I was excited to hear of a new instalment to the popular first-person shooter franchise. Then I realised Far Cry: New Dawn was a far cry from a successful sequel.
What I loved about Far Cry’s franchise was the realism of the action and the scenarios that took place. Conflicts that took place across the games were realistic but also incredibly interesting.
Therefore I was surprised to see Ubisoft create some sort of surreal pink post-apocalypse that felt about as likely as it sounds.
The game is set several years after the events of Far Cry 5, but all in all seems more effective as a DLC update rather than a standalone game. Hope County is devastated by a nuclear war, and for some reason survivors want to ‘rebuild the community’. Regardless, ‘the highwaymen’, a gang of bandits, seek to diminish their efforts, led by twin sisters Mickey and Lou who look as though they were created to tick about every oppressed minority bingo box that exists.
As antagonists they are simply unlikeable, and are certainly not of the same fierce calibre of the past Far Cry villains. The way they have pandered to SJW audiences to such an extent makes me cringe. Take a leaf out of Red Dead Redemption 2s book and have a badass female representation that isn’t slapped all over the branding, shoved in your face and just overall desperate. Since when was the Far Cry logo embossed with flowers and drowned in pink? Thank you, Twitter.
What also bothers me about New Dawn is that, like all current post-apocalyptic first-person shooters, they are all trying to out-do apocalypse role-playing titan, Fallout, and it’s pretty unoriginal. Oh boy, another nuclear war, with edgy survivors and weird weapons. No way.
The main protagonist you play as is another mute with no backstory, no dialogue, or even a name, which feels pretty distant and lacks any intimacy within the plot. Known as ‘the captain’, it is your job to help the survivors and take back control of the county, and defeating the twin tyrants. The plot doesn’t extend much more than that, making it about on par with Mario Kart.
Overall the latest Far Cry game feels unfinished, unpolished and repetitive, and lacks the strong narrative of its predecessors. Maybe this new dawn needs a bit more time before it breaks.
Erica Goncalves Lopes
Bethany Aspinall
Megan Kelly