I recently started FarCry 6 after having not played an FC game for many years. I am more an Assassin’s Creed aficianado, although Valhala didn’t resonate with me. Both games are developed and published by Ubisoft, and I honestly hadn’t realized how much crossover in mechanics had occurred between the two franchises.
Getting started in FC6 follows a pretty familiar “new action game” pattern of throwing you into a high stakes escape/chase through a part of the map that you won’t return to for quite some time. I wasn’t able to completely comprehend exactly why the antagonist of the game (voiced and modelled after Giancarlo Espisoto) was quite so… antagonistic. The opening cut scenes move very quickly through explaning that the faux-Cuba has discovered a “cancer drug” that is made by spraying some kind of poisonous red fog over otherwise normal tobacco.
Understanding where this discovery was made in this otherwise third-world country is a bit of a stretch, but the real confusion for me is that if this tobacco-based cancer treatment really worked, then a country like Yara would be absolutely rolling in cash. The island would be more Wakanda and less rock-bottom Cuba. Following from this, there would simply be no reason for El Presidente to mistreat his people so badly. Why would we be using rickety old technology, and spraying the fields with dubious chemicals from crop dusters, if we were selling cancer-curing tabacco to the entire world?
As mentioned above, there is a lot of back and forth between this Far Cry and, for example, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey. This is more particular than the generic premise of open world, hundreds of objectives to destroy, find, liberate etc. We encounter such familiar concepts as battling with specific alpha animals in hunting side quests. I am also surprised at the extent of collectibles and cosmetic customization that has developed – again, similar to Assassin’s Creed. There is also a strong emphasis on finding the high ground to scout out locations prior to attacking or infiltrating them – very familiar to me from the various Assassin’s Creed titles.
I wonder about Ubisoft’s other major open world franchise: the Tom Clancy series (particularly The Division). How similar is the setup in these games? Perhaps I’ll have to find out sometime soon.