Far Cry 6 is on the way, with fans of the franchise hoping the next game will capture the feel of the series’ trademark strong storytelling, charismatic villains, and tight first-person shooter combat. The games are also known for the drastically different endings the players can get, some of which can end in the death of the player character if the wrong choice is made.
However, there’s a big flaw in the way many of the Far Cry games handle their biggest turning points. If Far Cry 6 is going to take the series’ storytelling to the next level instead of repeating the structure of previous games in the series, it needs to make choices really matter by making one big change.
The Far Cry series has a tendency to make the outcome of the game entirely dependent on a single decision made either at the beginning of the game, or at the very end. There are a few instances where players can unlock “secret endings” at the start of the game. By simply staying put instead of trying to escape after Pagan Min leaves at the start of Far Cry 4, players will unlock the secret ending, honor their dead mother’s wishes almost immediately, and finish the game. Similarly if the player refuses to put handcuffs on Joseph Seed near the beginning of Far Cry 5 they will also be allowed to walk away, and once again the game ends almost immediately after it began.
While interesting, these choices are more fun Far Cry Easter eggs than real meaningful decisions. Few fans would claim they got their money’s worth after beating the game in under thirty minutes. The real decisions in Far Cry often come right at the end of the game. In Far Cry 3, the major decision at the end of the game is whether or not Jason sacrifices Liza, or decides to save his friends. If he kills Liza he becomes the “Ultimate Warrior” and is killed by Citra shortly afterwards. If he turns on Citra, Citra is accidentally killed by one of her followers attempting to kill Jason, and Jason and his friends get to leave.
At the end of Far Cry 5, players have the option to resist Joseph, or to walk away. If they walk away the player character Rook and the other members of the Hope’s County Sheriff’s Department get to leave, though it is implied at the end that Rook is still under the effects of Seed’s mind control and may kill – or have already killed – the others. In the resist ending, the apocalypse Seed predicted really does come true, and the player wakes up in Dutch’s bunker after a car crash with Seed claiming that they are the first in his new flock.
The problem with these endings isn’t the lack of diversity in their outcomes. The problem is that they make the player’s actions right up until the end of the game irrelevant. In one sense this works in the context of Far Cry 5‘s apocalyptic themes – both main endings are pretty nihilistic, and the fact that the player’s actions don’t matter is interesting from a storytelling perspective. However, Far Cry 6 needs to present more choices throughout its story that have cascading consequences. Not only that, but the choices with the greatest effects shouldn’t always be so obviously presented, as they are Far Cry 3 and 5.
If nothing else, Far Cry 6 should diverge from the structure of the previous games in the series simply to keep things fresh and unpredictable. In the next game players will be part of a revolution trying to take down Yara’s dictator, Anton Castillo. Revolutions are a messy and complicated business, and if Ubisoft is going to make Yara’s revolution and its consequences feel realistic instead of reductive, the revolution’s outcomes cannot come down to a single binary choice at the very end of the game.
Far Cry 6 is in development for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
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