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Montana Itself Is the Real Star of Far Cry 5 – IGN First


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Trapped within the jaw-dropping beauty and authenticity of Hope County is Far Cry’s trademark absurdity that makes for a hell of memorable time.

Some of my most memorable moments in my time spent exploring the first of three regions in Far Cry 5 didn’t involve explosions, trigger-happy cultists, or psychotic religious figures. While those moments certainly took place, and with the kind of insanity we’ve come to expect from the series, it was the much more serene and spontaneous times that have stayed with me since Ubisoft Montreal invited us up to play a roughly 15-hour chunk of what the team’s been cooking up for the last several years.

About an hour into my playthrough, I discovered a cool feature where if you pull out the binoculars, and then quick toggle the HUD off, you could walk around viewing the world through what is effectively a camera lens. From that moment on I spent a lot of my time exploring the rugged mountains, valleys, rivers, and open plains as a budding documentarian. And in all honesty, I was surprised how engaging this quiet act of observation could be in a game where I’m also allowed shoot explosive tipped arrows at helicopters while parachuting from a World War 2-era fighter plane I had stalled and ditched seconds earlier.

The Last Best Place

What struck me hardest was the validity of Hope County, Montana, the game’s fictional locale, and how it so effectively portrays the raw beauty of its inspiration. Growing up in Montana, my childhood weekends were spent inhaling breakfast so I could head out into the woods with my BB gun and fishing rod to explore and adventure until sundown. And in all honesty, having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for more than 20 years, I’ve been so removed from those days – what it was like to be enveloped by nature – that playing Far Cry 5 genuinely surprised me with memories I’d all but forgotten.

I’m sure all this sounds hopelessly cheesy. But Ubisoft’s recreation of that place – the steep hills, expansive golden farmland, and thick, chapped bark of the pines – lend the kind of eerie, organic authenticity that you can only find in a place you’re familiar with. While the tropical island and Himalayan settings of the two previous numbered entries in the franchise were amazing to behold, Far Cry 5’s Montana resonates with me in a way those couldn’t.

I’m excited to share the wildlife and environment pieces that we’ve got in the works for later this month – all of which will live on our Far Cry 5 IGN First hub – so you can see exactly what I’m talking about when I say that Hope County feels like a persistent place teeming with the uniquely Monatanian animals and landscapes you can’t find anywhere else in America. But even beyond the nature aspect of the environment, Hope County is dotted with small-town folks and blue collar business that drive the way of life outside the cities.

The level of detail to be found in the farms, junk yards, rail yards, lumber yards, auto shops, and the local watering holes that serve as both dingy dive bars and family restaurants is incredible. No location I wandered through felt out of place, or worse, placed there for the sole purpose of filling space. There’s a pervasive sense of lived-in at the core of this environment that’s really impressive.

You Wouldn’t Believe Me If I Told You

But like all things, there’s an absurd yang to the serene ying of Far Cry 5’s natural setting. After all, Hope County is a war zone, where everyone is armed to the teeth out of necessity, and where there are next to no rules when it comes to the interaction between people and between people and the environment. As I stated earlier, this is a series that isn’t known for subtlety, and watching these two principles clash is both amusing and bewildering.

For example, at one point I had sat myself on the bank of a river with my binocular-camera zoomed in on a whitetail deer grazing on the far shore. Suddenly a black bear emerged from the woods and, to my surprise, didn’t immediately lunge for the deer. They were both just foraging near one another, completely unphased by one another, or me, lurking from a distance. All of the sudden, the deer lifted its head, tensed up, and immediately bolted back into the brush. I had thought the animals’ AI had finally kicked in, but instead, the low hum of an engine is what drove the deer away.

Seconds later a pair of locals on a jet ski came into view, and proceeded to do aquatic donuts in the river. The bear seemed immensely pissed off by this, and charged the two, swimming out to the deeper water where it harmlessly pawed at them. Upon seeing an angry bear swimming toward them, the passenger pulled out an Uzi – because of course he did – and began emptying clips at the bear. This went on for some time until the bear, unable to contend with an automatic weapon, died in the water and the two rode off up river.

It was a surreal moment that pretty much perfectly encapsulated my feeling on Far Cry 5. A beautiful, natural world that’s at constant conflict with the craziness of what’s happening between the locals and the Project Eden’s Gate cult. Throughout my time playing, it felt like a three-sided conflict: the good guys, the bad guys, and the living world around them.

But that flair for the over-the-top is the excellent punctuation of Far Cry 5. Every 20 minutes something so unbelievable would happen that I’d have to lean over to my colleague and nudge him, as if to say, “Did you see that?”

And as much as I genuinely admire the premise and characters – some of which we’ll be diving into later this month – I lost count of how many little perfectly timed moments kept happening over and over again because the world is simply set up for everything in it to nudge against one another.

There was the time I was chased a turkey into a pack of wild pigs that took turns trampling me to death as I tried to flee. Or the time I rescued a civilian imprisoned in a cultist van, who thanked me, got in a car and ran over my dog on the way out of town (it’s OK: Boomer survived!). Or the plane that seemingly hunted me down after I bailed out of it, crushing me a good 30 seconds after I had a parachuted safely to the ground.

All these little emergent moments from just 15 hours in Hope County came together to create a kind of highlight reel that’s kept me smiling since I left. And I know there are dozens, maybe hundreds, more in store when I finally get back.

Brandin Tyrrel is an Editor at IGN. Let’s chat over on Twitter at @BrandinTyrrel.





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