Far Cry 6 review: a waste of potential

Yara, the Cuban-inspired region where Far Cry 6 takes place, it is presented as a “tropical paradise frozen in time”. His people once raised their weapons to overthrow a dictator, but now, his son Antón Castillo (voiced by Afro-Italian actor Giancarlo Esposito) is following in his footsteps, deploying the military in every corner and eliminating anyone but what he calls. a “True Yaran”. History begins to repeat itself through abusive and exploitative practices, as the country burns and progress is measured in blood. And just like its island surroundings, Far Cry 6 It seems like history repeats itself, a perfect showcase of how Far Cry as a whole is frozen in time.

Through the eyes of Dani Rojas (a character that can be male or female), you participate in the fight against this new dictatorship, after Castillo arrests and executes a group of Yarans fleeing to Miami. You survive and agree to help the revolutionary group Libertad in exchange for another ship to the United States. But once the time comes, you decide to stay and help, accepting the task of convincing three factions to join forces and defeat Castillo.

In classic Far Cry fashion, this means traveling through a massive open world environment, taking on missions from each of these groups with objectives that Far Cry it has been supported hundreds of times before. You will infiltrate camps and outposts, either by speeding hard or taking a stealth approach; you will use a flamethrower to burn a plantation; You will face waves of enemies while you wait for a progress bar to fill up.

It is a cycle in which it is entertaining to participate during the first hours. It is a foundation that has worked well since its implementation in Far cry 3. But it gets old quickly. Enemies don’t offer much variety, and encounters almost always end with destroying a tank or helicopter as a climax.

Past activities related to crafts, such as hunting animals, are still present, but no longer felt as the central focus. Most of the crafting is done with materials scattered around the world. They can be turned into suppressors for weapons, sights, and different types of ammunition that take out certain enemies more easily. However, in practice, not having armor-piercing rounds for an armored enemy is not the end of the world, when explosives and other bombastic tools exist.

Two of these tools are Supreme and your Friends. The first is a backpack that offers an ultimate attack type, ranging from EMP shock waves to a rocket blast. The second is the companions, another element that we have seen in previous Far Cry games. The Handsome Crocodile is great for a full speed approach, while the Chorizo ​​Dog will gladly distract enemies so you can take them out with your machete. However, in my experience, combat scenarios are recycled so frequently that I was rarely challenged to change my tools and play style.

So if these few additions don’t do much, and combat quickly falls into a repeating cycle, what exactly is the main draw of Far Cry 6? The answer is Yara, for better or for worse.

As someone born in Argentina, I was intrigued, if not a little concerned, about how the game would portray a Latin American setting, specifically, one with a military dictatorship front and center. Many countries, including Argentina and Cuba, have endured them in the past and the scars exist to this day. Seeing Yarans under a curfew, standing by the roadside to show their papers, or even imprisoned in torture camps, hits close to home.

I was not alive during the last dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1983, but everyone I know personally from that time, including my parents, has stories similar to these scenarios. My mother used to tell me that the military stopped my grandparents in the middle of the street to verify their identifications, or the constant concern that soldiers could knock on anyone’s door at any time in search of so-called subversives, anyone suspected of think differently from the military. College students and young people, in particular, were some of the main targets. Journalists were also the center of attention and were often “silenced”, a fact that is mentioned briefly during an opening sequence of Far Cry 6.

Unfortunately, Far Cry 6 it continues the series’ weary tradition of portraying itself as politics, on the surface, while groping for any attempt at meaningful criticism. Like Far cry 5, which was presented as an exploration of white supremacy in the US but failed in execution, Far Cry 6 is a game where you rescue refugees using a weapon that plays “Macarena” while aiming down.

The representation of Far Cry 6The guerrillas are equally conflictive. The term guerrilla itself is so overused among game characters (“once a guerrilla, always a guerrilla”) that it becomes a catchphrase. The people you help also fall into tropes of Latin American characters: the cheeky alcoholic know-it-all; a sex-obsessed couple (jokingly called “animals”); the veteran guerrilla who constantly sings “Long live freedom.” Bad stereotypes abound and although I tried to ignore them, the dialogue in the game doesn’t help.

Speaking of tropes (as I and other Latin American people saw it coming, since the game’s reveal), Yara is a native Spanish region that uses the English language by default, and most of the time, the characters remind you of their nationality when changing of language. without any consistency. There are sequences in which two characters speak completely in Spanish for a few seconds (one of the most prominent is a song that is completely subtitled in English during a scene), then they quickly return to a mashup: the the same recently seen in other AAA games like The Last of Us: Part 2 and Cyberpunk 2077.

It’s been said multiple times, but when Spanish-speaking people speak in English, we’re not constantly switching mid-sentence in Spanish. Far Cry 6 he is obsessed with this fallacy. At best, it seems like a parody, and at worst, a total disrespect. Castillo quotes his father at one point, saying, “Jesus would make an amazing president of Yaran.” When I heard that, I was pretty close to leaving the controller and ending the day. I stayed with the game long enough to see the end credits, but unfortunately the rest of the game didn’t fix any of this.

What bothers me the most is the wasted potential to get it right. Adequate Latin American representation in games is severely lacking, but 2021 in particular has stood out on both ends. I found Hitman 3Mendoza’s performance was a pleasant surprise on almost all fronts, while the first Argentine operator on Rainbow six siege it sounded nothing like us. Far Cry 6 paints a hopeful picture at times, as all the signs in the game, and all the graffiti, are written in Spanish. Recognizing songs on the radio, and even hearing Dani sing about them, made me stop for a second with joy and surprise. But as soon as a character started speaking, the moment was ruined.

For a Spanish-sourced setting, Yara is a vast, sprawling, and beautiful island, and on more than one occasion, I parked my car to take a screenshot of the sunset lighting up a nearby shoreline. However, it is a world constructed by a conglomerate of studies in which workers have described experiencing abuse, harassment, misconduct in the workplace, toxic leaders and racial pay disparities, and neither empty promises nor leadership changes it seems likely to solve those systemic problems. As Castillo himself says, if the guerrillas manage to recover Yara, what will they do with an island that is already on fire?

Far Cry as a whole is frozen in time. The few mechanical additions in the last entry in the series don’t show much improvement over what Far cry 5 or Far Cry New Dawn I have already explored. And if your interest lies in finding some suitable representation appearance, you’d better look elsewhere. Very few examples, in recent years, have been able to break the norm. What if Far Cry 6 It’s a hint of what AAA editors can do with a Latin American setting, painting it more like a showcase than a real image worth celebrating. I’d rather not see another attempt.

Far Cry 6 It will be released on October 7 on Windows PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Stadia, Xbox Series X, and Xbox One. The game was reviewed on PlayStation 5 using a pre-launch download code provided by Ubisoft. Vox Media has affiliate associations. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find Additional information on Polygon’s ethics policy here.