to be. And I don't really know where the expectation for Far Cry 5 to be something more seems to have sprung up from, as it was not the first game to have done many of the changes to being more of a power fantasy type game, why would it change the formula that mich if it sells well especially when it seems to be meant as a product to be put out in order to make its company safe money, because games are still a business. These games are also not why games are actually not viewed as art, movies have similar types of movies and are still considered art, the big difference seems to really just be Games are a lot newer and are a very different form of art when compared to other more traditional from of art, and honestly being hung up on others not seeing games as art, implies you think games need the approval of those not interested in games or art in order for games to receive any validation to qualify as art.
The expectation for Far Cry 5 to have something to say comes from the four games that precede it, successfully taking stances on the issues of gun violence, oppressive governments, institutionalized racism, and the nihilism of war. Most of this video is Chris praising Far Cry 2 for at least having SOMETHING to say, even if it comes at the expense of annoying gameplay mechanics or wonky environmental things like poor cover and intense fire-spread. That's where the expectation comes from. That, along with all of the marketing for the game cashing in on America's current political climate, it's pretty easy to see why there was expectation for this game to pull no punches. And your argument stems from the infamous "not all art has to be political" faux pas, but the point you seem to be missing is that if Far Cry 5 was truly aiming to be apolitical, that would be fine. Power fantasies aren't inherently a bad thing, and sometimes escapism is just the thing we need in video games, but the reaction to this game comes from it handling it's themes sloppily and _attempting_ to be political, but not backing up their thematic claims through their story or their gameplay and in fact hurting their perceived stance by backing up their opponents' views through character design and main gameplay loop. I ultimately think that what holds back games from being seen as art are the gamers who push back on the criticism and analysis the likes of Chris produce; for games to be art, they need to be analyzed and discussions need to be had on what impact a game's central loop, or story, or mechanics, or any other elements of their creation, can have to a larger social, political, or historical context. That's what defines art, at it's core.
Joey Sweener So the expectation is justified because people where being stupid in assuming the game would pander to their political beliefs? That sounds like an argument an entitled child would make about expecting something unrealistic, in order to validate their feelings of disappointment. Usually I am a lot more polite when trying to discuss other view points online, but I think it is important in this situation to make things clear to you, that the game did not promise you that it was going to "pull no punches", and be strictly about the current political climate, and the game does have a few indirect Trump bashing jokes in there from what I heard, and given that it is a tripple A game designed to be sold as a product to the largest number of people possible, it is somewhat surprising they included any at all. Also only the politically motivated actually think all Art does indeed need to be either a large social, historical and or political context in order to be judged as art, and no one else actually agrees with you, because most people are not stuck up elitists looking to justify looking down on art in order to justify my own tastes in art. And such views of art can be toxic, and stop some works of art as being counted as art. Is a painting that captures the emotion of sadness and makes you experience it, no longer art, because it holds no historical or political and or itself holds a large social context?
Kids movies are more political these days than adult entertainment. Adults are the ones who have to be a princess have good and evil clearly defined or else it shatters their little mind and they throw a temper tantrum. All rationalizations about risk and budget are invalid, you just have to face the truth that some adults these days are completely insane. Watch Zootopia and tell me what big budget productions can and can't say. It's not Art, not Money, it's 100% the audience. We accidentally at least one entire batch of humans and now it's too late.
Just to zero in on a specific point you raised, I hate the way "realism" is treated as a dirty word in entertainment (not just video games but tabletop games and films as well), as if it's the antithesis of fun and only matters to boring old history nerds. And that's bollocks. It paints "realism" as a binary (or at least a strict good/bad axis) as opposed to an aesthetic choice where the "correct" level can be radically different for different works. Would Saving Private Ryan or Heat be improved if they had featured gunplay from an 80s action movie? Of course not; that would ruin them as surely as authentic, tactical gunplay would ruin a John Woo film. And that's no less true of games because they're interactive. Call of Duty's not fully realistic but it relies on a degree of realism to successfully deliver its particular brand of heroic power fantasy. Doom's mechanics would utterly destroy it. And games like Red Orchestra, Metro and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. would collapse entirely without a faithful adherence to reality.
The fact Ubisoft is European I feel like should be in the discussion more? They may not be as focused on guns as an issue as Americans. Like, they don't see our politics the same way. Which can be refreshing because usually the opinion is totally not a default American right nor left one.
If you think Far Cry 5 presenting anything straight, then you might have missed the point. It's supposed to be a tongue in cheek parody of 'Murica culture.
This is dumb. Far Cry isn't about anything because it's escapist fantasy. Personally, I play games to get AWAY from all of the boring bullshit of the real world, and the more games discuss it the less I like it. Why should this game try to say anything when that's not the point? The point of the game is to have a fun open world with an interesting enough story. The more we bring boring garbage politics into it, the more boring it gets.
I like Far Cry 2 the most, simply because it's the only game in the franchise that offers some challenge. There are some pretty tricky moments in that game, and the less refined game mechanics, coupled with the unforgiving save system, makes for some rather tense action sequences. You DON'T want to die. Compare that with Far Cry 5, where the friendly autosave will guide you by the hand to the fake promised land.
