Far Cry 5 Review

Upfront Clarification

While developing this review, I found another review that made some strange claims. Namely…

That the Project At Eden’s Gate (Henceforth Peggies) are a white supremacist cult, not a doomsday cult (like they are telegraphed as being in the game).
That the Peggies have a disproportionately black population (even after previously stating the Peggies were a white supremacist cult).
Calls out conservative lingo used by characters MEANT to be conservative punching bags.

When doing some debunking to check the legitimacy of the review, I ran a tally of kills during a play through of the game; I counted more white males than POC and equal numbers female for both white and POC.

I acknowledge that the creator of that review may actually be part of a minority population in Montana as they claim, but it doesn’t add up that they’d mince up an inclusivity review. I hold nothing against them, but I do question their legitimacy as a reviewer from…I can’t remember where, probably Kotaku? Again, nothing against the writer of that review, but I did find their review very questionable. I’d site that review, but I can’t find it anywhere. All I can say in conclusion with regards to that review is that I wanted to address its legitimacy in case any readers of this review had previously read that one. Anyway…

Cast Inclusivity

Player Character: The Deputy (AKA Recruit / Rookie / Rook)

The player character is a blank slate and mute. They can be male, female, boy, girl, AND/OR ANYTHING IN BETWEEN!!! The same applies to their mentality; they can be neurodiverse, neurotypical or even bat-shit crazy!

Supporting Characters: The Citizens Of Hope County

Outside of Marshal Burke, everyone else in the game that can be met are genuine Hope County denizens. They range in pallet from the Rye family (consisting of Nick Rye, his wife Kim, their daughter Carmina and her godparent, the Rookie), to Joseph Seed, his brothers and honorary sister, who themselves range from Jacob (the realist), to John (the sadist). Other notably colourful residents include Hurk Drubman Senior, his son Hurk Junior, HIS cousin Sharky Boshaw, Hurk Senior’s ex-wife Adelaide and my personal favorite: Chad Wolanski, who hires the player character to take a truck and collect roadkill for him to cook into food for the local militia! Overall, they’re a pleasant mix of genuinely decent folk and lovable caricatures of the people they’re making fun of.

Supporting Characters: The Preppers

Joseph Seed’s family of doomsday preppers can be summed up as realistic depictions of maniac doomsday preppers. Dutch and some ex-owners of existing Prepper Stashes can be summed up as more idealistic depictions of preppers: rational thinkers with a dash of paranoia. That being said, there are preppers in this game that hit a grey area or aren’t preppers but are still insane, like Zip Kupka. Zip sends the player character on a mission to shoot up drugged livestock amidst a storm of bullets, shrapnel and fire, then he deduces that the Peggies (who he also claims are government spooks) are getting their money from a shutdown gold mine and tells the player character to blow it up. Kupka isn’t really a prepper, more a domestic terrorist, but I’m putting him in this paragraph because he doesn’t compare to…

Supporting Characters: The Whacks, Angels and Tourists

Among the murderers and terrorists, there are also complete nutcases that deserve getting addressed in this review. Namely the Angels, an enemy type that almost exclusively appear in the Henbane River region and briefly in John’s bunker, who are described by Sharky as “brain dead zombies” because they are completely lost in this brain cell destroying hallucinogen called “Bliss”, which reduces the Angels to…well, zombies. Then we get Guy Marvel, his own brand of insane, who, according to his ‘sound guy’ (that Guy refers to as the A.D.) wanted to shoot cows with live ammunition for a scene in his movie, only to fire the original A.D. and appoint his sound guy as the new A.D. Other notable characters in this category include Parker: an alien invasion flavour of prepper who either gets transported to Mars or is vaporized (depending on if one were to consider the Mars DLC canon), The Admiral: a Russian sturgeon that somehow found itself in a closed-off lake in Montana, Xander: Adelaide’s boy toy and The Cook: a unique named flamethrower Peggie who starved a family to such desperate extremes that he [REDACTED] the parents’ [REDACTED] to the kids.

This brings us to our next category to discuss…

Accessibility

Audio

Far Cry 5 features a few audio options. The main audio language is English, but the game has subtitles for…

English
French
Italian
German
Spanish
Dutch
Polish
Czech
Russian
Simplified Chinese
Brazilian Portuguese
Japanese
Korean
Traditional Chinese
Arabic

There is also an option for a subtitle background, that allows the subtitles to be more easily read.

Visuals

A colorblind filter is available, though it only changes the red to yellow. Alternatively, the contrast and gamma can be altered as well.

Controls

Control inversion for the Rookie and their vehicles are available, as well as a drive-by-shooting aim assist and two different control schemes for the planes.

3rd Party Controls For Physically Disabled

THE GAME HAS EYE-TRACKING!!! AND YOU CAN ADJUST IT TO YOUR LIKING!!! REJOICE!!!

Additional Options

Various interface elements can be toggled on or off, as can the music.

Trigger Warnings

In the opening cutscene, Joseph Seed presses in the eyes of someone caught smuggling a video camera into his church.
One of Joseph’s followers actively dives into helicopter rotors to stop his arrest.
Marshal Burke leaves you for dead at the chopper crash site and does so again when your truck sinks after a bridge is blown up during the opening car chase.
Numerous firearms are depicted as being easily accessible in various spaces from residential trailers to prepper bunkers.
Some of the above mentioned firearms are military spec and thus illegally owned.
You can consume some craftable ingredients in their pure forms, such as alcohol used for Molotov cocktails or “oregano” which only exists for consumption because of…reasons…
Many dead bodies that do not disappear can be found littered across Hope County.
Marshal Burke’s last action is to kill a grieving father, then himself.
Sheriff Whitehorse, when you rescue him from Faith’s bunker, will attempt to hang himself on a noose while under the influence of Bliss.
It is outright stated in dialogue that “Judges”, enemy animals that have been drugged with Bliss, are tortured and experimented on before being sent after the Rookie
Hunting is an optional pass time, but some animals need to be killed in order to progress certain missions.
Cheeseburger the Bear has diabetes from a burger cooked by Chad Wolanski
Chad Wolanksi cooks roadkill into cheese burgers
Tammy Barnes, a member of the Whitetail Militia, interrogates Peggies by frying them in a kiddy pool hooked to a car battery
Deputy Pratt has a complete mental breakdown when you rescue him from Jacob’s bunker, complete with a Rambo scream while unloading a machine gun.
Deputy Hudson, when being rescued from John’s bunker, tries to shank the Rookie in a blood rage before figuring out they’re the Rookie.
Agent Willis Huntley, an actual government spook, claims to want help to find and destroy the President’s “secret” that’s recorded on a VHS and is in the hands of a Russian immigrant who’s also a Peggie (guess who was President of the United States around 2018).
Huntley goes back on his promise to help the Rookie with the Peggies after receiving a phone call saying he’ll get a raise.
Adelaide Drubman makes a comment about shooting “gophers” with a helicopter.
Hurk Senior uses the phrase “Obama-Lovin’ Libtards” when conscripting the Rookie for his political campaign.
Hurk Senior also jokes about “Canadians and Librals” when alerting the Rookie about Peggies during one of these missions.
Hurk Senior’s son, Hurk Junior, worships a Monkey God that Senior actively refuses to believe.
Hurk Junior only avoided signing up as a Peggie after realizing one of their rules was “no fornicating”.
Hurk Junior doesn’t deny Sharky’s claim that Junior “strapped dynamite to monkeys”, only correcting the fact that they were chimpanzees.
Guy Marvel refers to the Angels as “special” and “space cadets” when telling the Rookie what to do in order to shoot a scene for his movie.
Guy Marvel refused to take no for an answer when told not to shoot cows with live ammo by firing his assistant director on such short notice that he then appointed the sound editor as the new A.D.
Grace Armstrong, an Afghan Vet, laments about how soldiers can’t easily adapt back to ‘normal life’.
Jess Black, Dutch’s niece, is heavily implied to be one of the children from The Cook’s origin story that she regales to the Rookie while hunting him down, meaning she may have [REDACTED] her parents’ [REDACTED] and was severely traumatized by the event.
One of the paint schemes for the tractor (without the mulcher) is called “Red State”.
Several vehicles can be found on the side of the road with bloodied driver seats, one of the seven deadly sins written on the hood and a shattered windshield.
Pastor Jerome Jeffreys carries a snub-nose revolver in a fake bible.
Though the camera turns away from it, Nick Rye has part of his chest carved off with a knife by John Seed, who then staples the piece of skin to a wall.
John Seed ‘baptizes’ unwilling people by nearly drowning them.
Jacob Seed either uses humans as food for his Judges, live target practice or turns them into sleeper agents through violent brainwashing that has a higher chance to kill the supposed agent anyway.
Faith Seed is implied to be beaten by Joseph when she shows insubordination.
Mary May’s father, when she sends you to retrieve his truck, was probably a MAGA supporter, as a red baseball cap can be found on the dashboard of the truck.
Fishing is an optional side activity, but can be interrupted at any time.
Wolverines aim for the testicles on the Male body-type Rookie when attacking them.
It is heavily implied in Far Cry 5 and spoon fed to the Captain in Far Cry New Dawn that the Rookie was brainwashed again into The Judge, a companion in New Dawn who only unlocks when you befriend the Peggies in that game.
Sharky Boshaw has a crush on his aunt.
Sharky Boshaw is an arsonist with wanted posters littered across the county.
Sharky Boshaw un-ironically likes disco music.
The hymn Amazing Grace is featured frequently throughout the game.
Joseph Seed, during a visit to Jacob’s base, describes himself murdering his minutes old infant daughter after his wife died in a car crash.
Jacob Seed, in his second-to-last encounter in the Whitetail Mountains, explains how back in his service days, he had to leave a friend to die to wolves after the friend’s legs got blown off.
Jacob Seed is heavily burned and scarred, implying he was caught in the same explosion that disabled his friend.
John Seed is frequently encountered making veiled and sometimes explicit threats to the Rookie.
The Rookie is present when John, Faith and Jacob Seed each take their last breath, with John visibly gasping after his.
Due to how the stage is set, the Rookie can interact with John’s corpse as if it were any other lootable body in the game.
At the beginning of the game, Marshal Burke breaks the rules of engagement and fires off a pistol into the sky after no shots were fired by the Peggies.
The game’s first DLC takes place in Vietnam, as recounted by Wendell Redler, a mission giver in the main game.
The game’s second DLC takes place on Mars and depicts both Hurk Junior and Nick Rye as unaware morons who fail to realize that Parker’s AI, ANNE, is only exterminating the indigenous Martian bugs as a front for a robot uprising.
The game’s third DLC takes place in various zombie movies pitched by Guy Marvel as he interrupts the personal times of multiple Hollywood bigwigs and even breaks-and-enters into their cars or yachts.
Once you start New Game Plus, you can’t change the Rookie’s gender.

Concluding Notes

While it can be a mess at times, with even some tone whiplash if you’re not prepared for it, Far Cry 5 is a game that I recommend, baring in mind that the game also has some technical problems and has already been succeeded by Far Cry 6. That being said, the game has amazingly acted characters, a decently written story, plenty of jokes and jabs about the political climate of Montana and plenty of replayability and places to explore.