Far Cry 5: Rednecks, Sectarianism and unbridled fun

It just so happens that the game section of the RockThisTown website is mainly represented by combat classics, “turkeys” and hidden diamonds of the past. Can the mainstream, with its terrible optimization, stagnation of gameplay, and other agenda, provide anything good at all? Well, as it turned out, it can. Today I will tell you about a part of the famous seven-year-old series, which is quite fresh by our standards, filled to the brim with the atmosphere of rural America, country rock and other similar fun. It’s about Far Cry 5.

You’ve probably heard about this series of games, and most likely something is not very good. Gaming journalism is still a swamp in every sense. While film journalism has long been divided into yellowishness about the personal lives of actors, mixed with advertising and serious publications about cinematography, game stories are cooked in a single pot. Thus, anyone who absorbs content about video games forms an opinion significantly in advance or completely replacing the games themselves. It’s faster, cheaper and there are no problems with the device.

But the taste formed by such a swamp is truly frightening in its absurdity. For example, it is customary to dislike modern games from Ubisoft a priori. It’s not that there’s nothing to scold them for, but it’s somehow unfair not to pay attention solely to the downsides. Yes, we can agree that starting from the third part inclusive, the setting of the Far Cry series is mainly changing. But what if the setting is exactly what interests you the most?

Rednecks vs Saints

Welcome to Hope County, Montana. This picturesque corner of the American land was unceremoniously captured by the totalitarian apocalyptic cult “Gates of Eden”, led by Joseph Seed (in the Russian localization, Joseph suddenly became Joseph), a cross between Charles Manson and Jared Leto. Belatedly, the federal government drew attention to this case, which sent a whole federal marshal to the crowd of fanatics in the company of the local sheriff and his unnamed assistant, you. By that time, the fanatics had already acquired aviation and artillery, so one official piece of paper (the main weapon of the federal marshal) could not defeat them. After the unsuccessful capture of the sect’s leader and a rambo-like escape from his personal army, we find ourselves in a mysterious resistance bunker. The game starts from this moment. We need to defeat Joseph’s entourage, each of whom controls a section of Hope County and get to him, simultaneously destroying his followers, returning freedom and democracy to the land of freedom and democracy.

You can do this either alone, cosplaying not even John Rambo, but rather Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character from the movie “Commando”, or in the company of many assistants. These can be unique game characters like pilot Nick Rai or pet cougar Peach (the latter is my favorite), unnamed digital volunteers or your real friends. The key difference from the previous parts is the possibility of a cooperative passage of the whole gang. The opportunity is not intrusive. Playing alone is no worse.

Do you know what madness is?

If you do not take a direct comparison with other games in the series (which I will not do, because, unlike most igrojours, before that I only played the very first part during its period of relevance), then the closest comparison will be with the GTA series. And even with GTA Online, if you evict all the inadequate players from there. It’s an amusement park with a lot of content and characteristic madness. As far as I understand, madness is an innovation of this 5th part. The fact is that during certain tasks, the world doesn’t revolve around him and anything can happen.

For example, you decided to use stealth to clear out a sectarian outpost, but as you were approaching it through the woods, you came across an aggressive skunk that would chase you. Subsequently, instead of tactical sabotage, a smelly sabotage may turn out, where you and the fanatics will try to hoe the black-and-white fiend of hell. Everything will go as wrong as possible, but it will be a lot of fun, genre-shifting from a cool brainless action movie to an even more brainless action comedy. Or here’s how to make an even more absurd quest with the extraction of beef eggs to cook the signature dish of a local chef? The bulls need to be shot during mating, but everything will become even more fun when a probe team of sectarians who flew into your soul in a blue helicopter enters the circus arena to aggressive animals.

All these delusional situations are good precisely because they are unplanned. I am more than sure that at the testing stage, after seeing how artificial idiots make a farce, the developers deliberately did not make them smarter, giving us a lot of hours of fun with a capital B. To aggravate the feeling of the luna park, the leveling in the game is done in such a way that encourages the player to try different approaches to fun. Because it was made through achievements, and it will not be possible to sit in one role-playing build, as it is done in more serious shooters. Yes, you’ve learned how to shoot arrows perfectly, but now it’s time to burn your opponents with a flamethrower! What about close combat? Take a combat shovel and there will be no peaceful solution, because you really need leveling points.

And of course, transportation. Cars, ATVs, boats, planes, helicopters – there are a lot of them, and, as in the series about the great racing driver, all this can be changed like gloves. Driving here is extremely pleasant and comfortable, which is not so easy to do with a first-person view. Plus, there’s a kind of cruise control if you want to focus on shooting.

But the coolest thing is the unique vehicles. How about custom oil cars from a famous stuntman, whose exploits you will have to repeat in separate tasks? Remember that the world still doesn’t lock up while you jump through rings of fire. Well, quite wild things, like a tractor with twin machine guns on the hood, inscribed in the main plot.

DLCs finally bring the degree of unbridled inadequacy into the stratosphere. The Rednecks here are no longer against the saints, but against the Viet Cong, zombies and Martians. And the most amazing thing is that it fits seamlessly into the narrative. For example, a trip to Mars will be on behalf of the aforementioned Nick Rai, who had the misfortune to stumble upon a flying saucer during one of his car trips. The Arcade mode also fits well into the narrative – sets of individual custom maps that are not related to the main game, but more often resemble one of the spinoffs of the series in the setting: the neon-eighties Blood Dragon. In the world of the main game, the game is played on arcade machines, which are generously scattered across different locations.

War zone vacation

We’ve figured out that it’s all very funny and Hollywood-like silly. But what’s the point of remembering this particular big-budget piece of gum among a bunch of similar ones? It’s all about the setting, because it’s really unique here. The fact is that rural and one-story America is usually presented in two equally unsightly guises. This is either a bawdy caricature, as in the wonderful classic Redneck Rampage, or outright propaganda of the land of the free and brave. There is almost never a golden mean. But it was here, through the eyes and hands of French developers, that it was achieved.

Hope County is a country of forest and mountain expanses bathed in the gentle sun. The rivers are teeming with fish that are just begging for a hook. And there will be someone to go fishing with! After all, locals love the simple joys of life most of all, such as hunting, fishing and drinking homemade beer while listening to rockabilly on the radio. They drive pickup trucks, and choose a career path from the professions of a farmer or a trucker. This is a kind of complementary cranberry to the stereotypical voters of the Republican Party. With a lot of irony, but still with a lot of love.

Funnily enough, in the year the game was released, some very politicized guys decided that moving the actions of the new part of the game from the third world countries, where no one felt sorry for anyone, to the very center of the first world was an unequivocal prophecy for the first term of Donald Trump. The prophecy is naturally ominous, given the bleak ending of the game, and indeed everything that happens in it. Whether these comrades understood that rural America is as far away from developers as the tropics or Africa is a rhetorical question.

Far Cry 5 Soundtrack

Well, to finish off the statement of how much this game appeals to the readers of our magazine, let’s take a look at the soundtrack. First, the original one, written by composer Dan Romer. Drawling violins and banjos in this kind of blockbuster reinvention work great for immersing yourself in a generally very dramatic plot that can hide behind the fun gameplay.

But much more interesting is the music from the radio, which you can turn on in the car and hear from the boomboxes of ammunition dealers. Who’s not here? Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Black Keys, T.Rex, Etta James and The Platters. There’s even Reverend Horton Heath! All this garage rock, blues retro mash-up finally makes you feel at home. It is also worth noting the songs that Dan Romer co-wrote with various musicians specifically for sectarian radio. All of this is available in the playlist below.

In general, there is a lot more soundtrack in the game, including the original one, but you will have to familiarize yourself with it yourself.

I won’t say anything about the visual. Technically, this is a great modern game that runs quite decently on builds from a decade ago.

As a result, we get the perfect evening entertainment when you need to relax your head and heart. A lot of content, fully justifying the size of under a hundred gigabytes, will take 200 hours of not the slowest passage. It’s possible that Far Cry 5 will become one of your favorite games for a very long time. Don’t listen too much to gamblers and other loafers. Welcome to Hope County!