E3 2017 - Hands On With Far Cry 5

It had been a while since the release of Far Cry 4 and while Primal was a great game, people wanted the next entry in the series and they wanted it to be even better. With the announcement that 5 was being set in rural America, people started to think maybe Ubisoft are not thinking right, but with the changes the game is bringing to players, you will be surprised.

The demo at E3 was unique in two ways, first of all, you got to choose the experience you wanted, at the outset we could choose to have one of three support characters, Grace the Sniper, Nick the Pilot and Dog the Dog. Depending on the character selected, things would play out entirely different, but that is not all, the choice you made had ripple effects how things played out as well. Which is where the second way of play came into being, choice, while not on display in a great way in the build, it was hinted at and like I said, with how everything was based on choices you made, I could see different people doing things very differently.

This was not just a matter of choosing to approach something from the north, rather than the south, this was more about how you wanted to engage the enemy, the demo started out in the same spot and in my first play through, I used Nick, while I climbed up to the top of the water tower, I had Nick go through and light up the fuel truck that was parked in the middle of the street, it caused a massive explosion, which sent all of the cult members into panic mode, this allowed me to pick off a few from my perch on the tower, however they eventually wised up and started to shoot back, once I was on the ground, I had to find another weapon, as all I had was a sniper rifle, not so good up close and a six shooter, thankfully weapon pick-ups are still around. Once I had a standard machine gun, I took out all the guys, took a lot of damage myself, ran into cover and healed, before taking out the final enemy who was standing on top of the gas station roof, once I had taken back control of the small town, that was it.

But as I said, choice was what the game was about, so I went in for round two, this time however Grace was my partner and as a sniper I had her sit at the top of the water tower, while I snuck in to position. Sadly though, instead of telling her to shoot, I accidently told her to move to a new position, right beside the leader of the group by the church. This had the unfortunate issue of bringing every bad guy around to the action and causing a lot of havoc, well the last part was a good thing, but in the end, Grace and I survive and I had enough time to start up the final choice, Dog, sadly though the timer ran out before I could do anything more than look at him, but watching him in action in the trailer, he could prove to be an interesting companion.

What I really got from playing the game is that Far Cry 5 is just more of Far Cry and that is ok, while Assassin’s Creed is trying all new things, Far Cry seems only to be expanding on what it offered in past games and that works for me. I don’t need a Far Cry game that is all about stealth or requiring enough good guy points to continue, I need a game that has large explosions and lets me do things my way and so far Far Cry 5 seems to offer just what I need