So I platinumed Far Cry 5 and here are my thoughts. I have a lot to say so forgive the length. Please feel free to state your reasons for liking or disliking the game; I’d love to read some in-depth opinions or counter arguments.
IMO Far Cry 5 is a game you’ll either love or hate depending on how you approach the world. Structurally, I did all the main missions, outposts etc first and left all the character centric side missions until after the region was liberated. I never tackle open world games this way (I always do the smaller activities and side missions first) but in my Far Cry 5 head canon it felt right. Additionally, the idea that the junior deputy stays behind to help the residents even after the area has been liberated plays into my ‘heroic rookie’ roleplay. That said, I’m doing a NG+ playthrough on Infamous difficulty where I’m approaching the world how I normally would i.e. just doing whatever I come across and I have found that this approach has fundamentally altered the pacing of the game – and not in a good way.
First, the good: I remember back at launch hearing a lot of critics accusing Far Cry 5 of being "like any other Far Cry game" or dismissively groaning that it’s "like any other Ubisoft open world title" but that’s patently untrue. The removal of towers - which Jim Sterling mocked for being what he deemed to be a minor change - completely reinvents how players move through the world. There is far more emphasis on discovery which means the player actually has to go out and engage with the world now in order to uncover it - whether it’s reading road signs which detail fishing and hunting locations, or talking to residents to get intel on quest givers and other activities. You are encouraged to just get lost in Hope County as opposed to being guided from icon to icon like in traditional Far Cry games.
I frequently stumbled upon areas that were not telegraphed anywhere in the world so I would have missed them if curiosity hadn’t got the best of me. There were many instances where I came across underground bunkers or little cabins containing cash, perk magazines, hunting magazines, weapons and ammo that nothing could have pointed me to. I read every note and listened to every voicemail because they were often humorous, interesting or would foreshadow later events and characters. I remember walking into a doctor’s home and listening to a voicemail from a prominent character asking about experimental treatment for his pregnant wife in order to ensure she has a boy.Other times letters and voicemails would simply provide more insight into the culture of Hope County or a play-by-play of the cult’s daily methods for conversion. I never felt like the game ever tried to convince me any of this was important, it’s just something I took the time to do because I was that invested in the world of Hope County.
I also appreciate all the environmental storytelling that doesn’t necessarily tie directly into levelling or progression. Sometimes I would just happen across an area where there were markings in blood and dead bodies scattered everywhere and I would walk around just trying to piece together what happened before I showed up. One time I went into a bunker and found a dead body with a suicide note - and this wasn’t part of a quest; this was just something in the world. To summarise, I like how the game injects story telling and world building even off the beaten path and that it’s up to player whether he/she wants to seek it out.
The only anomaly here is how the discovery of specialists is done. For some reason you can learn about your followers just by looking in the roster tab, and their location is even marked on the map which is entirely unnecessary seeing as the residents eventually tell you about them anyway... Additionally, NPCs give you tips as to how to get by in Hope County but the game doesn't trust the player to pay attention to them - how many times do we need to be told that pelts can be sold for cash? I personally absorb information better when I learn from the actual game world rather than from a thousand hints on screen. These are minor quibbles though. Contrary to popular belief, Far Cry 5 does make a huge leap when it comes to not holding the player’s hand and I hope the devs continue in this direction.
Whilst I don’t agree with the lifestyle choices of even its sane residents, I totally buy that there was a real culture in Hope County before the cult showed up. All the characters are memorable and likeable. Watching Nick and Kim Rye debating whether they are going to let the cult drive them out of a house that’s been in Nick’s family for generations, and listening to Nick talk about wanting his son (daughter) to take over the company I realised I’m not just doing the Ubisoft open world routine of region to region boss clearing, I’m saving a town and its traditions.
I thought playing as a silent protagonist would be mistake but it totally works here, perhaps because the previous protagonists were so unlikeable. It was nice to play as a character that wasn’t selfishly motivated for once (I generally prefer playing as the good guy in games) and I felt like I was building my character simply by the choices I was making. At your base, you are a junior deputy trying to do your job but whether you go the extra mile or not to help the residents of Hope County defines how heroic you are. I liked the way the enemy NPCs recognised my character’s gender by saying things like, “babygirl!” and “Lady, we're gonna find you!” however, in some of the main missions, characters would start referring to my character as ‘him’ which basically proves this game was written with a male character in mind (and that the female version is merely a skin). Was kind of awkward at times.
I do appreciate the attention to detail in the questing. For instance, when you collect items that are part of a side mission the quest giver will acknowledge you’ve already found some. The fact that it’s even possible to collect them before meeting the quest giver and that collecting enough of these items actually triggers the mission to start is also very RPG-ish. On the subject of NPCs, I like their realistic reactions to your behaviour such as getting anxious when you point a gun at them or noting your rudeness when you leave mid conversation. However, because friendly NPCs do have that capacity to become displeased with your actions this comes with plenty of wonkiness.
I recall during the early jailhouse battle in Faith’s region I kept dying by deliberate friendly fire. At first I thought I was imagining it. When I saw the sheriff and Tracey running at me I assumed it was just bad A.I. pathing but then I noticed I kept being shot even though no enemies were nearby and none of the angels had guns. As an experiment I made sure to get myself into a death state and when I turned to face the sheriff he finished me off with a shotgun which confirmed he was definitely shooting at me! The only reason I could think of as to why that was is because I had probably unintentionally shot my allies and the game took that as me going rogue, so maybe in future a bit of leeway could be applied, especially in situations where you have to fight in tight spaces. I had to make sure I was taking on the angels at ground level while the Sheriff and Tracey took care of them on the roof just so they wouldn’t off me.
On the subject of the story, I’ve heard people say that it “doesn’t go far enough” with its political implications because it’s trying not to offend people and my response to that is…so what? It’s a very left leaning game and there are references to real world events but it’s clearly not intended to be anything more than just that - references. You can easily look at it as a totally isolated story about a crazy cult and their reign of terror over a little community. I think critics were projecting their politics on to an artistic product that never promised that in the first place. Oh, and I may be in the minority but I actually liked all the endings even though New Dawn totally spoiled the canonical one for me.
The three lieutenants and Joseph are all very entertaining to watch as they monologue about all the terrible things they’ve done and try to justify it as divine intervention. No, they’re not particularly three-dimensional but they’re charismatic enough that you never take your eyes off them when they’re on screen. This is the exact order I would recommend playing their regions:
1. John's Region (my favourite because of the characters and the climactic ending)
2. Jacob's Region (weakest, bland… the region is too hilly but a plane or a wingsuit will combat this. Some good moments, especially the end.)
3. Faith's Region (works best as the final region due to the twist at the end. Faith’s character is a mystery. She’s such a liar that I was reading any note about her I could find to get a sense of the person she was before she became “Faith”. It is a little annoying that her loading screen face model looks nothing like her actual in-game model, and the weird dancing and singing made me cringe but other than that I enjoyed her crazy.
I suspect most people will play 1. John, 2. Faith and 3. Jacob because of how the missions sort of navigate you down that path but ending on Jacob’s region would be a bummer IMO (meh).
I've seen a lot of complaints about the forced capture parties and, again, this is where player approach comes in. In my first playthrough I B-lined through the critical path, which does not fill up the resistance meter as quickly as just doing random activities so, to me, the forced captures felt infrequent. However, on my second playthrough where I’m doing… everything the forced kidnapping is incredibly intrusive. That said, as with my first playthrough, once I am actually in those forced missions I quite enjoy them. Faith’s kidnapping are just long cut scenes with very little input required from the player. The second one in John’s region is disturbing but compelling, and I thought Jacob’s trials would annoy me but they’re very quick to do, plus the final one has a good conclusion, as mentioned earlier. IMO the forced kidnapping feature is not in itself the problem. It’s the way they’re done that’s problematic. For instance, the game warns you when a capture party is coming but... why? There’s no point travelling to another region to prepare weapons and ammo because most of the kidnapping missions (barring John’s first one) don’t enable you to use your weapons so rather than prolonging the capture why not just instantly trigger the cut scene? I think if it weren’t for the pretence that the player could get away it would be less irritating. In fact, Jacob's boss fight actually requires you to use your own weapons but the problem is you’re launched into it immediately after the final trial so there’s no time to prepare... Luckily, I had excellent gear at the time (including my .50 cal which took him out in two hits) but others would not be so fortunate.
I get what the devs were going for – the idea that you’re powerless to do anything against this larger- than-life cult but in gameplay terms it doesn’t work. Thematically, it’s unnecessary because I feel like the world does a great job of making the player feel oppressed by the cult anyway to the point that I would say it’s almost mandatory to adopt a stealth focused playstyle until the first region is liberated. When I first started applying perks, upgrading health was on my low priority list because the way I saw it getting into open combat was simply not sensible in the first instance. That said, I played on Hard difficulty where enemies can kill you in 2 or 3 hits.
I’ve seen some say that the game doesn’t really encourage a stealth playthrough but for the most part I totally disagree. This is the best stealth of any of the Far Cry games I’ve played so far. Sure, you can absolutely play it like Just Cause and just go around endlessly blowing stuff up but there is more choice for different playstyles than ever. For one, unlike Far Cry 4 you can actually take down heavily armoured enemies from the start without having to purchase a skill to do it and the insane enemy spawning (more on that later) is offset by the fact that there are more stealth opportunities than ever. You can move through virtually all bushes and seeing as Montana is just trees there is plenty of cover so long as you stay off the road. I never grew impatient crouch running through the world because often there was always something interesting to discover on the way to my objective.
I like the fact that enemies call for reinforcements if they find enough dead bodies, even if technically you're undetected. This means you either have to move quickly to clear an area before any bodies are found or just make sure you move the body out of sight. It’s refreshing that throwing a rock to distract an enemy more than once causes the NPC to shout, “that can’t be coincidence. Look around!” so that you don’t end up with this goofy, ‘ooh, a piece of candy’ routine. Also, if you snipe and miss a shot while enemies are already looking for you they will eventually track where the bullet is coming from resulting in detection. So yeah, stealth is less forgiving and there are forced combat scenarios but it’s certainly viable for most of the game.
In fact, the only issue with stealth is that as I became more powerful it became less necessary and dynamic. Early game, I found myself using different loadouts for different missions because initially weapon space is restricted and it took me a while before I could hold more. However, as I acquired more weapons, better ammo and more health getting caught started to not matter as I just two-shotted or one-shotted everything in sight. Also, the bow was my favourite weapon initially when I played primarily as a stealth archer (I never play as an archer in games so that’s a testament to just how good it felt). Initially, it’s silent and deadly but as you encounter stronger enemies it becomes less appropriate to use and the .50 cal sniper rifle became my weapon of choice. The problem is the .50 cal is so OP, almost game breaking, that I stopped going into the outposts altogether and would just snipe everyone before they even realised anyone was down.
Speaking of outposts, they used to be the pillar of the series for a lot of people but I personally found them to be overkill and world smothering. Now they're just “kind of there” and this is a much appreciated changed. You don’t have to do them to free up the world any more as there are plenty of other activities that will achieve this. They don’t feel copied and pasted either; each one is unique in terms of their real world functions (e.g. one can be a petrol station, another could be a food bar etc) with good level design.
Another pleasant change is that the hunt/craft system is gone. I’ve always hated it because the animal spawning was quite blatantly gated by story progression so that the player didn’t out-level the game too quickly. Hunting is now purely a means to get more cash so it’s entirely optional. Animal spawning is consistent now and the damage each animal takes is more realistic i.e. an arrow to a small animal’s head kills it instantly. Inventory space crafting, however, is gone in favour of the perks system which may feel more “video gamey” but the way you go about getting the perks is very organic. The corresponding challenges, for instance, are all things I naturally did within the world anyway so I ended up ticking off most of the boxes without even realising. Unlike the previous hunt/craft system, I never felt like the game was throttling my progression with the perk system either. I could be as powerful or as weak as I wanted to based on how much I was willing to do before taking on the cult. The fact that you can also acquire perks through “prepper stashes” or simply finding magazines a la Fallout was also incredibly generous. The prepper stashes, by the way, are almost too good to be true. Fun little environmental puzzles that also award up to thousands of dollars in cash, plus perk point magazines and ammo? Get out of here.
That said, as generous as the prepper stash and the animal skins are it’s still not enough to combat the game’s disgusting and predatory economy. Yes, I expect guns and cars to be expensive but $1000 for a pair of basic jeans is utterly ridiculous. Of course there’s a “good” reason for such stupid prices and that’s because of the game’s rampant microtransactions and holy cow are they obnoxious!!! The weapons that can be bought with silver bars – the game’s premium currency - are prioritised in the menu so they are always the first bloody things you see. Oh, and it completely insults the player’s intelligence by enabling us to find silver bars in the world, a bit like how the Oikos of Olympos in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey wants to fool players into thinking that with a lucky roll they stand even half a chance of getting the full Spartan Renegade outfit.
The good news is that some weapons can be found in the world and once you find them they don’t have to be purchased but if you want the best weapons you’re going to be waiting a long time unless you grind out the prepper stashes and murder the wildlife like there’s no tomorrow. What’s worse is that the store loads really slowly as a result so I had to turn my PS4 network off when I wasn’t playing Arcade. There's also too many adverts for future content and other Ubisoft games. As if the pause menu wasn’t enough, there are cosmetic items that you can’t purchase unless you own other Ubisoft games.
Anyway, moving on. I have to commend the addition of Guns-For-Hire. It’s not exactly an original concept, no, but it significantly changes how you take on missions and thus makes the game super replayable. For instance, there were two side missions involving planes that I couldn’t be bothered to do myself the first time so I just ordered Nick and Adelaide to do it. The fact that that’s even an option (no matter how game breaking lol) reminds me of the crazy mechanics in Metal Gear Solid V.
The best specialists IMO are Peaches and Nick Rye. Peaches is great in both stealth and open combat and she takes huge amounts of damage. I petted her any time I could because she was so adorable. Nick Rye does major damage, rarely can be killed, only engages when you’re caught and he'll take care of the nasty plane problem the game gives you whenever you’ve liberated the region too much. He also very rarely natters (more on that later). Hurk and Cheeseburger are great too if you want to go in guns blazing. All the specialists are very unique and the missions where you first encounter them are some of the best in the game. For instance, Cheeseburger is called Cheeseburger because it’s his favourite meal even though technically he’s not allowed to have it because he has diabetes. He’s also a bit of a local celebrity. That, of course, is completely irrelevant detail in gameplay terms but in terms of world building it makes Cheeseburger feel like a real character and one that I felt compelled to protect.
I like the fact that when you dismiss your human companion they don’t just despawn, you actually see them driving away in whatever vehicle they have managed to acquire. Fun fact: the human specialists all hang out at the 8 Bit Pizza Bar so if you’re curious as to where they all go when they’re not working, it’s there.) It’s also pretty cool that if I order two quad bikes one of the specialists will sit behind me while the other will get on the second bike and follow behind. Pro tip: if you dismiss specialist while simultaneously getting another during open combat the dismissed one will stay behind to clear an area before leaving, essentially granting you 3 companions fighting at a time rather than 2.
That said, as much as I like the Guns-For-Hire mechanic and I understand this is fairly new territory for the series…it needs a lot of work in terms of tempering their aggression towards enemy NPCs. The biggest issue is that the specialists don't mirror your behaviour and I feel like I constantly have to babysit them. Jess has a really beautiful and tragic back-story but wow is she a liability! She is the so-called stealthy one but she, more than any other companion, gets caught the most because whenever she sees an enemy she starts screaming at them like a lunatic. She doesn’t take much damage either and becomes more of a burden as you continuously revive her. It gets to the point where every time I see an enemy NPC I have to order my specialist to go somewhere that the enemy won’t cross their line of sight just so that they won’t be tempted to open fire. That’s a problem. The default state for all human specialists should be stealth and they should be auto following nut-to-butt unless the player orders them otherwise. I shouldn’t have to keep telling them to follow me every 5 seconds because they get distracted by everything they see.
The other problem is the game feels like the characters need to be talking ALL THE TIME. Grace is the worst for this. At least Hurk actually has humours banter. I really don't need to hear Grace say, “on the move”, “not a good position, gonna find a better spot” every five seconds. It’s SO annoying. I do enjoy each specialists unique interactions with one another and their various commentaries on events but when they’re alerting me of enemies ahead in a game that always has enemies ahead I get bad Barnabas on the Adrestia flashbacks (those who have played AC Odyssey know what I’m talking about). The only specialists I travel with now are the animals and Nick and Hurk and then I just switch to the appropriate specialist when I reach my target location.
This is a symptom of a much bigger problem with Far Cry 5 in that the game feels like it needs to have something happening on screen all the time whether it’s visual or audio. It’s trying way too hard to create memorable and unique moments for each player and it comes across as incredibly forced.
The enemy spawn rate, for instance, needs a serious decaf. It’s way too much. People have chosen this instalment to complain about it for some strange reason but it’s always been like that in the series. For me, it’s particularly egregious in Far Cry 5 because, unlike all the previous games, Hope County is a world that is built to be uncovered via exploration so constantly being interrupted as you’re discovering stuff is almost game breaking. It makes me laugh that there’s even an enemy who can call for reinforcements because his job is redundant given how crazy the spawn rate is. You could be trying to have a conversation with a mission giver and just completing that conversation becomes a mission in itself as you are constantly interrupted by so-called random occurrences – which are not random at all but happening purely because the player is there.
Typically, my interaction with an NPC is as follows: I approach an NPC and then a cougar attacks her. I fight off the cougar and attempt to talk to the NPC again and then a skunk spawns and start’ spraying everyone. However, rather than acting like how a rational human being would when they see a skunk the other NPCs start throwing grenades at it which sends the NPC I’m trying to talk to running down the street in a panic. As I’m running after her suddenly a cultist pulls up behind me on a quad bike so I have to shoot him and his buddy but oh nos a black bear has spawned from the woods and mauls him and his friend to death oh goodie so now I can kill it and take its pelts but – despite there being a skill to stop predatory animals running away – the bear runs away so I try to catch it but oh look an enemy plane has spawned in the sky and is raining death from above so I have to call Nick to bring it down and it just goes on and on and on and on and on and on. It almost feels broken but it’s not, it’s a totally deliberate gameplay design and I just don’t understand why the devs think anyone would enjoy this.
What’s odd is the more you free the region the more chaotic and hostile it becomes right up until you liberate it as the cult attempts to push back against your actions. Once you liberate the area it becomes so subdued that trophy hunting is prolonged because there are virtually no enemies. So basically you go from one extreme to another.
And as good as the music and sound design is there is too much sound. Between the radio, the television, the various NPCs talking over one another, the quest givers calling you over repeatedly, the voicemails you’re trying to listen to... It’s a mess. Oh, and the guy who keeps begging me to play Arcade mode can go to hell (which I certainly hope he does every time I shoot him in the head).
Now, once again, this is where player choice comes in because if you’re going down the Just Cause route you’ll notice it even more as the enemy patrols spiral out of control and fire fights refuse to end as enemies come in waves and waves and waves without any calling of reinforcements. Stealth players will find this less annoying because evading enemies is all part of the fun and if you’re rarely caught like I was you don’t end up in endless firefights. That said, even a stealth focused player would struggle to have a conversation with an NPC without some wolverine spawning and resetting the entire dialogue.
Quality of life niggles:
- Why do I have to equip a weapon first to customise it? Sometimes l want to put attachments on a weapon that I’ll need for later.
- Why isn’t there a toggle to automatically compare weapon stats?
- The map should be on the touch pad and the other menu tabs should be on the options button. No excuses. There were many times when I wanted to just pull up the map but had to scroll through all the tabs first just to get to it and it became cumbersome. World map should never require more than a single button in a game. It’s 2019.
- Why oh why is the ‘loot’ button the same as the ‘take’ button? The amount of times I ended up picking up a weapon rather than looting. It got to the point where I stopped looting altogether because it was so annoying.
- Why can’t I pause cut scenes in 2019?
- Why do “you’re leaving the missions area” prompts still exist in 2019?
- Why oh why are auto fails still a thing in 2019? An example: there was a mission where I had to set up an ambush for a patrol but I didn’t want to do that… I wanted to do a car chase, as that’s more fun. However, I had no car so I would have needed to fast travel to get one. Thinking I could do this I let the target get away but and the mission auto failed… why couldn’t they have just made it so that you have to relocate the patrol and track them down that way? What’s even worse is that there are other missions that have fail states without auto fails. For instance, I had to lure a guy to location and kill him but Grace got knocked out and while I was reviving her the target got away. So I had to track him down in his hideout. Inconsistent.
- Why does the game unequipped melee weapons, change your primary and secondary weapons and specialist assignment wheel upon fast travel?
- It would be nice to have like a little diary of the hard fishing spots on your person so you can pull it out when necessary, rather than having to run back to the base of operations in each region to see what fish you need to get and how many pounds...
- Where’s the no map filter? The map is huge and has so many icons. To not have a filter seems like a huge oversight.
The end on a positive note, the graphics are stunning. Even someone spoiled by Red Dead Redemption 2 (which is, graphically, the best looking open world game on console) can appreciate the level of detail here. The cut scenes are incredibly cinematic, especially the opening to the game. The voice acting and motion capture are top notch.
The presentation is also very inventive from the way your map makes that woosh sound every time you move the cursor over it or the loading screen that features a photo realistic picture of the corresponding region boss with their quotes and biblical references underneath. Speaking of the loading screen, the tips actually correspond to activities you’ve just done which is great. For instance, early game I got randomly two shotted by a moose while sneaking through the woods and the loading tip said I should increase health when traversing because wild animals are roaming about. I can’t stand loading screens that give completely repetitive, obvious or irrelevant tips for the mere sake of passing the time so kudos to Ubisoft.
And as much as I’ve complained about the sound getting chaotic at times, I do have to stress again that the music is soooooo good. Love the idea that the cult has its own playlist (and that each song contains a weird little choir version of it). On top of that there’s plenty of recognisable pop tunes on the radio to enjoy when I’m driving. Even the Arcade multiplayer music is awesome.
I’ve also experienced very few bugs post patch cycle. There are some continuity errors like the incorrect gendered dialogue as previously mentioned, and on my first playthrough Nick kept prematurely celebrating the death of a character that hadn’t died yet… Also, in co-op NPCs do the upright crucifix pose upon death (which actually is kind of fitting considering the narrative of the game lol). Other than that the game is well optimised - frame rate, stability and draw distance is silky smooth with very little pop in. There were some occasions where fast travel wouldn’t actually fast travel i.e. after loading I’d still be in the same place but this was quite rare.
Anyway, to wrap up, I guess ultimately what I’m trying to say is that Far Cry 5 gives the player a lot of ways to approach its world but only certain choices won’t punish the player and that’s why I think this game is so divisive. Depending on how you play it, it’s either a great game or an incredibly frustrating one and I believe that going forward the devs will be very mindful that they are not giving the player choices only to unwittingly crucify them for the "wrong" ones. For me, the good far outweighs the bad, even on my second, more chaotic playthrough. The world building, characters, story and mechanics more than make up for the broken enemy spawn rate. There’s just too much good stuff here that it would be a shame to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I’m excited to see where the series goes from here and I’m very much looking forward to playing New Dawn.![]()
I jumped back and forth between all the area's not just one at a time until it concluded.. Faith being a witch I could not help making sure I always took her out first!LOL
Loved the whole game except for the forced captures and the points totaling up too fast.. that made me NOT rescue anyone if I did not have to..
I don;t know what else you wrote about as I was not in the mood to read a book about a 2 year old game![]()
No worries, thanks for stopping by and offering your thoughts.Originally Posted by crunc01 Go to original post
btw I'm thinking of getting the DLCs, have you played them? Are they any good?