Ever since its announcement on May 26, 2017, the fifth entry in the Far Cry video game series has received much controversy regarding the game’s villains. The villains are specifically considered controversial because they reflect issues occurring in today’s society.
The newest edition to the first-person shooter action/adventure series takes place in the fictional Hope County, Montana. The county is ruled by a militaristic doomsday cult called The Project at Eden’s Gate, which is led by religious zealot Joseph Seed and his three siblings, The Heralds.
Seed believes that he has to protect the people of Hope County from an inevitable collapse and save as many souls as he can from the end of days. In reality, he and his followers are terrorizing the locals, forcing them to convert and preventing them from reaching out to higher authorities through violence and intimidation. Those who resist are slaughtered in cold blood.
The use of white, non-military Americans as villains, especially first-person shooter games, is rare. Enemies in those games typically include non-human entities, such as zombies, robots and aliens. When the villains are human, they are often portrayed as terrorists, Nazis or other oppositional military personnel.
In the previous Far Cry games, the player had been pitted against primate mutations, mercenaries and drug lords, psychotic pirates and barbarians. Ubisoft, the developer of the game, and its decision to make the fifth game’s lead villain a non-military, caucasian male has stirred up controversy in the gaming community.
Adam Mahlin, longtime gamer, fan of the Far Cry series and member of Far Cry Universe Facebook group, applauds the game developers for choosing a non-traditional villain and thinks the decision will make the game that much better.
“I think the scariest things in life are things that happen in your own backyard,” Mahlin said. “Whether they sneak up on you and you didn’t know they were there or you’ve turned a blind eye and it comes back to proverbially or physically bite you. I’m stoked for this game and support it.”
“Far Cry 5” is going to touch on a lot of issues that are extremely sensitive in today’s world, especially in the United States, such as religious fanaticism and alt-right politics. Due to the issues brought up in the game, certain members of the gaming community think the game should be cancelled.
Following the announcement of the new game, Gamers United created a petition to get Ubisoft to either shut down the game or change the villains to Muslims. This petition spread quickly and while many people who saw it thought it was a huge joke.
Mahlin understands why some gamers are upset by the game’s central villain but thinks they are getting too worried when it is only a game.
Mahlin said, “People are probably up in arms because it has religious themes— mostly of the anti-religious nature of showing the negative side— but really, it’s a game. It’s just a game, not a national crime.”
“I personally think it’s a problem that does need to be spoken up about,” Arora said. “This doesn’t apply to all, but there are some organizations doing a lot of damage in the name of being religious or peaceful.”
Since it usually takes about four years to make a game the size as “Far Cry 5,” it is unclear whether Ubisoft was intending to make a statement or if the relevance of the game to current social issues is just a coincidence.
While some gamers have found issue with the main antagonist of this game being a caucasian, non-military male cultist, it is recognized that Ubisoft has released a series of one-off Far Cry games for more than a decade and now the game has simply changed to the point that this one iteration happens to be about a character whose actions reflect modern issues.
“Far Cry 5” is scheduled to release on Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC on February 27, 2018 with the clear intention of being a thought-provoking and risk-taking edition to the Far Cry franchise.
