Developed: Ubisoft Toronto/Milan
Published: Ubisoft
Genre: Action/Open world/Shooter
Release Date: Oct 7th, 2021
Platforms: PS5/PS4/Stadia/Xbox/Epic/Windows
*Review copy provided to me by Ubisoft
''Viva la Libertad!''
Far Cry 6 is an open world action first person shooter game developed b Ubisoft Toronto/Milan and published by Ubisoft. Once again changing your location, games formula and mechanics, Ubisoft Toronto attempts to breathe new life into the series and change it up just enough to make it feel like a fresh new experience. But do they achieve their goal and vision of this? or does it end up a copy and paste job like some fans accused them of with Far Cry 4 and Far Cry Primal? Only one way to find out, so, blame Canada! I mean... La resistance!
Story:
As the dictator of Yara, Antón Castillo is intent on restoring his nation back to its former glory by any means, with his son, Diego, dutifully at his side. Their oppressive rule has ignited a revolution. Now as Dani, an orphan caught up in this mayhem, you must join the fight, alongside the Libertad Guerrila's, to take down this regime once and for all and free all of Yara for good.
GamePlay:
With the last few Far Cry games being a mixed bag of both good and bad with Far Cry 5's cult storyline going from realistic and interesting, to supernatural and over the top. Far Cry New Dawn leaning far too heavy on the arcade like game play with sponge enemies and an uninteresting story, a shake up was needed. This is when Ubisoft decided, ''you know what, screw it, were changing the formula again''. Welp, with Far Cry 6, they sure did change up the formula, some changes bigger than others, but every single one is impactful or significant in some way shape or form, for better or for worse. One of the smaller editions we see brought into the mix is the re-introduction of third person voice acted cutscenes. That's right, third person voiced acted cutscenes finally makes its grand return for the first time since the original Far Cry game. Why is this even significant you ask? well its significant because allowing you see and hear the story from a third person view gives you a better scope of not only the world around you, the setting and characters, but it also helps immerse you in the story that Ubisoft has crafted this time around for Far Cry 6, and it's a story that I feel is up there as one of the best in the series. Yes I know, that might seem controversial to say at the moment, given the games political focus. But don't fret your pretty little head(or handsome), because I will let you know why I feel this way shorty. But for now I want to focus on the characters, the world, and mechanics that will be with you throughout your 20+ hour journey.
The start of your journey really sets the tone for the rest of the game as you move forward and progress. This isn't your normal and lively Far Cry game that you have generally known. You're now thrusted into a fictional country on the brink of a civil war as rebel guerrilla's fight back against the murderous and dictator regime of Anton Castillo and his armies. You play as Dani, an orphan and product of the destructive force of the Castillo regime, who now just wants to get out of the country and make it to America. But sadly as her and her friend Lita make their escape on a boat with other Yaran immigrants, they're found by not only the armies of Castillo, but the man Anton himself. His son, Diego, snuck on the boat and tried to escape too. He isn't like his father, he's not cold blooded and heartless, he's just a kid and he doesn't want this, but him being there sealed the fate for all immigrants on the boat. He pleads with his father to let everyone go. But Anton Castillo is cold and calculated, he tells his son ''sure they can go'', but as soon as he leaves, the soldiers open fire on the ship, not only sinking it, but killing many on board as well. When Dani awakes, she is on a beach with her dying friend. ''You're the lucky one'', Lita tells her. But is she? is she really?. Girl, were on a beach like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, this isn't exactly ''Lucky''. Were not even Britney Spears level of Lucky. Yall remember that song? pretty catchy... but ahem back on topic. As Lita succumbs to her injury, pushing her hopes for a new Yara onto you, your adventure NOW fully begins and its one doozy of a journey at that.
Once you get going in the game, you're going to notice that you don't necessarily ''level up'' anymore. Instead of the gain experience points, level up, gain new abilities and perks, you now just focus on raising your guerrilla rank by completing main story missions, taking down propaganda signs of the Castillo regime, take down military bases and checkpoints or by doing side missions known as Yaran Stories. When leveling up your guerilla rank, the stats move to focusing on your gear and weapons over your actual character itself. This is a complete departure from what we have been used to since I think Far Cry 3 and I have to say, I actually like this change. It makes the game that much more intense because every single time you rank up and get stronger, so too does that enemy forces all over Yara. Unlike Far Cry 3 and other entries where you got perks and abilities to level up as a reward, this time when guerrilla rank is raised you gain access to new weapons and gear that will help you in your fight against the Castillo's army by unlocking stronger weapons that improve damage or gear that will give you regeneration abilities. They key reason I think Ubisoft went direction is for one reason only: Balance. During previous entries into the series, it was always just, crazy bad guy does this, a few of his crony henchmen come after you and then you take down a little small group of people who range from snipers, regular people with machine guns, riflemen, and bad guys focused on melee. But in Far Cry 6 here, you now feel like you're actually taking on a legit army that has thousands of forces at its disposal and a variety of ranks that will come swooping down on you, should you cause too much havoc and become ''wanted''. I guess you can say its a ...Far Cry... away from the previous games. Am I right?.. guys? hello?. Yup. Lets move on. Now instead of the usual generic bad guys, you have an army with actual ranks that range from enemies being able to call airstrikes on you, army helicopters being called to follow and stalk you like a Halloween movie, division of the army that sets up sentry guns to take you out, which reminds me of TFC or TF2 and even deploy medics on the ground that will revive and heal any downed enemies. This is not even all of them either. Oh no. I will get more into enemy variety types as we go on because this ties directly into the guerilla ranking up system in this title.
The world map of Yara is absolutely massive. So big in fact that its split into four different distinct areas called Isla Santuario, El Este, Valle De Oro and Madrugada as the main sections of the map, with Esperanza being the main stronghold of Presidente Anton Castillo. Now these areas aren't just split up into sections just for the sake of ''having more areas'', not true. These areas are split up into sections because they all tie into the narrative of the story being told. You see this game is about a country that is under control of a vicious dictatorship and thousands per day are being executed by way of poison and other means genocide for not being ''true Yarans''. It's either you're a true Yaran citizen who obey's Castillo's every law and command or you are labeled a traitor and sent to your death. Now other games and forms of media have attempted to tell this same story, but its always a ''good versus bad'' scenario, one right versus one wrong. However, that's not how real life works, just because someone may have a different view on things, doesn't mean its wrong, it just means there's a different vision from one side that is pushing towards the same goal you are. This is what sets Far Cry 6 and it's world apart from other open world games. You see across this gigantic open world, each area is controlled or ran by a specific faction, these factions range from Libertad, who are a group of ragtag Guerrillas attempting to take down Castillo, ''The Old Legends'' who are a once great legendary team who fought in the revolution of the 1960s, and then the young anarchist group La Moral. Each faction has the same goal in mind ''Take down Castillo'' and they all have a different vision of how to get it done and once the job is done, they all have a different vision and scenario for what the ''NEW'' Yara will look like. This is the core of the story that you, as Dani Rojas (male or female) take on your shoulders as an orphan turned guerrilla, and is now your job to unite all factions together under the Libertad and work together to end the reign of terror once and for all. Now it won't be that easy, but during your trying times you have to remember, ''you may get stabbed in the head, with a dagger or sword, you may be burned to death or skinned alive or worse, but when they torture you, you will not feel the need to run, for though you die, La Resistance lives on!''. Wait a minute.. that's not Libertad's motto. ''Once a guerrilla, always a guerrilla''. Ahh there we go.
Now with a game being this massive, surely there is a lot to keep you occupied right? it's not just some barren open world that just looks pretty, correct? yes that's correct. This is one of those games that should normally take you around 20 hours to beat in the story mode, but instead you find yourself wandering around for hours aimlessly and putting in 20 plus more on top of it. That's how much content there is in this game. As you progress through the story narrative you will unlock multiple new play styles, new weapons, new gears, new companions and other objectives to complete that either tie into the story direction and narrative, raise your guerrilla level or gain you access to secret intel that will help you take down Castillo and his army. When you begin taking on missions from any faction, whether its Libertad, La Moral or the legends, you will always get a choice to choose the option ''Operation'' and Operation is what you will refer to as your main scenario mission, all of them marked on your map with a giant yellow star. Complete enough Operations with specific characters, such as helping a character named Bicho broadcast himself to all of Yara to become famous by vandalizing propaganda signs with his logo and taking over the radio waves with his own announcements, saving captured friends and freeing prisoners, destroying poison factories, doing all of this will unlock a category named Yaran Stories. Think of Yaran stories as your side missions you can do whenever you feel like and every Yaran story relating to one of the characters or factions that need help. I suggest doing these in conjunction with the main scenario as it helps you learn key information about each character in the game, some backstory and even provides intel of potential military targets for you to take out that you may have never knew about before. Doing all of these, along with your main scenario adds over a dozen of more playable hours to your game time, however, some of them do feel like glorified fetch quests and not all of them knock it out of the park. But they're side missions, so what can you expect? the real meat and potatoes is in the main story. That's a lot to digest so far right? well hold onto your butts because were just getting started in relation to the content presented here.
I noticed because this world is so big that any questline could be done in any order. I thought to myself, I wonder if they structured it like breath of the wild, where you can just go straight to the final boss and take him down and win the game. So here I was at the time as a rank 4 and the area of Esperanza where Castillo is held up in at the time is like Rank 9, so I decided, screw it, lets go for it and ventured off. When I got there during the missions in the area, it was setting up like we were going to do the assassination and I'm thinking ''holy crap my playthrough is only gonna be like 6 hours, that's nuts''. But nope, not today scrub, your princess is in another castle. Legit. That's literally what they tell you, minus the princess but insert a dictator. He's not there, he knew we would come, we got completely bamboozled and I felt like an idiot. But going there was not a total loss because I got to see just exactly what I'd be going up against and what type of gear I would need going forward should I want to challenge the entire army myself in the future. Enemies at higher ranks started wearing heavier armor, double plated armor, using poison filled spray guns, flamethrowers and heavy artillery guns. With my current gear and weapons, there's absolutely no way I'd be able to take them down, no way and no how and ''no chance in hell'', according to Vince McMahon. This is where your guerrilla rank will now come into play as you unlock new gear, new weapons and new ways to play the game to give you a distinct advantage. Upon completing several missions, you will unlock hub areas in each factions main stronghold and HQ, and in these strongholds is where you'll be able to take on Operations, mini games like chicken catching, buying or updating your weapons with crafting via resources you collect around the world, Amigo companions and even a really addicting feature called, Guerrilla Camp Facilities. This mode kind of acts like a RTS game in which you must put your resources into creating new facilities inside each headquarter and gain a significant reward. Each area that can be built range from a Hideout Network that scouts out all nearby areas to find you new fast travel locations, as well as give you a wingsuit to soar with, guerrilla garrison that allows you to purchase stronger weapons, a Cantina that allows you to buy or trade animal meat for stat buffs and the most important one of all, the Barracks, which allows you to recruit more NPC's on your missions. Be warned though, your NPC help in this game is not very good, like at all, they're extremely dumb. This is why you can say screw them, let's just take out our animal companion, known as Amigo, in this entry. They are so much fun.
Upon buying new weapons needed and ammo that you can use on helicopters and heavy plated armor guards, you can attach various mods to your weapons that will allow you to have blast rounds to inflict blast damage, armor piercing bullets, suppressors to make yourself more stealth and many other upgrades that enhance your aim, sight, health regeneration and much more. My favorite weapon in the game is by far the Supremo, no contest. The supremo is a giant metal jetpack looking object that you carry on your back and each back pack you purchase will give you a different ability, with each ability ranging from firing heat seeking missiles towards enemy airplanes, aircraft radar, tanks or even the civilian army themselves. Other Supremo allow you to set off a large EMP wave to take down alarm systems or army vehicles, release poisonous gas to slowly kill your enemy and even allow a self revive and regeneration ability that is perfect for co-op or aiding fallen allies. Each supremo also allows you to hold throwable items like dynamite, molotov, baseballs and throwing knives, which hell, with the supremo alone, you're a one man army right? well not true, you see in order to even get other supremo, you need to find depleted uranium that is hidden all over the map and in spots during tough missions and it also runs on a timer of around 5+ minutes before it can be used again. However, you may also find modifications and upgrades that allows it to refuel faster. Choice on loadout is completely up to you as you're allowed to switch to any weapon you wish to and add them to your weapon wheel at any point in your adventure, even during combat. Its fast, sleek and intuitive. ''Wait hold on you rambling freak'' you tell me, ''you completely skipped out on Amigo's. Don't make me write a nasty mean spirited comment on here and then watch for two hours to see if anyone likes my post so I can have some validation to my sad life!''. Woah woah. don't be so hard on yourself, I still love you, we all do, but I was just about to segway into Amigo's, so don't fret.
The amigo feature in this game is probably the most fun out of all of them. Amigo's are your animal friend companion's who accompany you on your journey and every single one that you befriend comes with a different trait and skillset that will aid you in your missions. There's Guapo the crocodile who wears a cute little shirt and can be commanded to sneak up on an enemy and do a take down move, Chorizo, the disabled wiener dog who has a ton of heart in that cute little body of his, who coincidently has the funniest unlockable mission of the starter Amigo. You literally just have to play with him and give him treats, yup, that's it. Give him treats an he is now your best boy for life. He doesn't have raw power like the other animal friends do, but he uses the skills of ''good boy'' and hypnotizes and distracts enemies with his cuteness, giving you time to pop off a headshot. Should you miss however, he will start biting at their ankles with all his might, its hilarious as heck and the cutest dang thing in the game. Even though Chorizo is the cutest Amigo of all, my go to was K-9000 Doggo, a cyber kinetic future doggo who specializes in brutal take downs. He comes with the Far Cry Blood Dragon DLC set and he is able to take down and slow down enemies that even have heavier armor on. He makes much more sense for a strategic playthrough due to how silently he can sneak up on bad guys. Going through the game with these amigo doggos and animal friends was a treat, but also very stress inducing if I'm honest. ''Why is that?'' you ask. It's because I take my dogs getting hurt... VERY seriously. No joke. I run through hell fire and brimstone to save a downed Amigo, sometimes even as a detriment to my health and I end up failing the mission. One example of me taking it too personal and getting way too attached to my amigo friends is when someone ran over and ''killed'' my K-9000 doggo friend. I immediately got so mad that I pulled out my rifle and started shooting at his window, he then started driving away, so I threw a molotov at him, but only hit the back of his truck, ''oh crap he's going to get away!'', I can't let that happen, I told myself, so then I unleashed the wrath of my Supremo on him and fired 6 heat seeking rockets towards him after he was like a mile away from me and laughed as I saw him and his truck explode into a million pieces. NO ONE messes with my doggo friend. NO ONE.
Now everything in this game is not perfect. I won't lie, a lot of the things in this game aren't exactly new, such as being able to call your cars, driving boats and planes, weapon wheels, capturing enemy outposts, etc, none of these are necessarily new, its the usual formula. But that's not what makes it ''not perfect'' because I have a few gripes here and there, such as when you first start your game, the aim and look sensitivity is really bad. At first I thought my tv wasn't set to game mode because of how bad it felt. I had to spend roughly twenty or so minutes in the settings adjusting it to the way that felt normal and not broken. But when I did fix it, the game felt really good and responsive to play. Other issues I had were in relation to the little bit of padding with the ''have a drink with Bicho'' mission which just involved you having a drink with him and then having to find him again when he disappears, it served no real purpose overall to what was going on and felt like a waste of time... filler and padding, the bane of my existence. There are a few other missions like this as well. Lastly another small gripe was the constant use of the word ''Guerrilla''. This phrase is hammered down your throat to excess and it goes from ''bad ass'' to ''cringe'' in like an hour. You know the feeling when someone is praising you or someone else for something by saying stuff like ''man they're good'' and you're like ya you're right they are and then again they say ''like not just good but REALLY good'' and you're like yup ok uh huh and then they keep going on over and over about how great someone or something is to the point of nausea?. This is how it is here. Literally every 5-10 minutes someone is shouting stuff like ''THATS HOW A GUERRILLA DOES IT'', ''YOU'RE THE BEST GUERRILLA'', ''YOU'RE A TRUE GUERRLLA''. I get it, Dani Rojas is awesome, I totally agree, she's a bad ass, but yall are just being obnoxious now. Chill.
Extra Stuff:
Even when you're done, you're not quite done. After you've pushed through 20 hours of main story, there is still a large variety of content left for you to do. This extra content involves things like taking out all military targets you have left to destroy, which will grant you even more rewards, as well as open up airspaces for you to fly around in without getting shot, treasure hunts that involve you figuring out cryptic clues that will lead you to a treasure that is more than worth the brain storming for, finishing the rest of your yaran stories for Yelena/Juan/Yami/Lorezeno and others, to get more backstory and extra content and resources, check point races to gain more cars, online multiplayer for campaign co-op for you and your friends to play and finally Insurgency. Insurgency unlocks once you beat the main campaign. With Castillo now dead and Yara now ''free'', new villainous figures emerge to try to create their own fascist vision or continue Castillo's work. These operate on a week by week basis, updating on your map and giving you new military targets and leaders to take down. This ensures that your adventure won't be over for a long long time.
Overall:
At the end of the day, Far Cry 6 actually surpassed my expectations for it. I went into it thinking it was going to be a by the numbers Ubisoft game, which don't get me wrong, I do enjoy that a lot, but instead I was greeted with something that was not only fun, but also profound and really addicting. The story of Yara and its people's struggle against a dictatorship is told beautifully and isn't sugar coated for us as the audience. It shows you the manipulation, the lies, the torture and horror that dictators and fascists can bestow upon their citizens if they gain too much power. It's dark, provocative, with some glimmer of hope thrown in it from our colorful cast of main characters. Sure, this isn't what I'd call a masterpiece in gaming due to some of its glitches I experienced like floating horses and disappearing NPCs, several filler missions that feel like padding, occasional annoying dialogue during main story, mechanics feeling copy and pasted from previous entries, however, with the update to the game play with Guerrilla rank that makes you focus on gear and weapons and strategy to outsmart your enemy, utilization of guerrilla facilities to build your own personal arsenal and army, characters that start off really slow, but then develop into really strong characters like Clara or Juan, engaging open world that's beautiful and fun to get lost in and down to your wee little animal friends, Far Cry 6 is a game I can strongly recommend to players that are looking for some good sandbox shooter fun. So with that having been said, my verdict is clear, GameNChick says BUY NOW
