CULTS ARE REALLY, REALLY BAD, MKAY?!
The fact that that even needs to be said is troubling. There's not a "two sides" thing. There's not a "not portraying crazy cults accurately thing". Cults are bad. That's the message. I'd say this isn't seeing the forest for the trees, but you people are clearly dense as all get out.
But yes, Far Cry 5 decides to go a little left-handed monkey wrench for the first numbered entry in the series. If you recall, last time I played a Far Cry game, we'd gone back to the time of the caveman in Far Cry Primal and saw such primal joys as beating other cavemen to death with clubs, mastering the use of fire, and risking lawsuits from the legendary Marc Singer.
Before that, it was Far Cry 4, where we'd been whisked away to the mountains of Kyrat as Ajay Ghale and forced to decide the fate of the entire nation while also contemplating the Messiah archetype and seeing that (much like the Dune series pointed out - seriously, read it if you haven't) being the savior of the land is not always a good thing.
And before even that was Far Cry 3, my entry into the series. Trekking through the jungles of Rook Island, where Jason Brody had to decide just what kind of person he would be, losing his mind (and his soul) in the process.
All of these places had their own unique appearances and flavor that were clearly meant to be a far cry (pun intended) from what the players knew of. It wasn't meant to be a reflection of the world you saw outside your window, but exotic locales that hearken back to and homage the feeling of the old adventure serials of the 1930s.
So the next logical step is to go out into backwoods Montana.
...yeah, that's surely going to be waaaay out there for people.
Now, I know what you're thinking. "Hey, MadCap! Isn't it kind of unreasonable to expect a Canada-based division of a French company to come up with some creative ideas for locations! After all, they've done the Pacific Islands, twice, Africa, and part of Asia!" "Well," I would retort, "given the feel of every other game in the franchise - 1 and 2 included - that they have Europe, South America, and Australia to play around with before we need to jump into North America or, specifically, the United States."
Yes, sorry. Until North American sales are no longer a big part of the revenue, I'm gonna have to argue that that isn't really a far cry for almost anyone. Seriously, what's next? A game set entirely in the Mall of America? I wouldn't say any of this if 5 hadn't managed to double the first-week sales of 4, but I'm not here to argue about the sales figures, I'm here to talk about the game.
And a game that is set in America and features an incredibly right-wing antagonist group might just upset some people in the actual America following the election of a certain orange man with a bad hairpiece to our highest office. Y'know who that would upset? People who need to get the hell over it already. But yes, given the current political climate (at the time of this writing) in America, there were game journalists wanting it to be a denouncement of all right wing politics as animals to be put down, and right wing groups and individuals protesting it and putting up Change.org petitions to get the game outright cancelled or, at least, heavily modified.
So...you can imagine, Ubisoft had some eggshells to walk around here. Or not, because they rightly could have ignored all the yapping because of the main message of the game that I already described above: Cults are bad. And it is from here on that spoilers follow. You have been warned.
We journey to Hope County, Montana. It's a scenic place with forests, lakes, rivers, and hills...and the Eden's Gate cult, an apocalypse cult founded by one Joseph Seed. With some U.S. Marshals and Hope County Sheriff's Department members, you are the plucky young Deputy of questionable gender who is sent with a warrant to arrest Joseph. Here is where - spoiler alert, if you haven't played the game and want to, skip down a bit - you can get the only good ending in the game.
Yes, I'm dead serious. Much like Far Cry 4, if you wait long enough upon being given the prompt to handcuff Joseph, the Sheriff calls the whole thing off and you all go back, no harm no foul.
If you don't, then you're treated to a very, very gruesome scene where Joseph insists that God will not let you take him...and the cult climbs onto and starts throwing themselves into the blades of your helicopter, killing themselves and forcing you to crash. It seems that Seed has even taken control of the 911 dispatch, calming down the operator you've been speaking to and then telling you (with a look right to the camera) that nobody is coming to save you.
And then the cult sets the helicopter on fire.
It's really chilling, in all honesty, and follows the tradition set by 3 and 4 of having a very good establishing character moment for its villains. Joseph Seed is really quite terrifying, and stands alongside Vaas and Pagan Min proudly as a man who is coconut and banana sandwich crazy. The worst part about that, however, is that neither Vaas nor Pagan Min had an entourage of equally insane people working under them. They were mostly just nameless mooks, some of which got screwed really, really badly when they displeased their boss.
No, the People of Eden's Gate is a family business. The Father is helped out by his siblings - Jacob and John - and his "sister", Faith. They are all immensely as messed up as Joseph is...although John in particular might rival him in sheer nucking futs territory. They all have their own particular brand of crazy, of course. Jacob is the Worf of the cult...that is that he's the chief security officer for the cult and not a joke that was made significantly better in the spin-off. He's also voiced by Mark Pellegrino, who some of you might recognize as Lucifer from Supernatural and Rita's horrible ex-husband from Dexter. Kudos on a good casting choice!
Then you have Faith. She was taken in by the cult and brainwashed heavily, now a member of the "family" and being responsible for the production of the psychotropic drug called Bliss (because all Far Cry games require some excuse to have crazy hallucinations since at least 3). She has a tragic backstory even before joining the cult that is hinted at through writings and audio logs and the like. It's all very sad and what not, but I lose sympathy at the point where said person is trying to drug me up and/or terminate me with extreme prejudice.
It's rather like Kellogg in Fallout 4. Do your sob story and hand-wringing all you want, but don't try to cross me beforehand because it ruins the effect.
And then, we come to John, who I have saved for last. Why? Because he is easily the most insane of the bunch - possibly even more so than Joseph. The baptist (as in he baptizes people, not that he's loud, arrogant, and consistently claims to be a Christian while voting Republican) of the group, John waterboards people with extreme prejudice and is the practitioner of a little practice of the cult that involves carving sins into the flesh of a person in the form of words and then tearing them out when that sin is overcome.
That. Is. Messed. Up.
I know expecting sanity from a backwoods cult of clearly not alright people is, itself, insane...but Jesus.
While all the members of the Seed family could use a good shrink, I think John would be enough to make even Samuel Loomis retire in sheer shame...or be committed himself. While the entire cult insists they're doing this because they love and want to save everyone from the apocalypse to come, none of them seem to have the incredibly deranged, almost lustful want to do it that John does - particularly towards your character. John is particularly interested in making you say Yes (the cult's big motto is "Just say yes!") and goes to great lengths to make you do so.
Some characters even hint at the erotic undertones...and it's kind of hard to disagree.
As far as the plot goes, it's fairly standard for Far Cry at this point - enter a new area, take said area over and curbstomp anyone who gets in your way with increasingly awesome guns, explosives, and vehicles. Basically, in this case, you take the fictional Hope County back from the Eden's Gate cult. The only problem I have with the story, and in fact the entire game...is that, as I said above...there...is no good ending. Yes, you have the "do nothing" ending where you all get in the helicopter and GTFO, but that doesn't resolve anything. Eden's Gate is still gripping Hope County tight and not letting go.
So, you come to the ending choice. As with 3 and 4 it is not a moral choice system but a single choice that says which ending you'll get. I've seen some people complain about this, but I really don't know why because...that's been a thing since 3. This is not exactly some shocking revelation that nobody saw coming. What is something to complain about...is that there is no good ending.
Let me explain.
The choice involves whether or not to allow the Father to flee during the endgame. If you refuse and fight him...then Hope County gets nuked and you end up in a bunker with Joseph, who proclaims you his new family. I will say this is extremely over the top ridiculous even for a Far Cry game, and could very well be a hallucination caused by Bliss. That's a prevalent theory, though I question how Joseph could be seeing it as well...although shared hallucinations are apparently a thing. This ending could have saved itself by crossing over with Fallout and a last minute reveal that this was 2077...but sadly, no.
The other ending, called "Walk Away" involves you letting Joseph go. When you do, you head out with the rest of your group to get the National Guard...and then someone turns on the radio in your car, which plays a song you were brainwashed to earlier in the game (because yes, it's Far Cry, hallucinations and mind-breakage are par for the course) and the implication is that you kill off your team.
The problem with both these endings is...no matter what you do, there's no point. Evil wins. In 3 and 4, it felt like you did something. By killing Vaas and Hoyt in Far Cry 3, you were freeing Rook Island from a tyrannical band of mercenaries running a sex slavery operation. In 4, you were freeing Kyrat from an insane leader and trying to steer it towards something better...maybe. The choices were not necessarily good, but you had choices. Your actions meant something and gave the entire game more weight because of that. Your actions shaped the future.
With these two choices...it doesn't matter. Nothing that you do, over the course of the entire game, has any weight or consequences. And while I'm not asking for a good ending, per se, it says something that even the "bad" endings for 3 and 4 were a result of your choices. Jason Brody going insane and then dying horribly at the hands of Vaas' sister was a result of what you choose. Ajay Ghale either taking over Kyrat or seeing it fall into a drug money utopia or a closed off, intolerant of other religions totalitarian state was because of what you did.
Getting a nuke dropped on the town by no fault of your own, or getting triggered to kill everyone...are not a result of your choices. Unless, of course, I'm triggered to kill everyone and then drop a nuke, but Ubisoft didn't include that in as an option.
Far Cry 5's plot does have something to say - as I said before. Cults are bad. It touches on themes of religion, indoctrination, drug use, family, redemption, and the need of sane people to band together against crazy people, among others. People who say it has nothing to say aren't paying attention, simply put. It has a lot to say, namely all of it tying back into the fact that cults are bad. Or, that is to say, cults who do really, really messed up stuff like this.
Mechanically, not too much has changed from 3 and 4. You're stuck forever in first-person mode and have a tasty variety of weapons with which to turn the people of the cult into a fine, red paste. Like 3 and 4 you can hunt animals for their skins to sell as loot and, for the first time, you can even go fishing! And believe you me, it's just as fun as actual fishing!
That is to say...not at all.
One big change that I found to my dismay, Ubisoft seems to have done away with the "get shot in the head, better pull my thumb" meme. If you don't have a health kit...you're boned for healing unless you find somewhere to hide long enough for your health to recharge. I died several times before I figured out that that was, in fact, a thing.
You can also customize your character as either male or female, as well as get clothing options for...that are pretty much pointless since you rarely see yourself outside of changing outfits and when you slide along the ground enough to see your legs. So...thanks for that, I guess, Ubisoft?
And yes, now that I can no longer hide behind my in-depth plot analysis to avoid talking about the issue - you have a choice between a male and a female character, and you're a silent protagonist. Now I know some of you are thinking "Well, this much be a good thing that Madcap really likes!". You might be thinking "Maybe this is something that he will praise since he hated the Suddenly Voiced Protagonist of Fallout 4!". You might also be absolutely wrong.
If you've kept reading this long, hear me out on this - but making the protagonist silent was an immensely stupid move on Ubisoft's part. If you've kept reading this long, then you're probably tired of the comparisons to 3 and 4, but...in Far Cry 3 and 4, the stories were character-driven. You got to see the personality of both Jason Brody and Ajay Ghale throughout the stories. Both stories were built around those characters, which gave you an investment in the story.
You wanted to see them triumph, you felt bad when they failed, and you were horrified or exhilarated by events that transpired as they went through their character arcs. It made both games worth playing! It wasn't you, no, but there was good personality in both (Jason more than AJ, admittedly) and you really came to feel for both of them.
The Deputy? I have no idea who he/she is. I'm supposed to be able to project myself, sure, but that doesn't really work here. And I know someone will inevitably bring up the Fallout 4 comparison, but putting a voice in there would have been fine if Bethesda hadn't gutted most of the RPG elements. Fallout 3 and even more so Fallout: New Vegas had flavored dialogue that allowed you to approach a situation or a conversation from a variety of directions for a variety of results.
The reason that Fallout 4 doesn't work is that your options are reduced to "Yes", "Yes," "Sarcastic Yes", and "I Know You're Going To Put It In My Quest Log Anyway, So Fuck It, Yes". There isn't choice. There isn't variety. And the game suffers for that.
Far Cry 5, particularly when stacked against its two numerical predecessors, has the inverse of that. The Deputy...doesn't...say anything. You don't know anything about this character and while you have the "project yourself onto it", my instinct in this situation would be to hop the first plane the hell out of Hope County long before I get to the point of being in a crashed helicopter on fire.
Which, of course, you can't do.
The game even does things like have John insist that your sin is Wrath because you're following the game's narrative. Not because of anything you've actually done up to this point - besides, rather rationally, shooting at people who have been shooting at you - but you have no sense of the character that you're playing. If you're you, and you're not being an overly vengeful or destructive player, then this feels really out of place. Honestly, even if you are being overly vengeful or destructive...you know about you.
What's the Deputy's story? What brought him/her into working in law enforcement? What arc do they go through? Like I said concerning the plot, considering where it all goes, it really would help if we actually knew something about them. I can project myself onto my characters in Fallout: New Vegas because the dialogue choices help me develop a backstory and personality in my head. By the Deputy does nothing like that. He/she doesn't even speak.
You have to give me something here, Ubisoft.
So, to wrap things up - Far Cry 5 is not bad. Mechanically, it's a very fun shooting-driving-fishing simulator. And it is fun on that basis, so I can't really ding it for that. What I can ding it for is a plot that happens so independently of the player that they might as well not even be there at all, and giving us absolutely no reason to care about the fate of the player character. Those of you who have followed me for a while know that I will put story and substance before spectacle every time.
Far Cry 5 is, sadly, lacking.
Far Cry 5 is now available from Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Toronto, published by Ubisoft for Microsoft Windows, Playstation 4, and Xbox One.
For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.
By the way, in case the earlier mentions of it were not clue enough, allow me to reiterate one final time:
No, the People of Eden's Gate is a family business. The Father is helped out by his siblings - Jacob and John - and his "sister", Faith. They are all immensely as messed up as Joseph is...although John in particular might rival him in sheer nucking futs territory. They all have their own particular brand of crazy, of course. Jacob is the Worf of the cult...that is that he's the chief security officer for the cult and not a joke that was made significantly better in the spin-off. He's also voiced by Mark Pellegrino, who some of you might recognize as Lucifer from Supernatural and Rita's horrible ex-husband from Dexter. Kudos on a good casting choice!
Then you have Faith. She was taken in by the cult and brainwashed heavily, now a member of the "family" and being responsible for the production of the psychotropic drug called Bliss (because all Far Cry games require some excuse to have crazy hallucinations since at least 3). She has a tragic backstory even before joining the cult that is hinted at through writings and audio logs and the like. It's all very sad and what not, but I lose sympathy at the point where said person is trying to drug me up and/or terminate me with extreme prejudice.
It's rather like Kellogg in Fallout 4. Do your sob story and hand-wringing all you want, but don't try to cross me beforehand because it ruins the effect.
And then, we come to John, who I have saved for last. Why? Because he is easily the most insane of the bunch - possibly even more so than Joseph. The baptist (as in he baptizes people, not that he's loud, arrogant, and consistently claims to be a Christian while voting Republican) of the group, John waterboards people with extreme prejudice and is the practitioner of a little practice of the cult that involves carving sins into the flesh of a person in the form of words and then tearing them out when that sin is overcome.
That. Is. Messed. Up.
I know expecting sanity from a backwoods cult of clearly not alright people is, itself, insane...but Jesus.
While all the members of the Seed family could use a good shrink, I think John would be enough to make even Samuel Loomis retire in sheer shame...or be committed himself. While the entire cult insists they're doing this because they love and want to save everyone from the apocalypse to come, none of them seem to have the incredibly deranged, almost lustful want to do it that John does - particularly towards your character. John is particularly interested in making you say Yes (the cult's big motto is "Just say yes!") and goes to great lengths to make you do so.
Some characters even hint at the erotic undertones...and it's kind of hard to disagree.
As far as the plot goes, it's fairly standard for Far Cry at this point - enter a new area, take said area over and curbstomp anyone who gets in your way with increasingly awesome guns, explosives, and vehicles. Basically, in this case, you take the fictional Hope County back from the Eden's Gate cult. The only problem I have with the story, and in fact the entire game...is that, as I said above...there...is no good ending. Yes, you have the "do nothing" ending where you all get in the helicopter and GTFO, but that doesn't resolve anything. Eden's Gate is still gripping Hope County tight and not letting go.
So, you come to the ending choice. As with 3 and 4 it is not a moral choice system but a single choice that says which ending you'll get. I've seen some people complain about this, but I really don't know why because...that's been a thing since 3. This is not exactly some shocking revelation that nobody saw coming. What is something to complain about...is that there is no good ending.
Let me explain.
The choice involves whether or not to allow the Father to flee during the endgame. If you refuse and fight him...then Hope County gets nuked and you end up in a bunker with Joseph, who proclaims you his new family. I will say this is extremely over the top ridiculous even for a Far Cry game, and could very well be a hallucination caused by Bliss. That's a prevalent theory, though I question how Joseph could be seeing it as well...although shared hallucinations are apparently a thing. This ending could have saved itself by crossing over with Fallout and a last minute reveal that this was 2077...but sadly, no.
The other ending, called "Walk Away" involves you letting Joseph go. When you do, you head out with the rest of your group to get the National Guard...and then someone turns on the radio in your car, which plays a song you were brainwashed to earlier in the game (because yes, it's Far Cry, hallucinations and mind-breakage are par for the course) and the implication is that you kill off your team.
The problem with both these endings is...no matter what you do, there's no point. Evil wins. In 3 and 4, it felt like you did something. By killing Vaas and Hoyt in Far Cry 3, you were freeing Rook Island from a tyrannical band of mercenaries running a sex slavery operation. In 4, you were freeing Kyrat from an insane leader and trying to steer it towards something better...maybe. The choices were not necessarily good, but you had choices. Your actions meant something and gave the entire game more weight because of that. Your actions shaped the future.
With these two choices...it doesn't matter. Nothing that you do, over the course of the entire game, has any weight or consequences. And while I'm not asking for a good ending, per se, it says something that even the "bad" endings for 3 and 4 were a result of your choices. Jason Brody going insane and then dying horribly at the hands of Vaas' sister was a result of what you choose. Ajay Ghale either taking over Kyrat or seeing it fall into a drug money utopia or a closed off, intolerant of other religions totalitarian state was because of what you did.
Getting a nuke dropped on the town by no fault of your own, or getting triggered to kill everyone...are not a result of your choices. Unless, of course, I'm triggered to kill everyone and then drop a nuke, but Ubisoft didn't include that in as an option.
Far Cry 5's plot does have something to say - as I said before. Cults are bad. It touches on themes of religion, indoctrination, drug use, family, redemption, and the need of sane people to band together against crazy people, among others. People who say it has nothing to say aren't paying attention, simply put. It has a lot to say, namely all of it tying back into the fact that cults are bad. Or, that is to say, cults who do really, really messed up stuff like this.
Mechanically, not too much has changed from 3 and 4. You're stuck forever in first-person mode and have a tasty variety of weapons with which to turn the people of the cult into a fine, red paste. Like 3 and 4 you can hunt animals for their skins to sell as loot and, for the first time, you can even go fishing! And believe you me, it's just as fun as actual fishing!
That is to say...not at all.
One big change that I found to my dismay, Ubisoft seems to have done away with the "get shot in the head, better pull my thumb" meme. If you don't have a health kit...you're boned for healing unless you find somewhere to hide long enough for your health to recharge. I died several times before I figured out that that was, in fact, a thing.
You can also customize your character as either male or female, as well as get clothing options for...that are pretty much pointless since you rarely see yourself outside of changing outfits and when you slide along the ground enough to see your legs. So...thanks for that, I guess, Ubisoft?
And yes, now that I can no longer hide behind my in-depth plot analysis to avoid talking about the issue - you have a choice between a male and a female character, and you're a silent protagonist. Now I know some of you are thinking "Well, this much be a good thing that Madcap really likes!". You might be thinking "Maybe this is something that he will praise since he hated the Suddenly Voiced Protagonist of Fallout 4!". You might also be absolutely wrong.
If you've kept reading this long, hear me out on this - but making the protagonist silent was an immensely stupid move on Ubisoft's part. If you've kept reading this long, then you're probably tired of the comparisons to 3 and 4, but...in Far Cry 3 and 4, the stories were character-driven. You got to see the personality of both Jason Brody and Ajay Ghale throughout the stories. Both stories were built around those characters, which gave you an investment in the story.
You wanted to see them triumph, you felt bad when they failed, and you were horrified or exhilarated by events that transpired as they went through their character arcs. It made both games worth playing! It wasn't you, no, but there was good personality in both (Jason more than AJ, admittedly) and you really came to feel for both of them.
The Deputy? I have no idea who he/she is. I'm supposed to be able to project myself, sure, but that doesn't really work here. And I know someone will inevitably bring up the Fallout 4 comparison, but putting a voice in there would have been fine if Bethesda hadn't gutted most of the RPG elements. Fallout 3 and even more so Fallout: New Vegas had flavored dialogue that allowed you to approach a situation or a conversation from a variety of directions for a variety of results.
The reason that Fallout 4 doesn't work is that your options are reduced to "Yes", "Yes," "Sarcastic Yes", and "I Know You're Going To Put It In My Quest Log Anyway, So Fuck It, Yes". There isn't choice. There isn't variety. And the game suffers for that.
Far Cry 5, particularly when stacked against its two numerical predecessors, has the inverse of that. The Deputy...doesn't...say anything. You don't know anything about this character and while you have the "project yourself onto it", my instinct in this situation would be to hop the first plane the hell out of Hope County long before I get to the point of being in a crashed helicopter on fire.
Which, of course, you can't do.
The game even does things like have John insist that your sin is Wrath because you're following the game's narrative. Not because of anything you've actually done up to this point - besides, rather rationally, shooting at people who have been shooting at you - but you have no sense of the character that you're playing. If you're you, and you're not being an overly vengeful or destructive player, then this feels really out of place. Honestly, even if you are being overly vengeful or destructive...you know about you.
What's the Deputy's story? What brought him/her into working in law enforcement? What arc do they go through? Like I said concerning the plot, considering where it all goes, it really would help if we actually knew something about them. I can project myself onto my characters in Fallout: New Vegas because the dialogue choices help me develop a backstory and personality in my head. By the Deputy does nothing like that. He/she doesn't even speak.
You have to give me something here, Ubisoft.
So, to wrap things up - Far Cry 5 is not bad. Mechanically, it's a very fun shooting-driving-fishing simulator. And it is fun on that basis, so I can't really ding it for that. What I can ding it for is a plot that happens so independently of the player that they might as well not even be there at all, and giving us absolutely no reason to care about the fate of the player character. Those of you who have followed me for a while know that I will put story and substance before spectacle every time.
Far Cry 5 is, sadly, lacking.
Far Cry 5 is now available from Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Toronto, published by Ubisoft for Microsoft Windows, Playstation 4, and Xbox One.
For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.
By the way, in case the earlier mentions of it were not clue enough, allow me to reiterate one final time:
CULTS ARE REALLY, REALLY BAD, MKAY?!
No comments:
Post a Comment