Ubisoft is teasing a new Far Cry reveal for The Game Awards. Will they be able to stay away from old controversies?
First up, the teaser video.
Ubisoft has told us that this new Far Cry game will be revealed at The Game Awards ceremony, alongside a new Obsidian RPG and definitely not Borderlands 3.
The teaser doesn’t give much away, but does tend to suggest that this new Far Cry title will be post-apocalyptic in nature. That means that – like Far Cry Primal – it will probably sit outside of the main series’ modern timeline.
Spare a thought for poor Ubisoft, by the way. They just want to make games where you travel to strange new places to shoot people and blow things up and kill lots of animals for some reason. Yet somehow, people keep suggesting there’s some sort of political undercurrent to the Far Cry series.
Whether that’s the colonialist white saviour elements of Far Cry 2, or the Mary Sue white saviour elements of Far Cry 3, or the racist-looking box art for Far Cry 4, accusations of bizarre, violent murdertourism have never been far from the series.
They were surely safe setting Far Cry 5 on American soil, right?
Sadly, it didn’t pan out. As it turns out, prepper Jonestown-esque cults emerging out of the extreme right-wing of backwater America is inherently quite a political topic, yet Ubisoft maintains that Far Cry 5 doesn’t make any kind of a political statement. At all.
See also: The Division definitely isn’t making any kind of political statement, even though it is literally money that wipes out most of the world’s population, and the ruined Washington DC future civil war setting of The Division 2 isn’t political, either.
Ubisoft would very much like you to know that none of their games are political, in spite of appearances to the contrary (because showing any kind of political leaning or commentary is seen as a bit “bad for business“).
Surely they have to be safe by bumping Far Cry into the future, though? If they plonk the series into a post-apocalyptic setting, outside any modern frames of reference, with no governments or nations left to speak of, they can’t be making any kind of political statement, right? Not even a little bit? Not even by accident?
Except… the teaser suggests that this new Far Cry game will be set after some sort of post-apocalyptic nuclear holocaust.
Whoops. So close, Ubisoft! You nearly got away with that one.
In other musings, here are some suggested titles for this new post-apocalyptic Far Cry game:
- Far Cry: New Vegas
- Far Cry: Beyond Thunderdome
- The Last of Far Cry
- Cormac McCarthy’s Far Cry
- Planet of the Far Cries
- 28 Far Cries Later
