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Far Cry 6 needs to avoid Far Cry 5’s biggest mistake when it releases next year. Far Cry 5 is not only the best-selling Far Cry game to date, but the best-selling Ubisoft game of the generation. However, it’s also the most divisive, and not just because of its “controversial” setting and poorly realized “religious cult.” Everyone agrees New Dawn is pretty bad. Everyone also agrees while it has its bright spots, Primal is a little underwhelming. Meanwhile, it’s widely understood that Far Cry 3 is the best entry in the series. Not far behind are Far Cry 4 and Blood Dragon. Meanwhile, Far Cry and Far Cry 2 are somewhere in the middle of all this.
Disrupting this widely accepted ranking is Far Cry 5. For some, it’s the best entry in the franchise. For others, it’s right alongside New Dawn as the worst. I think it’s fairly obvious the game has a lot of flaws. Whether it’s the game’s sometimes nonsensical story, stale open-world, or outdated design, there’s a lot to negatively point out about the game.
There’s also the matter of its silent protagonist. Silent protagonists don’t fit in Far Cry. In RPGs all about character customization and making narrative choices that allow you to impose yourself on the character, silent protagonists are fine. In fact, they often work very well. But Far Cry isn’t any of this.
Silent protagonists are problematic for a variety of reasons. For one, they make dialogue writing and character realization much more difficult. Two, they can ruin cutscenes. In Far Cry 5, silent protagonists not only lead to lots of unnatural pauses, awkward conversation flow, and moments of immersion being shattered, but it eroded away at the game’s writing because the characters have to take your silence into account, which often leads to cheesy lines about being “the silent type.” It also means you’re going to experience a lot of one-sided, long-winded talking points.
Unlike Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 4, you play as a customizable character in Far Cry 5, which explains why they went with the mute protagonist. That said, you can have both. Plenty of games offer both, and offer it well. Further, it’s not like the trade-off is worth it. Customization options are limited, you never see your character due to the first-person perspective, and there’s hardly any character-defining moments. The result is you playing a hollow version of previous Far Cry protagonists.
What makes all of this worse is that nobody asked for this change in the first place. Hopefully, now that it’s received ample criticism about the design decision, Ubisoft isn’t planning on repeating this same mistake with Far Cry 6.
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