Far Cry 5 - Father Vs Father Showdown

I have mentioned in past blogs that I play xbox once a week with my Dad. It is something I really enjoy and its my chance to chat with him about the week due to us not seeing each other often since we live countries apart. This does mean though that we take ages to finish a game, especially when its open world and we only play for about an hour and a half each session. Well I can say after roughly 4-5 months we have finally finished the story for Far Cry 5. Lets talk about it.

Far Cry 5 takes place in a fictional region of America called Hope County. You are a deputy who has been assigned by the goverment to arrest a cult leader named Joseph Seed aka 'the farther' who with his family has managed to turn his cult into a massive militarized operation that has taken over the county. Obviously the arrest does not go as planned and you spend the game going to each section of Hope County and taking down the Seed family members before finally being able to confront 'The Farther' again. This is a very summed up version of the game as like every new Far Cry game their are hundreds of side objectives to do and additional allies you can recruit but for me and my dad we normally just follow the main quest in these sort of games.

The premise is a really interesting one though, especially in a time where from an very outside view, polictics in America seems more and more cult like with massive rallys and people seeing party leaders as a godly being. This game was released in 2018 and yet seems more relevant now than ever..... which isnt scary at all. The fact they made the location of this game in America is also quite a bold move. Normally these games take place somewhere in the himalayers or on a remote island. This being placed in America made it feel a lot more personal even for a non American citizen like me as it showed these events can happen in your own backyard, something that again seems incredibly relevant today.

Since Far Cry 3 and the incredibly entertaining Vaas Ubisoft Montreal discovered something, a really crazy and interesting villian can sell a game. No one remembers who the main villian was in Far Cry 3 but we all remember Vaas and we all adored every time he was on our screens. They continued it with the ecentric evil king that was Pagan Min, who's charm and style made you end up liking him and hating him at the same time. Now it's 'the farther' turn, Joseph Seed. He headlines this Far Cry and while he is a saddistic and a complete religious nutjob, he always speaks with a kidness and desire that you truly get the impression he really believes he is doing the right thing for God, to the point where you start to question your own morals (only very slightly though). This is done magnificantly by Greg Byrk, the canadian voice actor who completely owns the role. His performance always makes Joespeh seem to be on the thin line between true insanity and a more higher understanding, something you never truly know is correct.... until the end. I would still say Vaas is the top villian in a Far Cry game cause he knew he was insane and rolled with it which made some truly amazing moments in the game, but 'the farther' sits happily in second place for me cause he was generally terrifying at moments especially when he would sing the American anthem. It was chilling, terriyfying and a pure joy to watch.

The rest of the Seed family are also pretty interesting. John being the crazy promotional man for the cult who would carve peoples sins onto their flesh. Faith is almost seen as a pure innocent being who uses a psychodelic gas called bliss to send people to an epiphany state which allows her to control them however she wants. Finally their is Jacob who is an ex war vertran who believes in survival of the fittest and breaks people to do his bidding through torture. So yeah not your normal family. I would say that the least memorable for me was John and even then its probably because he was the first I encountered, Faith was fasinating since you find out that their has been many Faith Seeds before this one which almost made the name itself mysterious, where Jacob was always enjoyable to see due to his many methods on how he broke people. I also think Jacob was the only one that truly broke the Deputy's sanity.

Gameplay wise I will say me and my dad play a bit different to the normal style, its always a blast both literally and theoretically. My dad just can't do stealth, its not in his understanding when it comes to gaming. He will charge in and shoot like crazy which will either mean he goes down instantly or he cleans out the entire room, it was mainly down too if their was a heavy enemy in the room or not. He is also always grabbing the biggest gun he can find instead of changing his loadout, he knows how to do it but its boring to him and he just want to shoot. This is why Far Cry 5 was perfect for him. We would often charge into a compound and die about 5 times before taking it over, or throw 10 grenades into a bunker and charge in with rocket launchers which normally caused ourselves to be obliterated in the process. We would purposely drop helicopter into the enemy zone aiming for it to blow up or drive our vehicle with a mounted gun straight into the oil rig, this game allowed us to be as crazy as we wanted which meant lots of really fun moments. I also want to highlight the Clutch Nixon stunt missions which while being incredibly irritating when playing multiple due to when one player is too far away it would reset, it was a lot of fun as well. Having to race or fly through checkpoints with cool explosions and fireworks really made us laugh a lot while doing it. Another particular highlight was having the fight at the trailerpark with rock music blasting out of speakers, that felt very American and I loved it.

I do have issues with Far Cry 5 though, mostly to do with its multiplayer. I had it multiple times where we would die, respawn and then suddenly I can't see any enemies anymore but would still get hurt. This couldnt be fixed until I actually returned to the menu and rejoined my dad's online session. This would also happen for vehicles which wasn't a big problem in the open world but would complete stop me from doing certain missions where I would need to get into a vehicle that wasn't there for me (however this did add some very funny moments where my dad would be speed floating down the road as he would be in the vehicle which hadn't loaded for me). I even had this bug in the final mission of the game which mean we had to restart the whole mission again. Speaking about the final mission it really highlighted how some of them were not built for multiplayer, the start of the final mission was incredibly easy followed by an extremely difficult escape where my dad had a pickup truck and me only a slow atv. This meant he would often leave me to dust and I would explode due to him trigging world events. I only resolved this by jumping off my atv and getting into another pickup truck to keep up. This happened for a few mission where it just felt multiplayer was not given any thought.

Also lets talk about that ending.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Why? Like I know why they did it, to add like a crazy twist, but why? It felt like it made the whole game pointless!? I like how Joseph was technically right all along but everything we did to make the county better, all the characters you help and team up with, all for nothing. It just felt a bit dumb for me and was dramatic just to be dramatic. It wasn't enough to ruin the game for me but still me and my dad where both at the credits thinking 'is that it?'. I just think it would of been so much more satisfying to give us a somewhat good ending like the other Far Cry games where as this one was just bad. Yeah didn't like it.

Overall though I am being over critical cause this is a full open world story game that offers complete multiplayer throughout all of it. That is getting harder and harder to find nowaday especially with new games. Far Cry 5 gave us this experience and a boat load of explosive fun with it. So while it is in no way in my top 20 list, it was a joy to play.