Less realism, more fun.
El President by Stanislavsky
It is still forbidden to go into details of the plot, but in general terms I can say that plus or minus the same thing awaits us as in any other Far Cry, starting with the third part. Unless this time we are playing not as a stranger, but as a local resident named Dani Rojas, whose gender you can choose at the very beginning of the adventure. The main goal is also classic: to escape from a heavenly place, which, upon closer examination, turns out to be a real hell.
The Caribbean state of Yara is under the yoke of a bloody regime. Here, torture and reprisals against dissidents are normal, and the poor population is driven to tobacco plantations like slaves. Getting out of there, of course, is not easy, and the main character turns to the resistance fighters for help. Those, in turn, are not averse to replenishing the ranks with fresh blood (or cannon fodder), and therefore force the protagonist to run on all sorts of suicidal errands and slowly draw him into preparations for the revolution.
Not without the signature feature of the series – a charismatic antagonist with a jerk (though, this time, the jerks were poured a little). Yaroi is run by El Presidente Anton Castillo, a dictator and a sadist. If you do not stir up the excitement around Castillo just because he was played by Giancarlo Esposito, then it turns out that the villain this time turned out to be the most ordinary. And this is definitely not the fault of the actor: Esposito played in the series “Breaking Bad” more than a colorful villain – Gustavo Fring. The cold-blooded drug lord, disguised as a modest seller of chicken wings, was not inferior in charisma and cruelty to the best antagonists of Far Cry. But Anton Castillo is much more like the other role of Esposito – Moff Gideon from “The Mandalorian”… This is just a vicious and arrogant man with a lot of power and an army of stormtroopers. It is coolly played and seems quite real, but from Far Cry you expect a completely different villain: a kind of perky Mephistopheles, capable of arousing sympathy, despite all his crimes. I would like to believe that further in the plot, Castillo will still open up, and a couple of truly intriguing skeletons will be found in his closet.
Glory to convention
And it is worth taking a closer look at how the main character is being treated (Dani straightens his dislocated fingers right in battle and pulls bullets out of his hands with tweezers), and it will be impossible to get rid of the feeling of deja vu. But this feeling, I must say, is pleasant: as anyone, but to me, these crazy animations of the treatment went great back in the performance of Jason Brodie, and I am glad that they are back. Special thanks for cauterizing wounds with a cigar. First aid in Farkrai is so amusing that at first you deliberately crawl under the bullets, just to see another super-brutal way of healing.
But not all the iconic features of the third part evoke nostalgia – and, fortunately, not all have been returned. Ubisoft has completely removed the tower mechanics: here, as in the fifth part, their role was taken over by outposts, which now eat off a good part of the game time. We need a new point of movement in the region – we capture the outpost. We need information about the side effects nearby – to the outpost. You need resources or free equipment that drops out of chests – well, you get the idea … In fairness, it should be said that clearing bases is much more interesting than climbing the same type of metal structures. In Far Cry 6, they are very different: here you can find ancient fortresses, tobacco processing stations, and TV towers. All these objects look quite amusing and do not cause yawning – at least for the first six hours. But whether the developers have enough creative fervor to fill the entire huge Yara with different enemy bases, it will become clear only after the release.
Yara consists of three islands, divided into five regions, which are ruled by Castillo’s henchmen. Not visible in the screenshot, but there is still a small piece of land above – the island of Del Leon. On the small island at the bottom left, the tutorial and the first missions take place, just as the fans suggested. According to estimates, the total area of the map is twice the territory of Far Cry 5
Apparently, it was the gigantic size of the island that forced the creators to step further from realism in order to make the hero faster and more comfortable traveling along Yara. Novice partisan Dani, like a VIP, can call a “taxi” to any point in Yara where there are highways. We just open the weapon selector and call the nameless rebel, who will bring us a personal car. But you can’t go everywhere by car: the island is full of sheer cliffs, on which you have to jump and climb, like in Kirat. Of course, you can use a grappling hook, but this is too nerdy gadget. Much cooler – to hijack a helicopter, which are swarming in the air here like mosquitoes. To do this, Dani has an EMP cannon that allows you to disable equipment. You shoot a helicopter from it, and it delicately falls down, miraculously remaining unharmed. It remains only to shoot the pilot, take the turntable for yourself – and you can get anywhere with a breeze. Except, perhaps, those places that are guarded by anti-aircraft guns.
The desire of the developers to speed up the gameplay as much as possible is noticeable even in such trifles as collecting loot. Back in the fifth installment, Ubisoft abandoned the slow animations of skinning animals. Here we went even further: the skins of killed deer, cartridges and money from opponents are now collected automatically. You don’t even need to press the “E” key – just walked over the corpses, and all the loot is in your backpack.
But now it is impossible to pick up weapons from enemies, and this innovation already seems strange: even the freed hostages know how to collect guns from corpses, but not the protagonist himself. Dani Rojas either receives his barrels from rebel friends during the mission, or steals from containers with the inscription FND, or buys in the store. But you can carry a whole weapons warehouse with you. Each cannon received during the game can be pulled out of Dani’s bottomless string bag at any time and installed in the quick access slot. You no longer need to sadly trudge to the store every time you want to change your AK-47 for the AS “Val” – all the good is now always with us.
The new holster mechanic looks quite amusing against this background. The idea itself is good: removed the weapon in neutral territory – and the military will not attack the hero if they are not angry. But at the same time, Dani continues to carry on himself a flamethrower, pistols, machine guns and grenade launchers of all stripes, sniper rifles, a CD thrower from trailers, an EMP cannon and a set of throwing hatchets. Where he hides all this from the soldiers, in what such dimensionless “holster” is a mystery. But come on: such conventions definitely do not interfere with enjoying the gameplay. When you stir up a commotion in a military base, juggling cannons almost like Dumgai, the lack of realism is the last thing that worries you.
Moreover, a third-person view is cut into the rebel camp, and a hefty backpack can be seen behind the hero’s back. At first you might think that he carries all the machines in it … But no. Believe it or not, this is another megaphone – “Supremo”. With this jetpack, you can bombard enemies with a hail of missiles, destroying all living things in sight. And this is just so, for a seed … On the workbench, the knapsack can be altered to suit your tastes and goals, turning it into a portable medical station or a huge EMP installation. And if you want to push Anton Castillo from the place of the main sadist Yara, you can solder the Supremo into a giant flamethrower Furioso, spewing flame in all directions, and arrange a real hell of fire for the dictator’s poor henchmen.
Dachshund, crocodile and “shit for guns”
On the same workbenches where Supremo is configured, you can customize conventional weapons: scopes, silencers – everything is like in the fifth part. From the new added the ability to modify cartridges and install explosive, incendiary, poisonous or armor-piercing ammunition on any machine gun or pistol. For customization, you need standard craft trash – or, as the characters themselves capaciously note, “all sorts of shit for weapons”: scrap metal, gunpowder, bolts and nuts. All this is easily selected between times during story missions and at outposts – in six hours of the game, I completely pumped a few vending guns and never ran into a lack of resources. All kinds of useful trash and rags in Far Cry 6 are really in bulk.
And I have not yet told about clothes that replace skills here. As we progress, we will come across things with reinforcements: for example, respirator masks, armored shirts or miracle boots, which themselves neutralize stretch marks. The entire wardrobe found also remains with Dani forever, and at any time (even in the midst of a battle) you can change to suit the situation: put on fire-resistant gloves when they send them to burn tobacco plantations, or pull on explosive pants when you see the grenade launcher.
And in order to completely smash the dictator’s army to smithereens, you can call a friend for help. The co-op here, again, is the same as in the fifth part: the progress of the story is saved only by the host, but the invited player can take all the collected loot into the campaign. The situation is much more interesting with virtual partners. In Far Cry 6 they are called “amigos”, and there are no people among them – only war animals. Here you can make friends with a crocodile in a T-shirt with a gold fang, like a gangsta rapper: you set him on soldiers, and he picturesquely devours them. And when the soul asks for good, you can take a disabled dog named Chorizo on a sortie. He is not aggressive at all: no matter how much I tried to urge him on opponents, he didn’t even hit anyone by the leg. But it distracts the attention of Chorizo’s enemies with a bang, because it is impossible to pass by such a cuteness and not pat it. And if you perform a couple of simple tests with the help of a dog, Chorizo can be used instead of a first aid kit: all you need to do is scratch the “amigo” behind the ear, looking into its huge eyes, and the wounds will heal by themselves.
Of the serious shortcomings, it can only be noted that in Far Cry 6 the odious RPG level system still migrated from New dawn – only in a truncated and even more absurd form. The protagonist now has no skills, but he and all opponents have ranks. A bar of life hangs over the heads of the soldiers, and your damage to them greatly depends on whether you are higher or lower than their level. It looks very crooked when you put some warriors, as it should be, from one headshot, and you can’t stand others from three. As one of the rebels explained, it’s all about “better training.” The head of such overtrained comrades may not be covered by anything: bullets hit the forehead, and even a bloody hole looms, but an experienced soldier does not care. The brain is far from the main organ, we continue to fight!
And the main snag here is not even that it looks delusional. If we take the bottomless string bag of weapons and the healer dogs for granted, then we have to accept the bulletproof foreheads of the soldiers. The question is haunted: if there are no abilities and skills in the game, and all enhancements are tied to clothing, then why was the rank system needed at all? It can be naive to assume that the levels are needed to prevent the player from entering the final locations ahead of time. But in the previous parts they did just fine without it! We can only hope (again, very naive and optimistic) that experiments with the rank system have nothing to do with attempts to persuade players to donate, as was the case in the same New Dawn. Let me remind you that buying a high-level cannon there got rid of the boring grind of outposts. Alas, what causes excitement in the first six hours of the game can later easily turn into a dull job, which can only get rid of ahead of time for money.
And yet, if we omit the above controversial points, the first adventures on Yar turned out to be gorgeous. Yes, there was no revolution – but not every system needs a revolution. The series is developing at its own leisurely pace: it cuts off elements that are boring to everyone, adds new killer features and even returns chips that someone probably missed. And although the final departure from realism will not go to everyone, the developers have been moving in this direction for a long time. In the end, even in the fifth part, you could go on the attack with a trained bear. Well, now you have a healing cigar in your pocket, a cannon in your hands that lands helicopters without damage, and your friends are a whole gang of bloodthirsty militia beasts. The main thing is that the crazy island, where all this is possible, does not become boring to the players even before the end of the plot.
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