I sat front row while Dan Hay, the creative director for Far Cry 5, talked about visiting the place I grew up as if it was another planet. In addition, I guess it is. Montana, the setting for the next Far Cry, is one of the biggest states in the USA with one of the lowest populations. I remember when we broke a million – my dad texted me saying, ‘We’re big time now.’
Big is right. There’s so much empty space in Montana, it doesn’t always feel attached to the rest of the US – a perfect home for the strange. Montana is where the Church Universal and Triumphant started, a cult that performs eerie mantras to assure the stability of economies. Pinesdale is home to a Mormon sect that actively practices polygamy, just a short drive from Missoula, one of the more progressive cities in the state. In addition, in recent years Whitefish became the begrudging home to Richard Spencer, an oft-punched figurehead in the resurgence of neo-Nazi sentiment. Montana is an easy place for communities to mobilize and hide in plain sight, some harmless, some clearly not.
That’s the thrust of Far Cry 5, set in the fictional Hope County, where a powerful cult takes root. During a preview event in Santa Monica, I have to see a bit of the game in action and talk to Dan Hay about how and why Far Cry is making the transition to a more domestic setting.
A quiver runs through it
Videogames have been casting every race but Caucasian as the bad guys for as long as I can remember, giving the player big guns and saying, ‘Go!’ in the foreign country of the week. However, in Hope County, Montana, it’s you against the doomsday preppers of small-town America.
The team was inspired by the unrest and confusion felt after events like the Cold War and 9/11. Such moments represent the US at its most vulnerable, very different from the proud country its leaders claim it to be. But in the wake of uncertainty, events such as the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by an armed militia in Oregon early last year prodded at the idea of a governing body that didn’t have the interests of regular people in mind, and one that wasn’t prepared to respond during a catastrophic event on US soil. What if a group knew a collapse was coming, but didn’t want to wait for the fall? What if one of those movements was run by competent people? They’d probably find a nice, quiet place to get ready.
Far Cry 5’s bad people are made up of such a militia, a group of cultists led by a strange, bearded family. At its head is Joseph, an apparently magnetic figure who seems like the equivalent of Pagan Min. He’s the ‘father’ of the group, which must be a symbolic title because he doesn’t look old enough to be anything but a brother to the rest of the family.
“Our intention was to build a leader and a single idea where this person really did believe in the end of the world and does believe that the end of the world is going to happen. And we heard that from our cult expert that there’s a lot of this language in cults and that it was landing in Montana, and that you could drive there and experience it,” said Hay.
Montana makes sense for a cult as much as it does for an open world videogame. “We look at a place, and we go, ‘Could we believe a Far Cry experience could happen there?’ As beautiful and lush, and exotic in a strange kind of way, Montana checked all the boxes for that.”
In addition, visually, Far Cry 5’s Montana looks spot-on. I can nearly recognize the bluish mountain ranges gently sloping into lush river valleys. A few small towns break up the dirt roads and pine trees, and cows stand idly by, flicking their tails and mooing to passersby. There’s a bar called the Spread Eagle that recalls Butte’s Sagebrush Sam’s, and the logo for Whistling Beaver Lager looks like something The Great Northern Brewing Co out of Whitefish would make. Old beater pickups, tractors, cows, men with hastily cut sleeves – at a glance, it’s home.
From the little I’ve seen, Hope County, Montana isn’t just Far Cry with a new skin, but it may muck up Montana’s guts. It doesn’t appear to be representative of the people from the area, fictional or not. Members of the nearby Flathead and Blackfeet tribal nations may not be in the game at all, despite their importance to Montana’s identity. When I asked if they’d show up, Hay said, “I think because we’re making it our own world, we’re making sure that our characters and the people that are represented are of our world.” If that world is nothing but gruff, white 20-somethings attaching guns to pickup trucks, it might be too shallow and misrepresentation to be convincing.
I hope I’m wrong, because the contrast between postcard National Park Americana and all-out domestic warfare is striking, a surprising fit for Far Cry ’s light combat sandbox.
Big Cry Country
Seeing the game in action shows the opposite to the deadly serious tone of the initial presentation. It is showing off a very familiar Far Cry with a few rural flourishes: the player driving a tractor into an enemy outpost with guns blazing out the window, a dog stealing a gun from an enemy (as dogs love to do) and a shootout between hired mercenaries and cultists. We’re still going to run around a vast environment and take out the bad people. We’re just going to do it in new places and with more tools, like Mustangs and fly rods at our disposal. Just don’t call it rural Grand Theft Auto as if I did.
Hay steered away from the comparison, “If you played FC3 and FC4 and Primal and you know what’s in our DNA, I think that you’re going to step into Far Cry 5 and you’re going to understand it, and it’s going to feel familiar.” It won’t be a total retread, though. “There are going to be key moments where we go in different directions,” Hay continued, “and the reflexes that you may be had in those games will be challenged a bit and you’ll experience something fresh.”
I’m guessing he’s not talking about landing a fresh trout, though you can hunt and fish. Is it possible to make an ammo pouch out of trout skin? It might have to be, considering Montana’s fauna is likely going to be less varied than previous Far Cry games. Black bears? Check. Grizzly bears? Check. Wolves? Check. Big-ass killer birds? I once saw an emu farm outside of Anaconda, but that’s it.
In saying goodbye to big birds, Far Cry 5 is provoking a new kind of beast: US politics. Because Far Cry 5 is set in the same neighborhood of Montana as pockets of white nationalists and focuses on enigmatic leader types, it’s hard to separate the setting and imagery from the fringe groups that actually exist there. Hay wouldn’t say whether Far Cry 5 would address toxic views towards race or whether genuine white nationalist groups inspired the direction of the cult, but looking at the key art invites some obvious comparisons. “In terms of the specific push on whether or not about it was about something like what you were asking, we stayed clear of that because it didn’t feel right for what we were doing,” said Hay. Then what are they doing, I wonder?
I doubt Far Cry can be the delivery mechanism for a genuine depiction and commentary on anything going on in the US today – but I’d love to be wrong. I do think the setting and story concepts will invite more scrutiny and criticism than ever before. I’m happy that we’re not shooting enemies in the foreign country of the week, though. Hay told me he doesn’t want to make a point, opting to arrange ideas for the player to sort through himself or herself. “The intention is not to preach or to espouse the virtue of a single idea, it’s to pepper the world with different people with different perceptions and to allow the player to experience those, to form their own opinions.”
It’s an apolitical approach to a patchwork political conflict, drawn from tensions over the omnipotent arm of federal government, control of resources, the role of Christianity in American culture. Setting up conflict, then backing off and letting the player arrive to their own ideas doesn’t sit too well with me. Far Cry 5 is the most interesting approach Ubisoft has taken in years, but if it washes over the real inspiration for the setting, it will feel too unambitious and fearful.
Info
Release: February 27, 2018
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Puiblisher: Ubisoft
Big is right. There’s so much empty space in Montana, it doesn’t always feel attached to the rest of the US – a perfect home for the strange. Montana is where the Church Universal and Triumphant started, a cult that performs eerie mantras to assure the stability of economies. Pinesdale is home to a Mormon sect that actively practices polygamy, just a short drive from Missoula, one of the more progressive cities in the state. In addition, in recent years Whitefish became the begrudging home to Richard Spencer, an oft-punched figurehead in the resurgence of neo-Nazi sentiment. Montana is an easy place for communities to mobilize and hide in plain sight, some harmless, some clearly not.
That’s the thrust of Far Cry 5, set in the fictional Hope County, where a powerful cult takes root. During a preview event in Santa Monica, I have to see a bit of the game in action and talk to Dan Hay about how and why Far Cry is making the transition to a more domestic setting.
A quiver runs through it
Videogames have been casting every race but Caucasian as the bad guys for as long as I can remember, giving the player big guns and saying, ‘Go!’ in the foreign country of the week. However, in Hope County, Montana, it’s you against the doomsday preppers of small-town America.
The team was inspired by the unrest and confusion felt after events like the Cold War and 9/11. Such moments represent the US at its most vulnerable, very different from the proud country its leaders claim it to be. But in the wake of uncertainty, events such as the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by an armed militia in Oregon early last year prodded at the idea of a governing body that didn’t have the interests of regular people in mind, and one that wasn’t prepared to respond during a catastrophic event on US soil. What if a group knew a collapse was coming, but didn’t want to wait for the fall? What if one of those movements was run by competent people? They’d probably find a nice, quiet place to get ready.
Far Cry 5’s bad people are made up of such a militia, a group of cultists led by a strange, bearded family. At its head is Joseph, an apparently magnetic figure who seems like the equivalent of Pagan Min. He’s the ‘father’ of the group, which must be a symbolic title because he doesn’t look old enough to be anything but a brother to the rest of the family.
“Our intention was to build a leader and a single idea where this person really did believe in the end of the world and does believe that the end of the world is going to happen. And we heard that from our cult expert that there’s a lot of this language in cults and that it was landing in Montana, and that you could drive there and experience it,” said Hay.
Montana makes sense for a cult as much as it does for an open world videogame. “We look at a place, and we go, ‘Could we believe a Far Cry experience could happen there?’ As beautiful and lush, and exotic in a strange kind of way, Montana checked all the boxes for that.”
In addition, visually, Far Cry 5’s Montana looks spot-on. I can nearly recognize the bluish mountain ranges gently sloping into lush river valleys. A few small towns break up the dirt roads and pine trees, and cows stand idly by, flicking their tails and mooing to passersby. There’s a bar called the Spread Eagle that recalls Butte’s Sagebrush Sam’s, and the logo for Whistling Beaver Lager looks like something The Great Northern Brewing Co out of Whitefish would make. Old beater pickups, tractors, cows, men with hastily cut sleeves – at a glance, it’s home.
From the little I’ve seen, Hope County, Montana isn’t just Far Cry with a new skin, but it may muck up Montana’s guts. It doesn’t appear to be representative of the people from the area, fictional or not. Members of the nearby Flathead and Blackfeet tribal nations may not be in the game at all, despite their importance to Montana’s identity. When I asked if they’d show up, Hay said, “I think because we’re making it our own world, we’re making sure that our characters and the people that are represented are of our world.” If that world is nothing but gruff, white 20-somethings attaching guns to pickup trucks, it might be too shallow and misrepresentation to be convincing.
I hope I’m wrong, because the contrast between postcard National Park Americana and all-out domestic warfare is striking, a surprising fit for Far Cry ’s light combat sandbox.
Big Cry Country
Seeing the game in action shows the opposite to the deadly serious tone of the initial presentation. It is showing off a very familiar Far Cry with a few rural flourishes: the player driving a tractor into an enemy outpost with guns blazing out the window, a dog stealing a gun from an enemy (as dogs love to do) and a shootout between hired mercenaries and cultists. We’re still going to run around a vast environment and take out the bad people. We’re just going to do it in new places and with more tools, like Mustangs and fly rods at our disposal. Just don’t call it rural Grand Theft Auto as if I did.
Hay steered away from the comparison, “If you played FC3 and FC4 and Primal and you know what’s in our DNA, I think that you’re going to step into Far Cry 5 and you’re going to understand it, and it’s going to feel familiar.” It won’t be a total retread, though. “There are going to be key moments where we go in different directions,” Hay continued, “and the reflexes that you may be had in those games will be challenged a bit and you’ll experience something fresh.”
I’m guessing he’s not talking about landing a fresh trout, though you can hunt and fish. Is it possible to make an ammo pouch out of trout skin? It might have to be, considering Montana’s fauna is likely going to be less varied than previous Far Cry games. Black bears? Check. Grizzly bears? Check. Wolves? Check. Big-ass killer birds? I once saw an emu farm outside of Anaconda, but that’s it.
In saying goodbye to big birds, Far Cry 5 is provoking a new kind of beast: US politics. Because Far Cry 5 is set in the same neighborhood of Montana as pockets of white nationalists and focuses on enigmatic leader types, it’s hard to separate the setting and imagery from the fringe groups that actually exist there. Hay wouldn’t say whether Far Cry 5 would address toxic views towards race or whether genuine white nationalist groups inspired the direction of the cult, but looking at the key art invites some obvious comparisons. “In terms of the specific push on whether or not about it was about something like what you were asking, we stayed clear of that because it didn’t feel right for what we were doing,” said Hay. Then what are they doing, I wonder?
I doubt Far Cry can be the delivery mechanism for a genuine depiction and commentary on anything going on in the US today – but I’d love to be wrong. I do think the setting and story concepts will invite more scrutiny and criticism than ever before. I’m happy that we’re not shooting enemies in the foreign country of the week, though. Hay told me he doesn’t want to make a point, opting to arrange ideas for the player to sort through himself or herself. “The intention is not to preach or to espouse the virtue of a single idea, it’s to pepper the world with different people with different perceptions and to allow the player to experience those, to form their own opinions.”
It’s an apolitical approach to a patchwork political conflict, drawn from tensions over the omnipotent arm of federal government, control of resources, the role of Christianity in American culture. Setting up conflict, then backing off and letting the player arrive to their own ideas doesn’t sit too well with me. Far Cry 5 is the most interesting approach Ubisoft has taken in years, but if it washes over the real inspiration for the setting, it will feel too unambitious and fearful.
Info
Release: February 27, 2018
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Puiblisher: Ubisoft
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