So my last two topics stirred up a decent bit of discussion so let’s go for something a bit more recent this time. Far Cry 5 was announced and as a fan of the series i am pretty hyped. (totally not showing my bias here or anything) But it has come under fire from all sides of the political spectrum. For those of you who don’t know the game will be set in modern day America with the villains this time around being some redneck doomsday christian cult. Some are complaining that this is a political move against christian conservatives or a shot at rednecks. Some complain that it has no diversity in the villains. And there is a long list of other complaints that i am too lazy to list. Long story short, people on all sides are offended. So here is the topic this time: Is this game really that wrong?
My argument is: No it’s fantastic
Now before anyone jumps the gun, here me out. I started this series with Far Cry 3, i thought the game was pretty good, the story wasn’t award winning but we can all agree the first antagonist of the game stole the show. I then bought Far Cry 4 not long after it’s release and it now is my third favorite shooter (right behind Wolfenstein and Doom) I never played the first two Far Cry games but 3 and 4 both had you fighting eccentric villains in exotic locations. While the new Villain seems to follow the trend of eccentric villains (at least from what the released artwork shows) some might find the new setting uninteresting. While the new setting may seem everyday and a bit too close to home for the games American audience, the European and even Canadian players such as myself aren’t going to have the same attachment to the setting. I’ll get the matter of lack of villain diversity out of the way before i get to the villains themselves, there a cult of redneck doomsday Christians, what do you picture when you hear that? My guess is a bunch of white guys! Now on to the villains themselves, some hardcore Christians are offended by the villains being Christians. But I’d like to point out that these characters aren’t your average Christian, there extremist fanatics. In Far Cry 4 you could side with Sabaal (i hope i got the name right it’s been a while since i played the game) and his religious fanatics, i never sided with Sabaal or even really payed much attention to either side of the biggest asshole competition that was that game’s “heroes” so i can’t remember if they where supposed to be Hindu or some other religion, but I sincerely doubt that they where intended to represent the entire religion. Anyways if you sided with Amita you would end up fighting these religious fanatics, so this isn’t the first time you’ve killed religious fanatics in the series, just because their radical Christians doesn’t make them any less shootable than Sabaal’s fanatics, the point is there fanatics that actively antagonize the games protagonist and other characters and thus they are not representative of your average Christian, just like Sabaal isn’t representative of your average Hindu (once again i’m sorry if i’m wrong and they aren’t Hindu, it’s been a while) I personally am looking forward to the game, this isn’t the first time a game has used a christian cult as the villains, Outlast 2 also had a christian cult as it’s antagonists. I only hope the writing is as well done as the previous game (though i doubt they’ll pull the same shit like the last one in which the heroes where actually worse than the villain) and that the villain follows the trend of wonderful Far Cry villains. I don’t give a damn who the villains are in a shooter as long as the gunplay is fun and i have a decent reason to turn them into swiss cheese. This has been my longest starting argument so far and probably the least cohesive but tell me what you think about this topic, i look forward to seeing what people have to say. 
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