Spoilers I guess, but who really cares?
I finished Far Cry 6 last night. In so far as I completed the main storyline and poked at every nick and cranny I could do until I felt I'd experienced everything the game had to offer, hoping to find a reason to convince myself I still like far Cry. It's funny to think I probably put 20-40 hours, maybe more into it and I'm still left severely disappointed. People often say they base a games value by cost versus content size so if I paid $30 for this and I got 50 hours out of it I should feel more satisfied than say an indie game I spent $15 dollars on and only played for 5-10 hours. I don't think in those terms. Either a game left me with a warm fuzzy feeling or it didn't regardless of hour much I spent. I've felt more burned by a $5 game than a $60 game many times. I don't feel "good" about my experience with far Cry 6. I feel pretty burned out about it and I'm trying to consolidate my thoughts on why that is.
It immediately occurred to me within a few hours of the story that this was the least interesting story I've yet to play in a Far Cry game. I kept expecting some big twists and turns. Id be more fascinated and maybe horrified by the antagonists and feel more empathetic towards the rebels. Nope. The dictator while voiced magnificently is largely a one note villain. He's uncaring and uncomplicated. A generic Francisco Franco type, not even a craven Mao or a Mussolini (if you can find it I recommend watching the short film "Human Remains 1998", it will f'your world up about dictators). The auxiliary villains are equally tired and one note. Corporate pollution guy, Desperate dictators wife, Dictators Cousin, oh and some general or two or an evil doctor. Christ I've already forgotten anything about them. They were barely on screen. That was something I felt like was really evident. I spent most of the game fighting nobody's and barely recall the brief scenes with the main villains outside Carlo.
There's no feeling of gradual progression in the game or that it's going somewhere, I was just told to do things. Often I'd end a main mission only to find myself thinking "Ok what now?" because none of it ever really felt like it was coming together. You'd just be prodded to help one generic faction or another and patiently wait for the game to tell you you're getting somewhere. Juxtapose this with Maybe Far Cry 3 which had a very linear plot of Escape and Far Cry 5 which had compelling weirdo villains that you felt driven to explore and understand what's actually happening. I kept hoping as hinted in the trailers that the Father & Son dictatorship would go in some interesting direction, but it never really does.
The protagonist and compatriots are also a problem in that they are again generic and one note, inoffensive. There's no complexity - teenager factions, age guys faction, farmer faction. I didn't especially care for any of them. They go out of their way to show off a transvestite and tell you one character is trans. This could have been interesting as cultural politics in the Central and South Americas is very complicated, I think its still illegal to even be gay in some countries, but while the transvestite is mildly funny, the trans person is just a diversity inclusion. I didn't dislike them, but it was a male character they rewrote as trans so they could say they had a trans person. Your character mostly just gives generic answers to everything "That's weird, what a weirdo, ok" I'd prefer she/he just not talk. I can't help but feel like once they had a story written up they did the characters as a by the numbers after thought. Someone chained to a desk wrote the dialog for this and it shows.
So that really only leaves the gameplay to defend this game. This where the game really starts to fall apart and a substantial reason for concern about the life of Far Cry going forward. The easy bake oven basic element of Far Cry is still there since Far Cry 2. Explore, Solve Puzzles, Capture Bases, progress map space. The latter appears to be missing. This doesn't as far as I could tell provide any purpose or meaning to the game beyond providing spawn points. I might be losing my mind here, but I specifically recall this activity being a primary driver in progressing the previous games. Like you actually needed to do this to open up the games story, but I only know at some point a mission opened up that said I could go killed Castillo. It could have been there the whole time for all I know. I just kept trying to find story missions until there weren't anymore. I was never explicitly shown I was making any progress. It left me with a weird milquetoast feeling about why I was doing anything in the game beyond just going and killing Castillo. I remember really enjoying climbing radio towers in Far Cry 4 and it having a use and a number I could march towards. No radio towers in this one. Its also worth noting this game has "hunting"...but you never use it. Its not important to the story, there's only one brief "gather shit" quest and ultimately at best hunting and fishing is an amusing distraction. It feels painfully like it was obligatory Ubisoft mechanic as it only leads to unlocking some more outfits.
Its also fuckin broken
The majority of adjunct, non-required gameplay revolves around you collecting and upgrading weapons and armor. This mechanic seems poorly designed and actually broken. They warn you early on that you need different bullets and guns to do different things. This patently untrue. You need armor piercing bullets and a scope. I found a 1911 I have gun-nut nostalgia for and attached a scope, silencer and armor piercing bullets. I used this and a rocket launcher exclusively for the last 20+ hours of my play time. All enemies died with a headshot. I was able to headshot and kill heavily armored enemies from so far away they were just specs in my scope. I mean I sat on a mountain and headhunted enemies a mile or more away. I know its broken because many times it warned me an alarm or something is armor "Cant shoot this". I shot it, it blew up. What's interesting is I could do it with my pistol, but not a single sniper rifle I tried, which tells me they built a mechanic assuming you'd only use certain weapons to do certain things, but never tested it. My friend commented "This is the easiest game I've ever played".
With the guns and armor being ultimately meaningless because you can headshot any enemy and kill them with pretty much anything it made the whole collecting character of the game seem painfully forced. Less like an intended quality of the game and more like a Ubisoft development requirement. It had the opposite effect on me. After I tired of collecting guns once I realized it was broken I started thinking about the original shooters, your Far Cry, Crisis and Halo where in you never collected guns. If I recall correctly you never "owned" any. You had to collect guns and ammo off corpses and in many cases the game would ramp up difficulty by making you choose carefully what guns you'd hold on to. With this oversaturation of collectables I quite miss it.
In a weird sad turn the game doesn't actually end. Afterwards they've setup a system where every week a new "insurgent" pops up you have to go defeat with a couple bases. Its the same gameplay loop as any other nameless captain you kill, but you're rewarded with more guns and money. This is to keep that subscription money coming, well not from me. *Yawn*. Ok Ubisoft I get it. Goddamn you've really given up on "making" games anymore haven't you? My relationship with Ubisoft is now at the point where I'm not so much breaking up with them, but I'm just going to mute their dms. I'm not mad, just not interested anymore. It did have cute pets, but I can just go get my own cat.
I finished Far Cry 6 last night. In so far as I completed the main storyline and poked at every nick and cranny I could do until I felt I'd experienced everything the game had to offer, hoping to find a reason to convince myself I still like far Cry. It's funny to think I probably put 20-40 hours, maybe more into it and I'm still left severely disappointed. People often say they base a games value by cost versus content size so if I paid $30 for this and I got 50 hours out of it I should feel more satisfied than say an indie game I spent $15 dollars on and only played for 5-10 hours. I don't think in those terms. Either a game left me with a warm fuzzy feeling or it didn't regardless of hour much I spent. I've felt more burned by a $5 game than a $60 game many times. I don't feel "good" about my experience with far Cry 6. I feel pretty burned out about it and I'm trying to consolidate my thoughts on why that is.
It immediately occurred to me within a few hours of the story that this was the least interesting story I've yet to play in a Far Cry game. I kept expecting some big twists and turns. Id be more fascinated and maybe horrified by the antagonists and feel more empathetic towards the rebels. Nope. The dictator while voiced magnificently is largely a one note villain. He's uncaring and uncomplicated. A generic Francisco Franco type, not even a craven Mao or a Mussolini (if you can find it I recommend watching the short film "Human Remains 1998", it will f'your world up about dictators). The auxiliary villains are equally tired and one note. Corporate pollution guy, Desperate dictators wife, Dictators Cousin, oh and some general or two or an evil doctor. Christ I've already forgotten anything about them. They were barely on screen. That was something I felt like was really evident. I spent most of the game fighting nobody's and barely recall the brief scenes with the main villains outside Carlo.
There's no feeling of gradual progression in the game or that it's going somewhere, I was just told to do things. Often I'd end a main mission only to find myself thinking "Ok what now?" because none of it ever really felt like it was coming together. You'd just be prodded to help one generic faction or another and patiently wait for the game to tell you you're getting somewhere. Juxtapose this with Maybe Far Cry 3 which had a very linear plot of Escape and Far Cry 5 which had compelling weirdo villains that you felt driven to explore and understand what's actually happening. I kept hoping as hinted in the trailers that the Father & Son dictatorship would go in some interesting direction, but it never really does.
The protagonist and compatriots are also a problem in that they are again generic and one note, inoffensive. There's no complexity - teenager factions, age guys faction, farmer faction. I didn't especially care for any of them. They go out of their way to show off a transvestite and tell you one character is trans. This could have been interesting as cultural politics in the Central and South Americas is very complicated, I think its still illegal to even be gay in some countries, but while the transvestite is mildly funny, the trans person is just a diversity inclusion. I didn't dislike them, but it was a male character they rewrote as trans so they could say they had a trans person. Your character mostly just gives generic answers to everything "That's weird, what a weirdo, ok" I'd prefer she/he just not talk. I can't help but feel like once they had a story written up they did the characters as a by the numbers after thought. Someone chained to a desk wrote the dialog for this and it shows.
So that really only leaves the gameplay to defend this game. This where the game really starts to fall apart and a substantial reason for concern about the life of Far Cry going forward. The easy bake oven basic element of Far Cry is still there since Far Cry 2. Explore, Solve Puzzles, Capture Bases, progress map space. The latter appears to be missing. This doesn't as far as I could tell provide any purpose or meaning to the game beyond providing spawn points. I might be losing my mind here, but I specifically recall this activity being a primary driver in progressing the previous games. Like you actually needed to do this to open up the games story, but I only know at some point a mission opened up that said I could go killed Castillo. It could have been there the whole time for all I know. I just kept trying to find story missions until there weren't anymore. I was never explicitly shown I was making any progress. It left me with a weird milquetoast feeling about why I was doing anything in the game beyond just going and killing Castillo. I remember really enjoying climbing radio towers in Far Cry 4 and it having a use and a number I could march towards. No radio towers in this one. Its also worth noting this game has "hunting"...but you never use it. Its not important to the story, there's only one brief "gather shit" quest and ultimately at best hunting and fishing is an amusing distraction. It feels painfully like it was obligatory Ubisoft mechanic as it only leads to unlocking some more outfits.
Its also fuckin broken
The majority of adjunct, non-required gameplay revolves around you collecting and upgrading weapons and armor. This mechanic seems poorly designed and actually broken. They warn you early on that you need different bullets and guns to do different things. This patently untrue. You need armor piercing bullets and a scope. I found a 1911 I have gun-nut nostalgia for and attached a scope, silencer and armor piercing bullets. I used this and a rocket launcher exclusively for the last 20+ hours of my play time. All enemies died with a headshot. I was able to headshot and kill heavily armored enemies from so far away they were just specs in my scope. I mean I sat on a mountain and headhunted enemies a mile or more away. I know its broken because many times it warned me an alarm or something is armor "Cant shoot this". I shot it, it blew up. What's interesting is I could do it with my pistol, but not a single sniper rifle I tried, which tells me they built a mechanic assuming you'd only use certain weapons to do certain things, but never tested it. My friend commented "This is the easiest game I've ever played".
With the guns and armor being ultimately meaningless because you can headshot any enemy and kill them with pretty much anything it made the whole collecting character of the game seem painfully forced. Less like an intended quality of the game and more like a Ubisoft development requirement. It had the opposite effect on me. After I tired of collecting guns once I realized it was broken I started thinking about the original shooters, your Far Cry, Crisis and Halo where in you never collected guns. If I recall correctly you never "owned" any. You had to collect guns and ammo off corpses and in many cases the game would ramp up difficulty by making you choose carefully what guns you'd hold on to. With this oversaturation of collectables I quite miss it.
In a weird sad turn the game doesn't actually end. Afterwards they've setup a system where every week a new "insurgent" pops up you have to go defeat with a couple bases. Its the same gameplay loop as any other nameless captain you kill, but you're rewarded with more guns and money. This is to keep that subscription money coming, well not from me. *Yawn*. Ok Ubisoft I get it. Goddamn you've really given up on "making" games anymore haven't you? My relationship with Ubisoft is now at the point where I'm not so much breaking up with them, but I'm just going to mute their dms. I'm not mad, just not interested anymore. It did have cute pets, but I can just go get my own cat.
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