Far Cry 5 - Shoot Dirty Cultish Hipsters in Montana with guns and stuff - Games

And just how the fuck is a Deputy even supposed to stop a nuclear war? You'd think that if the world was so close to war that other people other than the crazy cultists would be talking about it a lot.

i think we have a fundamental disagreement here. my interpretation of the walk away ending is that joseph seed mind controls you into killing all your friends. the cult is tricking you, once again. that's not the good choice. and in no world is the nuclear fallout a result if your arrest, it likely happens either way. the timing is just different for narrative reasons, i strongly feel that it will happen anyway.

Here's the thing Rusty. What is shown and what isn't shown are very fucking important in media. If you just assume something happens you can literally make up any bullshit. You can say "The world was probably nuked" all you want but the only ending which actually shows it is the one where you do your job. And the timing being a coincidence is fucking bullshit, literally the instant the cuffs are on Joseph the first bomb goes off. Stories aren't a random series of events, the timing of things actually matters. Also Joseph doesn't mind control you into killing everyone in the walk away ending. It's another contrived coincidence. The Sheriff turns on the radio and it just happens to be your trigger to start murdering everyone? Fuck off.

Good lord they are doing it just to set up the next game to be a post apocalyptic far cry you don't gotta insult someone cause they like the ending you don't

That's not even taking into account the utter bullshit of how he somehow captured all your buddies with Bliss. Almost all of them were in heavily guarded areas so how did he get at them? It's so contrived. I literally flew into his compound on a helicopter with TWO of the people he drugged. How in the fuck did he do that!?

Rusty can like the ending all he wants, but that doesn't make it a good ending. He's well known for shitting on popular things and praising shit just because it's different. I was explaining why the ending of Far Cry 5 is bad, not trying to tell him he's wrong for liking it. Liking something doesn't make it good. I love the Power Rangers and that shit is fucking terrible. When an ending relies entirely on coincidental timing, the player not knowing vital information, and the bad guy gaining abilities at the last second it's a contrived, poorly written mess. It doesn't matter that the ending was 'different' if it's fucking shit.

None of the main series Far Cry games has ever had a direct sequel so how do you know that's what they're doing?

we also seem to have a fundamental disagreement with what's "important in media". i like it when things are heavily implied but not shown or stated outright. i think getting an idea in the head of your audience without ever explicitly showing or stating something is the mark of a great story. however, considering the backlash, it would seem that by and large they have failed at this unfortunately. you have to ask, why is the sheriff so quick to bail with you in the walk away ending? why does he turn on the radio and smile? it seems heavily implied that he's still under their control. it's not too far fetched that the song doesn't just 'happen' to be playing, and that the cult is broadcasting it locally in whatever way that gets it to show up on all stations (i'm no radio expert but it doesn't seem that weird to me) specifically so you don't get away. if you hate it, sure. i still think it's excellent

well gee they did just drop a nuke onto Montana and talk about rising escalations between countries on the radio.

I wouldn't mind the ending as much if the radio broadcasts were more in the forefront and not just random background noise, oh and it'd help if I could actually hear them. But since Ubisoft is too lazy to have multiple audio sliders they were completely drowned out.

Except if you never choose the arrest ending you'll never have any idea that the world gets nuked because the game doesn't hint at it anywhere except the radios that the vast majority of people didn't even notice. I appreciate that you like the idea of what they were going for, but you have to admit the execution was fucking awful. The vajority of people I've seen talk about the ending, here ,on Reddit, and on steam, seem to think the ending was terrible, and most of them say it's because it comes out of fucking no where.

That doesn't mean they're making a sequel. Valve left Half-Life Episode 2 on a cliffhanger but I don't see anybody playing Half-Life 3 yet.

I think that's what bothers me the absolute most about the plot is that the idiot ball gets passed around to an infuriating level. The coincidental timing of the nuke ending bothers me because it's so on the dot it means Joseph either used the nukes himself or he was omnipotent powers which is still stupid imo

Well to be fair Far Cry 1 did have a traditional hero ending iirc, but that was made by Crytek so I don't know if you think that still counts.

We don't see a new Half-Life cause Valve was dicking around for too long with Microtransactions and were too late on the draw, and know if they released it now it would be massively disappointing. Far Cry is still a pretty popular franchise pumping out sequels and making a pretty good return on them. They wouldn't do such a drastic change to the series like literally nuking the world if they weren't looking to make some money off of it. A post-apocalyptic Far Cry would sell super well and Ubisoft knew it. Hell, I wouldn't be suprised if the higher ups in the company stepped in last minute and were like "just fuckin' nuke it so we can dip into that fallout cash"

Not to mention the ending implies hurks gone and that's gonna be weird considering he's a character staple at this point

Didn't everyone here who got the ending thought Joseph had nukes at first ?

If you want a story where you're not the hero you just have to look at the other far cry games, they didn't leave you with a super accomplished feeling either and they didn't do it through mind control bullshit or by turning your stupidly overpowered character conveniently inept in cutscenes, because you can't write a good story for a videogame by just pretending it's not a videogame. That's a good point. Far Cry barely has an ending, Jack Carver kills the bad guy, gets the cure for his girlfriend and fuck off as the island explodes. It's the closest to a cliche ending you can have but it's literally "They didn't die, the end." In Far Cry 2 the ending choice is "team up with the 'bad guy' and kill yourself", either by blowing yourself up of by shooting yourself. All to end a war you actively perpetuated in your mission to kill a man for doing exactly what you're doing throughout the game. Far Cry 3's ending choice is to give in to your bloodlust and become a Rakyat warrior before Citra murders you, or leave with your friends knowing you'll never be the same person you were before you arrived on Rook Island. Far Cry 4's endings are 'You team up with a religious fundamentalist who initiates a purge of the heretics and turns Bhadra into a child bride." "You team up with a drug lord who enslaves the people and forces children to do hard labour." or "You take over the country by inheriting the land/killing off your allies and become the new dictator." The Far Cry games have never had cliche happy endings. Also, fuck your quote system Garry. I'll do this shit manually.

I really do think that the ending and all the references to the war were slapped in last minute cause the higher ups wanted to change direction in the series. If it was the plan from the start it would be more relevant to the plot

I wouldn't mind if it was at least more prominent in the game apart from vague comments and radio chatter. Even in 4 you knew the endgame for Kryat was gonna be in deep shit because of that hallucination trip explaining what's gonna happen once the fights over.

Not just that but you actively get to see these people descending in to their madness over the course of the story. The two faction leaders both start off bickering back and forth but they're largely in agreement and trying to take the high road. But as it goes along they both get observably more unhinged and the consolidation of power and infighting grows more intense until eventually the two big leaders are constantly at each other's throats the rare times they are near each other. And the things you help them do to take power are clearly explained as being dangerous and obviously building towards a shitty situation after Pagan Min is gone. All the points are there that you can see where it will go, its not a blindside asspull that your former allies have gone to shit because you've watched and help them go down this road the entire time.

That's another good point as well. It's like they tried to get Far Cry 4 and 2's downer ending but they missed what made said endings satisfying, which was the respective games logical conclusions. They wanted 4's "The bad guys aren't so bad, actually." and 2's "The world sucks so your choices didn't matter in the bigger picture" But it doesn't make sense because the cultists are arguably one of the worst factions in the series with little to no redeemable qualities (most notably the charismatic charm that Vaas and Pagan Min had, which is what made those characters interesting in the first place) and the bigger picture barely gets mentioned at all in 5 and suddenly plays a role in the plot at the end so it feels completely hamfisted for the sake of "Dramatic ironic twist" where as it's a central theme in 2 of how morally gray the situation in Africa was because it's two equally bad factions going against each other and you're working for both to help your own morally gray goal ( I didn't play 2 to completion so correct me if I'm wrong).

i GENUINELY think they are in no way trying to redeem the cult at all. there is no way anybody would try that. they are not saying 'the bad guys aren't so bad and maybe you are' in this one. i think that is a big misunderstanding, and maybe that's a storytelling failure on their part. they are real events to justify their horrible actions and warping logic to be seen as the victims and trying to shame you for stopping them. it's what cults do, it's part of their character

The problem comes up when the only good outcomes are literally from leaving the cult alone to do their thing. That's the point the game makes more than anything, "Some times it best to just leave things well enough alone." They hammer that in repeatedly that your attempt to arrest Joseph is what makes things truly the worst they've ever been. Whatever they did before, they've taken it to horrendous new heights because you tried to do your job. The sheriff, who is otherwise a fine character, doesn't try to reason with the Marshall that you need a lot more than four people to take Joseph in, he just says not to do it at all. The game constantly tries to drive home that if you had left the cult alone things would be fine.

It's not that it's convincing me and I'm blaming the story, it's that it's not convincing me and the game has to use something else to say my character is being convinced. literally everything about the cult puts me off. In reality if I was in the Deputies shoes I wouldn't even give them the time of day with their monologues and even the game knows that, that's why they write different means of manipulation like the Bliss, and the fact that the Bliss ends up playing a bigger role bothers me because it feels like instead of being a conversion tool for the overall charm that's supposed to be Joseph it just feels like it's supposed to go "no you're supposed to be convinced because the Bliss is making you convinced!" Wanna know the only time I actually went "you know what maybe they have a point"? When John is dying and he drops his Joel Osteen persona to just bluntly tell you "I'm trying to save people and you're ruining it, don't you watch the news? Something bad is gonna happen!" If he didn't have the holier than thou "Say YES!" Mindset and was just honest about world tension I'd be a lot more on the convinced side.

I don't think I agree with that at all, I don't feel the game hammered that over your head even once. The first time you get an option to walk away, it's a joke ending, an Easter egg. And throughout the game it's clear the cult did most of its damage before you even got there. All the bodies and abandoned buildings ready to find from the get-go. You literally undo damage and stabilise the whole town with less non cult casualties than were already happening. Their actions don't ramp up, they ramp down due to you. Theyd already built missile silos! It's not getting any worse because of you and I don't recall the game ever saying that? The second time you get an option to walk away, it results in mind control and the death of your comrades. The cult never actually has a point but the idea is that they'll try to convince you they do. It's never the devs point that you cause more harm by taking on the cult. You actively fix things. To me, the thing it hits you over the head with is 'the cult is trying to manipulate you into leaving them alone, don't listen to them'. The nukes, as I've said, do not correlate with your actions at all (how could they anyway unless their Joseph's nukes).

I honestly think the game telegraphed the ending from a mile away if you were listening to the cult. John in his final moments tries to ask you to think about whether or not Joseph is right. Even after all you've done he doesn't hate you he just wants to instill that he was trying to save people. Jacob tells you about how fucked the world is, and while he doesn't know if Joseph is really talking to God, he believes that his brother is right about the world(or at least America) being on the brink. Faith keeps trying to make the Marshal stay, and he eventually does want to stay because he's finally happy. Joseph, himself shows you the nuke as he berated the Government for betraying American ideals; building walls, taking guns away, allowing the rich to run the country into the ground, etc. Greed plays a large role in the game's story, the whole game in my opinion revolves around Joseph and his hatred of greed. (The story about his daughter. He kills her because he knows he cannot raise her on his own.) I think the cult believes what they are doing is wrong, a lot of it's members share that sentiment. However, a lot of them see the bigger picture and they think that at the end of the day it's better to be alive by any means than reduced to a pile of ash. Hell, Joseph kept saying, "In the end, you will thank me." He's the one that comes back to save you, he could have just left you there with the other officers. Do the ends justify the means, probably not. You doomed them all anyways. The game feels more anti-war than anything. Burke fucks it all up in the beginning and ruins the whole arrest. This causes the cult to react the way they do.

Yes, but they're a crazy murder cult. It's only reasonable to disregard what they say, because they drug people, murder them, and outside of them there's practically no indication they're not just fucking nuts.

The thing is, obviously this isn't true. Why would the Sheriff, and the Deputies be alive? Theatrics? No, they were trying to instill the teachings of the cult into the player by way of saving your friends. Jacob instills that you must be strong to survive by way of hypnosis and music. John instills that you must absolve and atone for your sins by way of torture and baptisms. Faith instills that being happy may be worth more than being violent by way of drugs and hallucinations. Obviously I don't think they're right in anything they do, but I can absolutely see what the point of each character was.

There are literally numerous corpses where the cult has strung people up, tortured them, disemboweled and dismembered them. They didn't just loot. You're literally just repeating the crap the cult says without looking beyond it at what is actually happening. Without actually being legitimately exposed to the bullshit tricks they used to brainwash people.