I guess I won't get into specifics, but did the earth-shaking events of the final confrontation even happen? Considering you're able to load back into the world after the credits and play like nothing happened, I want to say that it was all just another drug trip in a game with far too many drug trips. Beating one of the cult lieutenants who can seemingly teleport around at will, control minds directly, and both fly and shoot fireballs at you during her boss fight is a decent departure from reality, but with so much of the game leaning on this seemingly supernatural stuff, it's hard to take any of it seriously. It doesn't feel like a believable portrayal of rural life, even rural life under extreme duress.īecause so much of the game traffics in mindgames, either via Faith Seed's drugs or Jacob Seed's brainwashing-large parts of the game's biggest moments are spent with the screen all filtered or wavy because you're 'not right in the head.' You'll see things that might not be there, you'll do things that would definitely be impossible, you'll see stuff that couldn't possibly be happening. Meanwhile, the first 'good' prepper you meet is a vet with a USA jacket and a Canadian accent. Multiple missions involve 'getting someone's truck back, aw shucks, we sure loved that truck.' Meanwhile, after you've rescued dozens of people including a guy who owns a freakin' airplane, no one thinks to revisit the game's first idea of 'we should drive to Missoula and get on the phone to someone about this.' In the end, most NPCs are just people holding guns, wearing distressed American flag T-shirts, telling you about some paramilitary shit they got into or want to get into. Everyone is either crazy, stupid, or both.

For as much as it's disappointing that the villains aren't given enough dramatic weight, the way the game portrays rural America is somehow even darker. Maybe it'd be interesting to know why this particular valley in Montana has multiple militias and what their whole deal is beyond 'we're a militia and we hate this cult.' Maybe it'd be nice if you occasionally met a meaningful character who wasn't already armed and talking about what's up with 'their squad' mere days after the cult started going nuts. The militias and other characters you befriend along the way are also just. It doesn't just make its bad guys feel like generic, uncharismatic cultists. The lack of conviction in Far Cry 5 permeates the entire product. They aren't charismatic the way Pagan Min was, they aren't menacing the way Vaas was, either. I found that most of the long speeches from these characters just go in circles and don't actually give any of them any real weight. Each cult lieutenant gets a bit of screen time as the game very much overuses the idea of you getting captured and hauled off to listen to a bunch of rudimentary rambling from the torture guy who looks like a low-rent coke dealer, the lady pumping hallucinogens into the water to ensure an orderly flock, or the ex-military guy who wants to train people like they were Pavlov's dogs. Take over all three territories and you'll trigger the game's final mission against the Father, Joseph Seed, who looks and acts like a C-tier Matthew McConaughey character. Three control territories, and once you've executed enough missions in those territories, you can take that area back. The cult you're fighting has four leaders. the rest is pretty much fine if you're up for another Far Cry game. The end result is a story that goes nowhere, says nothing, and fails to live up to the previous settings and villains in the franchise. But the ambitious setting doesn't pay off in this story that seems to want to hedge every chance it gets. That's meat that few games even attempt to chew.

There's probably a great story you could tell around a Christian Doomsday Prepper Cult that has you fighting them off as they prepare for the End Times by murdering everyone around them and stealing all the resources they can. The setting and ideas of Far Cry 5 have a ton of promise that don't bear much fruit in the final product.

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