Far Cry 5

Has Ubisoft’s FPS reinvented itself in the American wilderness?

- James Davenport

I sat front row while Dan Hay, the creative director for Far Cry 5, talked about visiting the place I grew up like it was another planet. And 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. And 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 mobilise 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 got 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. But in Hope County, Montana, it’s you against the doomsday preppers of small-town America.