Far Cry 6 is the latest iteration of the Far Cry series. And it deals once again with a group of fighters rising up against a strong-arm tyrant—in this case a ruthless dictator named Anton Castillo, in the Cuba-like island country of Yara.
We learn that Yara has gone through many revolutions and violent changes in the past—including one incredibly bloody rebellion in the ‘60s when Castillo was just a boy and his father was dictator.
But after decades of economic decline in Yara, an older Castillo—using his discovery of a miracle cancer drug created from Yara’s abundant crop of tobacco—has risen to power and prominence. He promises to transform Yara into a wealthy paradise. Behind the scenes, however, Castillo has murdered thousands through forced medical testing, slave labor camps and human trafficking, and he continues to violently tighten his dictatorial grip on the nation. And he’s forcibly grooming his own son into that same savage image.
Gamers play as Dani Rojas, a female guerrilla resistance fighter with a paramilitary background who grew up as an orphan in Yara. After joining a band of rebels called Libertad, it’s her job (or his—in the settings you can make Dani a male, too) to travel the country and rally together other groups of insurgents, spurring them to mobilize and take down the foul dictator and his overwhelming force of 300,000 troops. She must encourage all these disparate leaders—from old men of the ‘60s revolution to female street fighters to a young transexual maverick—and pull them together to fight as one.
As Dani, you rally forces and take on first-person shooter quests to reveal Castillo’s deadly ways, take over bases, destroy military convoys, kill specific individuals and do whatever it takes to finally fell Yara’s brutal and murderous tyrant.
On the plus side, the game offers a well-designed open-world game filled with nicely-laid-out and often broadly crazy and frenetic story quests—cinema-like adventures involving exotic inventions and cobbled-together weapons. And gamers feel the adrenaline rush of pulling together far-outmatched people hoping to be freed from horrible oppression.
Those positive elements noted, this is definitely not a game for younger players or anyone who thinks twice about nasty content. There is some humorous comradery in the outlandish tale at this game’s core, but Far Cry 6 is often so dark, grim and grimy that you can’t walk away without feeling like you need a mental shower.
The trigger-pulling brutality and gruesome mayhem—involving dismemberment, deadly beatings, point-blank executions, horrific crocodile attacks, child abuse, purposely grisly murders and torture—is very disturbing in places. And that’s especially true when playing Dani as a woman. Watching her being suspended, beaten, burned with a glowing cigar and having teeth wrenched out of her mouth is realistic and difficult from any perspective.
The Far Cry series has always pushed the bloody, gory boundaries with its games. And that goes double here.
On top of all that are some sexual conversations and (fully dressed) scenes of sex play with a prostitute. Some characters use drugs, and Dani is poisoned and staggers around vomiting while seeking help. She also gets staggeringly drunk in one scene that blurs with her inebriation. Dialogue is packed with foul language ranging from f- and s-words and misuses of Jesus’ name to all sorts of crude quips and anatomical references.
Early on in this game/story of violent uprising, someone mentions that revolutions in a place like Yara never happen only once: the cycle repeats over and over from one potentate to the next. Nothing really changes.
There’s a certain irony about that being the central statement from a Far Cry title. For these games often feel like they deliver the same intensely bloody, foul-mouthed and nasty content over and over, too. The settings and heroes may change a bit, but the gruesome gore, and profane dialogue mixed with winking crudities feels oh so familiar.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
