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Far Cry 5 Dives into Familiar Subject Matters in Big Sky Country

Far Cry 5 Dives into Familiar Subject Matters in Big Sky Country

Hold on to your butts, players. Art is about to imitate real life and slap a big ol’ “F*ck You!” to a certain type of people here in the U.S. Hint: It rhymes with “schmerlitia.” Ubisoft announced Far Cry 5, taking gamers out from exotic locales from the previous games and into the United States. Specifically somewhere in Montana. While the setting is different this time around, the game will feature the same personal story choices with no good consequences. You can take a look at the announcement trailer below.

In Far Cry 5, you play a sheriff’s deputy who gets caught up in a war between US Marshal Service and Hope County’s resident cult leader, Joseph. Joseph is a man with radical beliefs. He thinks he has been chosen (by God) to protect his followers from a government collapse quickly followed by the end of days, which he thinks are all coming very soon. Do you see where this is going yet?

You also have to face off against Joseph’s brothers and half-sister, Jacob, John, and Faith. Joining you in the fight are potential allies such as Pastor Jerome, whose church was shot to hell by Joseph’s group; Mary May, who seeks revenge on the cult after her father was killed; and Nick Rye, a pilot and soon-to-be-dad whose father and grandfather fought for the U.S. in the military.

The very first thing that came to mind upon hearing about Far Cry 5 was the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge takeover in Oregon in 2016. When I typed “Montana militia” into Google, I found that this isn’t even a new thing for the state known as Big Sky Country. Its most prominent groups in the past were the Militia of Montana and the Montana Freemen.

“It’s not a story that’s supposed to teach you about something specific about politics,” creative director Dan Hay told IGN. “I think that it’s strong enough and it stands on its own that when you go in and you play it, and you have the experience of somebody who’s just echoing the sentiment that right now, the world is a little bit off.”

According to Mercury News, Hay said the concept for Far Cry 5 came from the anxiety he used to feel as a boy during the Cold War in the 1980s. “I was 10 in 1982 and I remember a specific feeling back then …,” he said, “a feeling in the pit of my stomach like we were going over the edge.”

Those anxieties went away when the Cold War officially ended in 1991, but then three things happened in fairly quick succession to bring those feelings back to the surface: the housing market bubble, Brexit, and the aforementioned takeover of federal land in Oregon. These were the biggest influences that eventually brought Hay to play with the idea of militias, cults…and Montana.

The above named groups, as well as Joseph’s group in Far Cry 5, carry a heavy “us versus them” mentality with Americans shooting at other Americans in defiance or defense of the U.S. government. No doubt this will draw some outrage from Fox News pundits, and most likely Trump. Shall we start a BINGO board of words and phrases they’re most likely to say? I’ll get us started: Hateful liberal media agenda, snowflakes, ISIS’ secret recruiting game… The center of the BINGO card will be the inevitable use of gameplay footage and passing it off as actual events.

When Hay was asked if he was worried about the game being politicized for its “us versus them” mentality:

The key for us is to make sure that when we build our world, we populate it with characters that have their own views, and those views compete. You go out into the world, and even when you think about the conversation between [two characters in the beginning of the game]…you’re listening to this and you’re like ‘Who’s right? Who is the person you should follow in this? Who’s right?’ And the answer is, It’s not clear. [IGN’s Ed. note: We don’t know yet if you’ll be able to make these kinds of moral decisions during the course of the game.] The world is sometimes messy and sometimes bumpy and filled with opinions. And if we do it right, we will build a world that has the same thing.

No doubt we’ll hear more about actual gameplay the closer we get to E3 2017. Controversy aside, this looks like it will be a decent game. Let us know what you think in the comments below!

Far Cry 5 is available for preorder at Amazon and other retailers.

Source: IGN

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Christina E. Janke

Christina is the co-host of “Intro to Geek” on Shauncastic and Editor-in-Chief at Agents of Geek. Her love of all things Mass Effect knows no bounds. She also carries an obsession with comic books, video games, and quirky television shows. Her heroes are Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Gail Simone. She hopes to be just like them when she grows up.