Far Cry 6 is a 2021 action-adventure first-person shooter game developed by Ubisoft Toronto and published by Ubisoft. It is the sixth main installment in the Far Cry series and the successor to 2018’s Far Cry 5. The game is set on the fictional Caribbean island of Yara, ruled as a dictatorship by “El Presidente” Antón Castillo (portrayed by Giancarlo Esposito) who is raising his son Diego (Anthony Gonzalez) to follow in his rule. Players take on the role of guerilla fighter Dani Rojas (voiced by either Nisa Gunduz or Sean Rey), attempting to topple Castillo and his regime. Gameplay focuses on combat and exploration; players fight enemy soldiers and dangerous wildlife using a wide array of weapons and gadgets. The game features many elements found in role-playing games, such as a leveling up system and side quests. It also features a cooperative multiplayer mode.
Development of Far Cry 6 began around 2016 and was extensive. The team studied several revolutions of recent history for the game’s narrative, primarily the Cuban Revolution of 1953–1959. The game was designed to be ‘political’, covering themes such as the rise of fascism in a nation, the costs of imperialism, and the need for free-and-fair elections, in response to the controversy generated by Far Cry 5. The development team also sought to bring back several elements from earlier Far Cry titles such as a tropical setting and a fully voiced protagonist. The game was first teased by Esposito in July 2020, and officially announced later that month, at the Ubisoft Forward online event.
Far Cry 6 was released worldwide for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Stadia, and Amazon Luna on October 7, 2021. It received a generally mixed reception, with critics praising the setting, visuals, Esposito’s performance, and the small improvements brought to the series’ gameplay formula, but criticizing its story, lack of innovation, and aging design. Several releases of downloadable content were subsequently published, including three expansion packs following antagonists from past Far Cry games.
Gameplay
Similar to the previous entries in the series, Far Cry 6 is an action-adventure first-person shooter game set in an open world environment which the player can navigate on foot or via using various land, water, and air vehicles. The world is divided into seven main regions with an array of terrain, ranging from urban areas and dense jungles, to mountain ranges and open oceans.[2][3] Gameplay focuses on armed and close-quarters combat. Players are able to use a wide array of conventional weapons (such as sidearms, assault rifles, submachine guns, shotguns, light-machine guns, sniper rifles and grenade launchers). Firearms can be customized using materials found throughout the world.
In a new addition to the series, the game features several prototypes of special weaponry, called “Resolver weapons”, each offering a certain perk to the player’s loadout, for example a silent close-range nailgun or a sling-shot projectile weapon which fires CDs.[4][5] Another new addition is the “Supremo” backpacks, allowing augmentation of the playstyle by assigning more perks to the player’s loadout, such as firing homing missiles or seeing enemies through solid objects.[6] Unlike the previous titles in the series, players are able to holster weapons; as a result, enemy NPCs will not attack the player on sight, unless within restricted areas.[7]
The game introduces a “Rank Level” system which indicates the player’s rank and highlights the level of a specific region. As the game progresses and the player explores more of the world, enemy forces will be equipped with more powerful gear and target locations become more heavily fortified.[8][9] Like previous games in the series, outposts are scattered throughout the world, allowing the player to kill or neutralize the enemy presence to reduce the dominance of forces in a particular area.[10] The game also implements a new notoriety and reputation-style gameplay mechanic. If a high notoriety level is earned, as a result of actions taken against enemy NPCs for example, the player will be hunted by special forces. The notoriety meter can be reduced by fleeing combat and staying hidden for a specific period of time.[11]
The player has the ability to construct and upgrade guerrilla bases called “Camp Facilities”, which provide useful resources and in-game bonuses to increase the skillset of the character, specialize perks in hunting animals, unlock fast travel locations throughout Yara, enlist new recruits and manage their equipment, or launch friendly NPC operations.[12] The game’s version of Far Cry 5‘s “Fangs for Hire” companion system returns, called “Amigos”, which features recruitable animals with a variety of abilities and perks tasked to assist the player in combat and exploration.[13]
Synopsis
Setting and characters
Far Cry 6 takes place in 2021 on the fictional Caribbean state of Yara, evocative of Cuba (though Cuba exists in the game as well) and is described as “the largest Far Cry playground to date”. Yara’s dictatorial military junta is headed by “El Presidente” Antón Castillo (voiced by and modelled after Giancarlo Esposito), who is guiding his son Diego (Anthony Gonzalez) to succeed him.[14][15][16] The player assumes the role of a local Yaran rebel named Dani Rojas, a former conscript in the Yaran military turned guerrilla fighter who initially yearns to escape Castillo’s violent crackdown on Yaran civil society for the American city of Miami. The player can select Dani’s gender at the start of the game.[17]
Plot
In 1967, a guerrilla revolution led to Yara being isolated from the rest of the world. Since then the island has been frozen in time for decades, thus wrecking the Yaran economy to the brink of collapse.
In 2014, Antón Castillo, the son of deposed former president Gabriel Castillo, is elected president of Yara and promises stability with the creation of “Viviro”, a new cancer treatment drug developed from Yara’s tobacco. Seven years later, he announces a draft “lottery” to enslave workers for the tobacco fields. As the Fuerzas Nacionales de Defensa (FND), the country’s armed forces, begins rounding up poor citizens in the capital city of Esperanza, Dani Rojas joins with friends Lita Torres and Alejo Ruiz in planning an escape to make a new life in the United States. Alejo is shot and killed, but Dani and Lita escape on a fishing boat with other refugees, bound for Miami. However, the boat is stopped by Antón, who reveals his son Diego Castillo was attempting to sneak away on the boat as well; after retrieving him, Antón orders the boat sunk by gunfire. Dani and Lita survive, but Lita succumbs to her injuries after bidding Dani to seek out the “Libertad” guerilla movement, led by Clara Garcia.
After assisting Clara and ex-spymaster and Libertad weapon maker Juan Cortez, Dani is given the task to contact and aid anti-Castillo forces throughout Yara’s three major regions: the Montero family, revered by Yara’s tobacco workers, in Madrugada, fighting against General José Castillo, Antón’s sadistic nephew and commander of Yara’s air force; La Moral (an anarchist group of university students) and the “Legends of ’67” (the surviving revolutionaries who toppled Castillo’s father) in El Este, opposing Admiral Aña Benítez, commander of Yara’s navy, and Canadian businessman Sean McKay, who imports Viviro for the Castillo regime; and revolutionary music group Máximas Matanzas in Valle de Oro, contending with María Marquessa, Yara’s minister of culture (and Diego Castillo’s mother), and Dr. Edgar Reyes, the scientist who created Viviro. During the campaign, Dani crosses paths with Diego on two occasions, first at a foiled assassination attempt on Antón during a public address, and again when Dani is captured and tortured by Antón’s second-in-command, General Raul Sánchez; the two form a bond, and Diego saves Dani’s life by killing Sánchez and convincing Antón to free Dani.
After uniting the anti-Castillo forces under Libertad, Dani learns that Castillo has captured Clara under the pretense of a parley and is holding her at his personal villa. When Dani confronts him, Castillo admits he has suffered from acute leukemia for 13 years, and that Viviro stopped working to treat it 6 months earlier. Impressed by Dani’s feats and wishing to have a guide for Diego when he dies, Castillo demands that Dani become his general in exchange for Clara’s life. Juan, covering Dani with a sniper rifle but unable to get a clear shot on Castillo himself, chooses to shoot Diego instead, but Dani knocks Diego out of the way; in response, Castillo kills Clara, leaving Dani as the reluctant new leader of Libertad. The Castillos return to Esperanza, which is surrounded by the united anti-Castillo forces.
Dani enters Castillo’s presidential palace and confronts the dictator in his office, but Diego refuses to let Dani kill his father. Dani promises to protect Diego, but Castillo, believing that Diego would be tortured as he had been after his father’s overthrow, shoots him, before committing suicide; Diego dies comforting Dani. The resistance forces unanimously declare Dani the new leader of Yara, but Dani refuses the leadership, turning it over to the revolutionary forces. After burying Clara, Dani and Juan continue to wage war against Castillo’s surviving loyalists.
In a post-credits scene, Juan supplies Viviro to an unnamed smuggler, who muses that Castillo killing his own son was an unreasonable act of insanity.
Alternate Ending
If Dani sails away from Yara before confronting Castillo, they will be shown two months later relaxing on a beach in Miami, with a news broadcast detailing how Castillo has taken back Yara from the rebels.
Story expansions
The game received three DLC episodes, which feature the return of previous Far Cry antagonists as playable characters: Vaas Montenegro (Michael Mando) from Far Cry 3, Pagan Min (Troy Baker) from Far Cry 4, and Joseph Seed (Greg Bryk) from Far Cry 5 and Far Cry New Dawn.
Vaas Montenegro: Insanity
Insanity begins at the climax of Jason Brody’s final confrontation with Vaas Montenegro,[b] in which the latter is seemingly stabbed to death. Vaas wakes up in a hallucination, and is guided by the voice of his sister, Citra Talugmai, to reconstruct her Silver Dragon Blade to win her approval as she claims that it is the only way he can escape his mind. Vaas journeys through his mind, revisiting past memories of his life while gathering the pieces of the blade as well as fighting apparitions of Citra, Jason and the Rakyat warriors. When Vaas succeeds in rebuilding the blade and hands it to Citra, she breaks it again and demands him to keep fighting for her as she sends waves of enemies after him. After a brief struggle and realizing Citra’s negative influence throughout his life, Vaas finally rejects her pleas to stay with her and escapes the hallucination. An older Vaas is then shown sitting at a beach on a deserted island, having somehow survived his confrontation with Jason, as he talks to himself using a tennis ball that resembles Jason.
Pagan Min: Control
Control begins in a dream sequence, where Pagan Min is having lunch with his lover, Ishwari Ghale, and her children, Ajay and Lakshmana. An apparition of Pagan, dubbed “the Tyrant”, appears and kills Lakshmana, then shoots Pagan. He wakes up later and follows the voice of Lakshmana who guides him back to the Ghale family as he explores his past memories, trying to hide his mistakes while collecting pieces of a mask and fighting apparitions of the Tyrant, Yuma Lau, Ajay and his father Mohan and the Golden Path soldiers. He eventually reunites with the Ghale family, but the Tyrant unleashes one final attack, forcing Pagan to defend them. In the end, Lakshmana convinces Pagan to leave the dream and come to terms with her and Ishwari’s deaths. An audio recording of Pagan plays afterward, in which he reveals to Ajay that he invested Kyrat’s resources into a stockpile of nuclear weapons as retaliation for the United States meddling in his affairs, adding that the weapons were pointed towards “somewhere in Montana“. With Pagan now gone from Kyrat,[c] he instructs Ajay to use the weapons as he sees fit.
Joseph Seed: Collapse
Collapse takes place in a dream sequence, where Joseph Seed is tormented by a mysterious voice, as well as those of his family, for leaving them behind while he hid from “the Collapse”.[d] Journeying through a destroyed Hope County, Joseph frees the “souls” of his family: John, Jacob, and Faith, while recovering pieces of his cross. Afterwards, Joseph attempts to cross Eden’s Gate, but the Voice prevents him, challenging him to fight endless waves of enemies to prove that he’s a changed man. Joseph succeeds in surviving the onslaught, and the Voice forgives his past sins. A phone message plays afterwards, in which Joseph tries to call his wife, the first Faith, who is revealed to be pregnant with their child.
Development
Production of Far Cry 6 had been ongoing for four years at the time of its July 2020 announcement, with Ubisoft Toronto the lead studio for the game.[18] Narrative director Navid Khavari said that they started researching revolutions of the past, they came across the idea of the modern guerrilla revolution such as the Cuban Revolution, which gave them numerous ideas of how to drive the player-character into fighting against a repressive government. This also brought back the need to give the player-character, Dani Rojas, a voice, compared to recent Far Cry games in which the protagonist had been silent. Khavari said “it was essential for us to ensure that the protagonist has a personal investment in that revolution”.[19] Using Cuba as an influence also established the return to a tropical setting, a feature of the earlier Far Cry games, as well as giving the setting a “timeless” look due to economic blockades that had been imposed on the island, mixing vintage cars with modern weapons.[20] Khavari spent a month in Cuba, speaking to residents there to help develop the setting.[21]
In contrast to the media controversy over Ubisoft distancing its stance that Far Cry 5 was made as a political statement,[22] Khavari said that Far Cry 6 was “political”, adding: “A story about a modern revolution must be”.[23] While the game’s narrative element is based on stories around Cuba, Khavari stated that the game “doesn’t want to make a political statement about what’s happening in Cuba specifically”, and does not attempt to make “a simplified, binary political statement specifically on the current political climate in Cuba”.[23] Khavari’s family had experienced the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s, eventually having fled to Canada, and using these experiences, those from Cuba, and from other research that Ubisoft had done, he wanted Far Cry 6 to have a story “about the conditions that lead to the rise of fascism in a nation, the costs of imperialism, forced labor, the need for free-and-fair elections, LGBTQ+ rights, and more.”[23]
Word of a new Far Cry game was teased in early July 2020, as actor Giancarlo Esposito has mentioned he had recently taken part in a “huge video game”, including voice work and motion capture.[24] Shortly after this, rumored leaks of Far Cry 6‘s existence appeared, including screens that showed a character resembling Esposito.[25] Ubisoft affirmed the game’s existence a few days ahead of the full announcement through social media, and fully revealed the game on July 12, 2020, during their Ubisoft Forward online event.[26]
Additionally, Anthony Gonzalez voices and provides the character model and motion capture for Diego.[17] Esposito and Gonzalez had done the motion-capture and voice work for the game’s trailer before shooting any of the footage for the game’s narrative, as this gave the developers the time to create the character models for the game itself.[16] For Esposito, he had been interested in the motion capture facets of the role, as he had done some for the canceled Mouse Guard film and was interested in doing more, as well as his interest in the type of character that Ubisoft had created for him.[27] Khavari said they had provided Esposito background material to help prepare before recording for the game, and upon these sessions, he found that Esposito had “done so much research already based on the material that we sent him. He brings an amazing empathy to his characters, and he brought that same empathy to Antón that I wasn’t expecting.”[19]
Pedro Bromfman composed the music for the game.[17] The game runs on the Dunia 2 engine, with new features such as ray tracing support on the PC version and support for AMD’s open source variable resolution technology, FidelityFX.