Far Cry 5: Montana never looked so good.

With Far Cry 5, the core idea is a single bad-ass (the player) coming from nowhere to tackle some opposing force or impending doom, coupled with wild unpredictable surroundings. Well, that’s Far Cry 5, review done.

No, really… While that is the core of this game (and all Far Cry games for that matter), there is so much more.  You’ll encounter different types of missions and conflicts that you can approach in a variety of ways; from going in “sun’s out guns out” or complete stealth picking off goons from the shadows to calling in support from an array of obtainable help. You’ll attempt to tame the wild, natural environment and all the while it is trying to subdue you.

Build up a guerrilla resistance by freeing the citizens of Hope County who have been abducted by the doomsday cult ‘Project at Eden’s Gate’ — or ‘Peggys’ as the locals call them. For Far Cry 5 the series has been majorly refined; a choice that benefits the title positively. These changes make exploring a rural Montana environment and taking on the violence and political setting a more engaging experience.

Not to mention the absolutely stunning look and feel of it all; it’s definitely a game you can walk around in and explore, fish, hunt, or just enjoy the scenery for hours. The game is also extremely optimized. It runs butter smooth at 1440p max settings on a Ryzen 7 1800x and Fury x combination, but still looks great running on a Ryzen 3 2200G APU at 720p medium settings.

Far Cry 5, Right in the FEELS

The Map

Far Cry 5 feels extremely open in its land area and in how you, the player, can approach a given aspect of the game and its story. You can choose to ‘walk away’ after the brief intro scene. While this is probably the quickest ending, it’s also maybe the most mundane. After a brief tutorial, the entire region of Hope County, Montana USA is open for you to explore and conquer.

Far Cry 5 is broken into three massive regions, a smaller area where the final conflict happens, and your starting point. The game only politely points you in the direction for you to head. The entire world of Hope County is open for you to tackle these regions in any order you please. Honestly, it is freedom – the freedom to make any choice you wish and to go where you like.

Story Telling

To make this free and open style work, Far Cry 5 handles its storytelling a little differently. The goal in each of the three regions is to earn enough ‘Resistance Points‘ to take on each region’s boss.

It works a bit like this:

Each of these individuals is in charge of a different facet of the cult’s operations: conversion, militia training, and drug production. It’s easy to hate them, because of the excellent portrayal. Their roles in the story, however, really don’t matter.

• Earn Resistance Points by completing any plethora of tasks.
• Anger the region boss enough to come out and confront you. Do this in three stages; each stage ends with you being captured and having to break out.
• The final confrontation is less a prison break and more of a hunt, be you the hunter or the hunted.
• Subsequently beat each region’s boss, each one a lieutenant of the Eden’s Gate cult. This will ultimately coax out the cult leader, Joseph Seed, “The Father”. But he’s technically the brother of two of the lieutenants, which makes me think less Montana and more… Kentucky.

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Far Cry 5 had (and still has) a lot of folks up in arms due to its potential for a controversial and politically charged narrative. It is, at least in my opinion, a great story. I felt actually immersed in something that could  hypothetically happen to some degree.

MECHANICS

The gameplay mechanics are great. Gone are the days of climbing tall structures to unlock map areas. Instead, you find various quests and points of interests by stumbling upon them. Occasionally you may happen across an NPC that mentions them.

I haven’t heard from old Beau lately, I wonder if the Peggys got him. That crazy son of a bitch was always working on his bunker on some land out in the hills west of here.

Random NPC

This is just an example, of course. It didn’t feel like a random NPC just throwing out a quest to weary travelers; it felt like neighbors checking up on neighbors, the only exception being the whereabouts of ‘Specialists’. Specialists are support characters who provide unique abilities when you add them to your team. There are specific quests to complete in order to get to them, as opposed to randomly coming across them. But the quests for finding them felt more rigid and less organic than most of the other quests in the game.

Far Cry 5 & Tobii

Another neat mechanic that I find being built into more and more of the games in my library is Tobii Eye Tracking. With the Tobii Eye Tracker 4C your eye movement is like a second mouse. You can look at a potential target then aim down sights. Doing so auto-magically orients your character to the target you were looking at. This game’s ‘hard mode’ is most games’ ‘nightmare mode’ so there is a ton of replay value for those looking for a challenge.

CONCLUSION

This is a great game, great story and plenty to do. It is definitely worth picking up. With it’s DLC in the works, with a season pass there is plenty to do.