Far Cry 5 is more effective - and relevant - than it knows

Unrelated. I bought the first game based on your review and its been on sale frequently so wanted to know what you thought of it. Glad to know that writing didn’t disappoint you.

God of War’s best aspect, to my surprise, is now its story. And I don’t believe alot of reviewers critique that as well as you do, hence my curiosity regarding your review. Hope you review it in the near future.

Well. One of us rented it, and the other sucker went out and bought the $90 version because they had invested in the neighborhood of 500 hours combined in FC2-Primal and they were foolishly convinced that FC5 was going to be a great game.

I rented it again. My plan is to run away in a plane anytime I’m hunted, or marked, or blessed, or whatever. I’ve now been chased around every province and am curious as to if I’ll still be hunted when I go back.

I guess then it’s watching the drippingly melodramatic eyeball to eyeball cutscenes while I do other things for 5 minutes. Or push the stick forward, or push a button to do something trippy.

Now that I think about it 4 had all these trippy scenes where you shoot weird enemies and they puff dissappear, and your visuals are all time shifted.

You can’t run away. If you’ve been reading the thread, that’s part of what makes the capture such epic levels of bullshit. No matter where you are, no matter what you are doing, you will get captured.

Yeah, one of them will “sleep dart” you in a helicopter at 1km moving at full speed.

It’s quite possible I’m cutting them too much slack, for sure. Though I will say, while over the top it is, it’s not that far from reality. The stuff Joseph says in those vignettes between deaths of his lieutenants is more grounded than the rantings of John, Jacob, or Faith.

Clearly this is an area you are knowledgeable about far more than I am. I haven’t seen any of those programs you discuss, but I trust your judgment on them. My only frames of reference are watching things like Jonestown and Waco play out on TV, But I agree that video games perhaps are not the best venue for careful and nuanced analysis of cult behavior.

In this game, they almost go down that path with Faith’s story; there are hints and even some direct statements that suggest the possibility of a more complex treatment of her character. John or Jacob, not so much, and goodness only knows what bee got in Joshua’s bonnet.

Yeah, that’s fair. The over-the-top language definitely fits. I think my main issue is that it comes across as trite coming from yet another Ubi-villain leering into the camera. I’m also keenly aware that the language has been scrubbed of any direct reference to Christ or Christianity or even the Bible. There are bits from the book of Revelation, but that stuff about bowls and whatnot is all but public domain these days. In the scene with the pastor at Fall’s Church and the hidden gun, the game makes it abundantly clear that the cult is not using the Bible.

Yes, I’m so glad you called that out! I wasn’t sure I heard what I thought I heard, but I wished I’d heard it better. It was mostly drowned out in the cacophony of my ammo being firehosed into a bag of boss battle hit points.

Oh, also a movie called The Sacrament belongs on my list. A scaled down version of Jonestown with a chillingly avuncular Gene Jones (no relation?) as the Jim Jones character!

-Tom

Yeah, I noticed that. I suspect it was a cop out, not wanting to offend or something. It does rather rob the whole thing of any gravitas.

As an aside, there does seem to be a sort of tradition of folks reworking scripture to their own ends. When I was in college, there were there itinerant stump preachers who would do their thing outside the student union. A hallmark of their spiels was their assertion that they had been given authority to “amend the scriptures,” which usually translated into being free to avoid any textual arguments with the legions of devout Baptist fundamentalists who emerged to do spiritual battle every time these guys came to campus.

Ah, but you can delay the kidnapping for a long while! At least, I did!

I got the message I was being hunted, so I fast-traveled to the SW portion of the map that I’d already freed and I was able to delay the sleep dart for about four hours of real time while I frittered around fishing, doing odd jobs, and generally just enjoying the open-world. The moment I popped back into Whitetail, I was knocked out.

Where is the “spit in cult leader’s face while they are spouting off” button?

Also if you’re on a story mission it can be delayed iirc.

I love this game. Just started the second area. I like to pet my cat during battles. I haven’t tried mixing dogs and cats yet but that’s next. Strafeville, population some bad guys!

I did an outpost last night with no alarms while fishing. Didn’t fire a shot. I stood in a boat and directed the action like a big shot with my binoculars while reeling in trout. I had a sniper popping guys off on one side while my pilot did bombing runs on the tougher guys and groups. At one point an errant rocket went whizzing by around 30 feet away while I was fighting one monster of a fish. That fish fought way harder than I did that battle.

Next outpost it was baseball bats to the head. Knocked a sucker right out with a thrown Louisville slugger right as he was going for the alarm. Get 'er done!

Helped my kid take out an outpost. We used Boomer and after we pretty much stealthed close to the outpost, I looked over and a large bear just started running at my kid. I yelled BEAR and he tried to beat the thing with his bat. Of course, no more stealth. So, I ran over to hit the bear with my flame thrower. The bear ran away towards the out post and started attacking cult members while still on fire…freaking awesome. They directed their attention toward the flaming fur ball and we took out the rest of the members pretty quickly…and got a nice bear pelt as a bonus.

Yeah, one thing about Far Cry 4 and 5 is the wildlife, while, shall we say, somewhat aggressive, is a freakin’ hoot. Lining up a stealthy sniper shot…and bam! eagle from the sky, bear from the woods, honey badger gnawing on your foot, wolf pack looking for dinner. And tossing bait to lure animals to attack bad guys…so good.

I agree, wildlife is awesome in this. I had just completed the Peaches quest when she starts attacking Hurk. He goes down and she starts coming after me. I put an arrow in her but she doesn’t go down. This is when I notice she’s missing her collar. Wait, what? This is a DIFFERENT, WILD mountain lion! We have a brief battle and when I win I go over and revive Hurk and find Peaches down too. Stupid fake Peaches imposter got them both!

I really do like the animal animations that Ubi does. In both 4 and 5 at least (memory is hazy on 3), the critters are damn good. In 5, when Peaches comes up for a snuggle, they really nailed the sense of power and feline grace, pretty hard to do really. And 4’s elephants are fabulous.