A Meta Review: Ubisoft's New 'Far Cry 5' has the Ideologues All Bent Out of Shape... AnD tHaT's A gOoD tHiNg

Originally, I wasn't very interested in picking up Far Cry 5, the latest entry in a series of formularized games going back to 2004 -- but the more I read about and saw more of its gameplay a couple of weeks leading up to its release, the more excited about it I became. The Montanan setting was much 'closer to home' than past installments, the cult concept was intriguing, the graphics looked gorgeous, the music highly thematic, and the gunplay sweet. The addition of co-op in its beautiful and chaotic open world of Americana was all just too much to pass up, this time around.

Pre-orders were placed.


First, The Actual Game

Allusions to 'The Last Supper', anyone?

On the politics (or mostly lack-thereof) within Far Cry 5 -- they had absolutely zilch, zero, nada to do with my initial excitement, subsequent purchase and ongoing enjoyment of this game. Far Cry 5 feels like The Dukes of Hazard taking on some equally cartoonish cult, and, ultimately, if I’m playing a Far Cry game, I’m not doing it for deep political commentary, regardless of the setting. I'm doing it to have fun in amazingly rendered open worlds and with the characters that dwell there, with great voice-acting, script, and well-executed facial and other animation mo-cap. I expect solid gameplay and combat with many ways to approach varying, highly dynamic situations within the chaos-engine that smashes, head-first, into what would otherwise be considered a paradise on earth.

At the end of the day, you and your buds are going to be sending flaming mountain lions to ravage a bunch of goonish, cult-obsessed, drug-addled hillbillies. Or maybe you'll take out psychopathic cultists with an M60 machine gun mounted on a flame-painted muscle car. Or maybe you'll whack them upside the head with a barbed-wire, nail-studded bat as you whip by in a pickup truck. Or maybe you'll raid doomsday prepper stashes. Or maybe you'll just enjoy the scenery. Or maybe you and your friend will do some fishing in order to feed your diabetic pet grizzly bear, 'Cheeseburger'. Whatever floats your boat, man (like, literally, you can go fishing on your boat).

Have some of that...

A bit of this...

And this...

And, of course, this...

Can't forget this...

There's some of this...

And, hell, why not some of this?

The chaos on the main roads in cultist-dominated regions outside their outposts is... palpable, to say the least. I think I actually like the non-stop chaos, but I'm not exactly sure. Wild beasts come out of nowhere attacking cultists and townsfolk (you happen to be talking to or receiving a quest from), alike, which can be comical when it's not an annoyance. Co-op really capitalizes on the chaotic aspect of the game, though, and finding random, hilarious shit to do in between the insanity on the roads is quick, easy, and supremely fun with a friend.

Customizing your character adds to the co-op experience, and Ubisoft promises to have regular 'Live Events' -- challenges to accomplish to unlock special weapons, skins, and clothes to play video game Barbie with. 'Far Cry Arcade' is another major multiplayer addition to the game, allowing players to use a huge collection of assets from a long library of Ubisoft games to create their own maps, scenarios and game modes with various triggers. At the time of this writing, the content, there, is very 'rough around the edges', to put it mildly -- but I expect better quality content to emerge with some time.

Of course, the game is far from flawless and could use some improvements, but they're almost all just annoying or restricting and not game-breaking. For one, player creation is extremely shallow and limiting with only a few faces and hairstyles to choose from -- for some reason I can't even give my male character any facial hair, let alone a BEARD, which makes no sense, considering the 'survivalist' culture of most of the characters. While the weapon models that are available feel very different from eachother, there aren't very many of them, and the so-called 'Prestige' versions of them are nothing more than aesthetically flashier re-skins. The AI does some weird shit, sometimes, although this is par the course for open-world games with so many interacting dynamics. Your pets can't ride in the vehicle in any way, which is more of just a bummer than anything else. The 'kidnapping' mechanic often makes little to no sense, and can be frustrating, depending on what you're doing at the time, as you could be flying or in the middle of a firefight and suddenly get 'scooped up' by a cutscene. Resistance points seem to accumulate far too quickly, and if you complete a region before doing all story missions, you seem to lose access to completing some of those missions. There are three regions total (each quite large), but once you fully complete one or two of them, the repetitive nature inherent in the gameplay starts to set in a bit, though this is definitely alleviated by playing with a friend.

With that all being said, there's a lot of potential to draw on, here, to keep things fresh and interesting. Once you beat the game, there's very little to do within the game world, and the game is absolutely begging for some kind of 'New Game +' mode, resetting the campaign and map and upping the difficulty while you carry your abilities, weapons, and cash over. They could do this the standard way, but it would be really special to see them give you the option of starting a 'New Game +' as a cultist, allowing you to customize a new cultist character, carry everything over from the campaign, and having you retake outposts you originally liberated from the local good-guy militia(s) / townsfolk. Perhaps you could save and recruit cultists in place of the townsfolk (as you did in the campaign), and more. A piece over at Kotaku made some great suggestions, though I'd support those ideas as part of the New Game + mode for disempowering the player while making situations much more unpredictable and uncontrollable. Even better, add in the option for a PvP invasion mechanic (a la Watch Dogs, Dark Souls, et al) and we'd really be set up for some great fun and havoc. I can even see incentive for some kind of ongoing territory control and war dynamic, with related 'Community Events' pitting players who restarted as cultists against other player deputies. PvP invasion challenges and other such systems could really add to the shelf-life of this game for years to come, with much of this going far in reducing a lot of the repetitive feel of the mid to late game campaign.


The TLDR Review and Score

Overall, the game is pretty solid, with some minor AI issues and bugs that crop up every once in a while. The environments are absolutely gorgeous and well-crafted. The combat and gunplay feels great. It can definitely be fun, especially in co-op, with the quantity and quality of multiplayer content and live events to increase over time, though the campaign can be weighed down a bit by some repetitive gameplay after you've completed a region or two. Luckily, prepper-stashes and other side-quests add some good flavor to distractions from the main story and feel hand-crafted and not utterly meaningless, like in so many other open-world games.

Far Cry 5, in its current state, deserves about an 8 out of 10, with what feels like a very strong foundation having just been laid. This game has the potential of it being a 9 out of 10 with some time and polish and especially with integrating some of the suggestions I and others are making to increase the longevity and freshness of the game.


Activists Trying to Poison the Video Games Industry

Unfortunately, we also have the typical social justice ideologues who are very frustrated with and want to bring Far Cry 5 down a peg or two simply because it doesn't 'sufficiently' or 'effectively' flesh out and 'call out' some preconceived mirror of current US politics according to their political view of the situation. They praise up and down almost everything about the game, but then give it a much lower or generally 'Mixed' review, or some such, clearly because of political reasons. Everyone is certainly entitled to their opinion, but let's not purport some pretense that you're actually reviewing a video game and not engaging in anything other than political activism. The running theme of some of these reviewers is that it either,

a) isn't political enough, or
b) has the 'wrong' politics, or
c) somehow, some combination of both 'a' and 'b'?

What in the hell were these people expecting from a Far Cry game? The whole situation reads as if, in their minds, Far Cry 5 was destined to be a fantastical place they could prance about, killin' armed cis-white-hetero christian Republicans/conservatives/libertarians (basically, anyone slightly right of hard-left), or, as they like to see it, "Nazis", with 'more incisive narrative (!) in the Age of Trump'. I know that last bit sounds a bit off-the-rails, but Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (a dystopian alternate reality where actual Nazis overtake America and it is implied that much of America welcomes them with open arms and parades) is essentially referenced as such in The Verge's review of Far Cry 5.

Oh, how wrong they were, and, no, they have not been happy about it.

From Wolfenstein II -- This is seemingly how SJWs view America, right now. So 'incisive'!

Here are some examples from the usual suspects...

At Polygon, after praising virtually everything else about the game, gives it a 6.5 out of 10, seemingly knocking off multiple points because it considers the story a missed opportunity -- to push a left-wing narrative, of course...

It’s a timely story that could at least try to address the polarized nature of current American politics, or talk about the issues inherent in a country that seems to worship firearms. But I never saw anything that hinted at how these cultists were radicalized. And their ultimate goal, revealed at the end of the game, undercuts any grand statement. 

...

The general absence of context in Far Cry 5 feels intentional, as if to smooth over any potentially controversial edges. You’re fighting against a conservative religious cult that has taken control of a big chunk of Montana, which made some conservative and Christian commentators uncomfortable during the game’s initial marketing. 

Those folks shouldn’t worry; any thematic point to be made about religion, the United States or the current state of the nation’s politics is quickly thrown aside to make way for all sorts of jokes and lighthearted hijinks — although you’ll also see a lot of crucifixions in your travels. It’s clear that this is a cult based on Christianity, but holy hell, is the game careful to dance around that fact. Ubisoft wanted the evocative art of these religious references for the marketing of Far Cry 5, but the game itself is too timid to do anything with them, let alone dig into their historical baggage. 

That was just a snippet, but almost the whole review reads like this. Remember, these are reviews for a Far Cry video game -- a franchise that, by the author's own admission, revels in 'action tourism'. And while the Polygon review sure is something, they are not to be outmatched...

Polygon: "Watch us make one of the most annoying, politically motivated 'reviews' of a game, yet!"
Motherboard: "Hold my beer."

In another 'video game review' titled, ‘Far Cry 5’ Accurately Captures the Total Collapse of American Society, the author states, "It's not that Ubisoft is doing anything new, it's just that our culture has devolved to the point that it often feels like a dumb, open world first-person shooter". He doesn't stop, there, neither. What happens if we increase the ideological lens prescription level to 'coke-bottle'? Let's find out! Here's a snippet...

That's what living in America feels like right now. Everything is falling apart and all you can do is get your kicks in where you can and hope whatever comes next doesn’t suck as bad as what came before. Protests turn violent and people get hurt. People walk into schools and shoot the place up. This has been normalized to the point that politicians advocate arming teachers and companies want to sell them bulletproof safe rooms. 

You want to see what this country looks like once every American is armed at all times and all that matters is one's personal gain? Play Far Cry 5.

Man, isn't that a bit... overdramatic? Apparently school shootings never happened under anyone other than Trump. Protests are turning violent, now, but not ever before. Everything is 'falling apart', even though, by almost every metric, American life, and increasingly so, global life, is better, now, than at any other point in human history, and continues getting better, regardless of who is president (in spite of whoever is President, I'd say). This is really how these ideologues view the world, right now -- as if we're living in some kind of 'conservative' or 'libertarian', dystopian, hellscape. What a sad way to perceive the world around you, as you whine and screech online about Trump being elected president, while being paid to write "video game journalism" from your MacBook Air, sucking down your Starbucks café latte enema. Ohhhh, the horror -- the oppression!

Not to be left off the rickety bandwagon for overdramatic, screeching ideologues, The Verge must now throw in their hot take, with their piece (of shit), titled, Far Cry 5 wasn’t a game for the Trump era, but it tried to be one anyway. The author says that "Far Cry 5 is a game crippled by its potential for social [justice warrior] relevance." -- with that last bit in brackets added by me, because, well, that's what he really wants. It goes on...

Much of Far Cry 5 feels less like a game about a modern world in crisis, and more like a stock conservative fantasy about the triumph of small-town America.

So he's mad because he perceives 'the good guys' as conservatives? Okay...

Austin Walker at Waypoint floated the notion that players in Far Cry 5 are “the agent of the broken status quo,” working for conservative conspiracy theorists and defending an hyper-individualist culture of personal bunkers against a collectivist threat. Walker quickly dismissed the idea, but it’s the most coherent interpretation of Far Cry 5 that I’ve seen — except that in this world the status quo isn’tsupposed to be broken, and the conspiracy theorists were right.

... and he's mad because he perceives 'the bad guys' as collectivists? Right, of course he is.

This is Far Cry 5’s approach to direct topical politics: awkwardly dropping buzzwords into characters’ mouths like a neural network trained on an infinite loop of Fox & Friends.

Ah, yes... no left-wing rant is complete without some reference to 'Fox News'. The virtue signaling is strong, with this one, but the art of 'flashing his good guy badge' leaves much to be desired.

Then you have the review that was just released by GQ, oh-so-click-baitedly titled, "Finally, a Video Game for Cowards". Uhhh, ohhhh-kay?

To be fair, the author actually reviews much of the game content, itself, fairly honestly and accurately. I'd even go so far as to say that much of his criticism about the story has merit. I think the story is 'good enough', and more interesting than most, but many of these critics actually have some valid qualms with the main story, due to inconsistencies and shallowness with a lot of unrealized potential in greater depth of characters as well as cult structure and more. The real issue with these people, though, is not with respect to some valid critique of the story -- tons of successful games, even set in America and often around controversial subjects, don't attract this kind of ideological and political attention. The difference is that this game not only implicitly and explicitly pushes on a wide swath of proximal triggers for certain ideologues and activists -- it does so in a time where Trump Derangement Syndrome has run rampant, with 'leftist' over-sensitivity and whining ramped up to 11. Referring back to the GQ article, the obsession with Trump as POTUS-45 and the political sensitivity is quite clear...

Far Cry 5 really wants you to believe it has something ballsy as hell to say. Its main narrative arc plays up the "Real Americans" of the heartland, the kind that pundits have eagerly invoked with regularity since Donald Trump was elected. It makes overtures towards religious fanaticism with the Eden's Gate cult, and makes explicit references to America's gun and prepper cultures. It wants you to think it's timely and relevant, but also fun. And that last part is the problem, because fun is where video games become cowardly. 

...  

There's a disingenuous both-sides-ism to just about every idea the game puts forth. 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. 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. It's Good Guys With Guns: The Game, and after a few hours, that the cult has any reasons for existing other than to shoot you dead quickly melts away.

Just as in earlier referenced reviews of the game, it's absolutely clear that what is irritating this guy, as so many others, is that Far Cry 5 has 'the wrong politics in the Age of Trump'. They're especially harping on it because Far Cry 5 has been hotly anticipated, and initial sales figures suggest that it's going to be very highly successful, as well (more on that, later). These people are still clearly reeling from his election and how it blindsided them, and they are still, a year and a half later, on some holy crusade to keep Trump from being 'normalized'. Anything in popular media even associated with Trump or those and the culture that supported his win, must not be encouraged or fed, lest it create some feedback loop of solidifying his obviously impossible victory and maybe even allowing more people to openly be okay with, or, Science forbid, actually support Trump. I'm not saying I believe this will happen in any significant way -- but this is the kind of stuff these kinds of propagandists believe that popular media such as video games, movies, shows, music, and more have the power to do. It's why they love to prop up, celebrate, and propagate celebrities and anything else in popular culture that pushes their political worldview, while trying real hard to punish anything contrary to that.

So let me speculate and judge, as I am wont to do, like the asshole that I am. These video game reviewers trying to insert so much political activism (particularly the likes of Polygon, Kotaku, Motherboard, et al) into the industry are likely failed "journalists" who either couldn't get a job in a 'serious' political magazine / website / newspaper / cable TV and still yearn for their world-changing political crusade. They've settled, but have convinced themselves that they can still do this from within the video games industry by 'doing their part' in dragging a game's metascore down (which they know publishers and developers value extremely highly) in order to influence its franchise going forward along with other big games in order to insidiously push certain political narratives. If they don't acquiesce, they'll get lower scores and thus lower sales and everything else that comes along with that. Part of this activism is also simply another expression of a power fantasy over their perceived political enemies.

So What Does the Data Actually Say?

Some have criticized the idea of even pointing to, or worse yet linking to, such reviews, thinking they shouldn't even be shared or have more attention brought to them, but I disagree. It's important to shine a light on this ideological activism and call it out as toxic. Further, I think it's important and useful to show evidence at any opportunity as to how full of shit and out of touch they really are.

As such, here are the sales numbers for this horribly evil, nothing-special game that, as they have flailed about to let you know time and time again, is not worth your money nor your time...

In its first week, Far Cry 5 has already sold an estimated 5 million copies with a 'Metacritic' rating of 75. Contrast this with Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, a game praised up-and-down by social justice ideologues for the 'incisive narrative' which painted the American population accepting their conquering Nazi overlords with open arms and holding parades in their honor, along with making numerous, cringey SJW jabs throughout. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus sold an estimated 319,000 copies in its first week, much to the lament of said ideologues in question -- and its 'Metacritic' score was 11 points higher at 86. Even better, compare the 'user reviews' between the two and you'll see quite a bit more salt in the Far Cry 5 ones with a much lower ratio of nastiness in the Wolfenstein II ones.

Of course, it's hard, even unlikely, to say that correlation equals causation, here. While I do think it's a factor, I actually highly doubt that SJWism is solely to blame for Wolfenstein II's failure. For what it's worth, I was one of those 319,000 who bought the game and really enjoyed the story, mocap, and voice acting, in spite of the eye-rolling SJW moments. There were a lot of really great scenes, interactive and otherwise, and I feel as if its metacritic score is mostly fair and deserved. The graphics were solid and gameplay was good, although movement and gunplay felt a bit too 'slidey' and the AI was cheap as hell. The lack of any co-op or multiplayer may have been a factor in its failure, but I doubt it, considering that the first entry in the reboot, Wolfenstein: The New Order, which also had no such multiplayer, sold over 1 million copies after its first week (make sure you add up all platforms) -- that's over 300% the sales of Wolfenstein II, and that was four years prior, and up against a much larger, highly anticipated and heavily marketed Watch Dogs release in the same week.

What we can say, however, is that it seems quite clear that pandering to social justice ideologues is a risk not worth taking, and that entirely abandoning expectations of inserting social justice narratives is either a winning formula for sales, or that it simply won't negatively affect a game's potential like the activists in these so-called 'video game reviews' are hoping it will. In this regard, pandering to social justice ideologues is a very risky venture and one not worth taking. As far as I'm concerned, this is a very positive development for the video games industry and, as such, the political situation going forward, with developers and publishers safely being able 'tune out' all of the screeching and just get back to making great video games. More and more people, even my fellow millenials, really don't seem to share as much of the same political view and oversensitivity as these video game "journalists" would like.

Hopefully, publishers and developers will take note. This ideological narrative in-and-of-itself is toxic enough, but even beyond that -- we don't want any political narratives, whether leftist, rightist, libertarian, or otherwise -- condescendingly preached down to us and oh-so transparently contrived and snuck in to our entertainment media.

Ultimately, it seems as if these people don't understand these games, and if not -- they should just stay away. A game is like a cake, and some games have more layers and flavors and complicated setups, while others are simpler, tried-and-true recipes. A game's story is the icing, but some cakes are so damned good and special on their own, they don't need much dedication towards icing (for me, the epitome of these are the Battlefield games). Better, deeper stories are a special kind of icing to top off a cake, but the game itself, considered holistically, is the cake -- and that's what we have all put the order in to eat, when it comes to Far Cry 5.

Here's to stopping political activists from trying to shit in our Far Cry 5 cake.