Thank you Signo Vir for gifting me this game to review!

Each of the Far Cry games takes place in a different part of the world and has a unique nemesis that needs to be removed from power. Far Cry 5 takes place in the fictional Hope County in Montana which has been overrun by a gun toting, drug pushing, Christian-like cult called Eden’s Gate. Many of the members were abducted and then drugged and/or brainwashed. Some people join this cult voluntarily, but the majority don’t. In fact, many hopefuls are literally thrown off a cliff if deemed to be “weak.” Active members are called “peggies” by the locals that have yet to be converted.

Joining Eden’s Gate is a four-step process. You first have to be marked by them and brought to their premises. Avoiding capture is impossible and is required for progressing the game’s story. The second step is cleansing which is similar to baptism but I’m quite sure that my pastor didn’t hold me underwater that long and one dunk was sufficient. Confession is a bit different in Eden’s Gate and makes telling your sins to some random priest in a confessional sound like a vacation. In Eden’s Gate your sin is identified (via torture) for you (mine was wrath) and tattooed on your body. Atonement is accomplished by cutting off the tattooed skin and stapling it to a church beam. This is a very gruesome and bloody process. Even though much of the terminology is the same in Christian circles, the way this cult goes about it is very un-biblical. Baptism, confession, and salvation should be joyous and voluntary events, not bloody and forced upon.

The game begins with a squad of body-armored law enforcement agents flying into the headquarters of Eden’s Gate with an arrest warrant for the founder, Joseph Seed who goes by “The Father.” Your character can be male or female and is referred to as deputy or rook throughout the game. Not surprisingly, the arrest goes sideways and your squad gets separated and brought to different branches of Eden’s Gate.

There are three regions that you get to focus on and each has a different ringleader that needs to be crossed off of the Seed family photo. Faith, Jacob, and John Seed must all be eliminated before you can take down Joseph and end Eden’s Gate once and for all. After getting cleaned up and rescued by a resistance member named Dutch, you get to decide which region you would like to explore and/or take down first. Completing regions is done by earning enough resistance points to get the attention of the ringleader and confronting them. Before the final confrontation, there are a couple of unavoidable rendezvous in between.

Earning resistance points can be done in various ways. Killing VIP members and destroying shrines and other valuable property is one way. Rescuing civilians being forced into Eden’s Gate is another option. Reclaiming bases is an advantageous method for the resistance to regain access to resources and abilities that the cult took away from them. Once a base is flying an American flag again, you can visit shops there to purchase ammo, guns, and transportation. Money is earned by selling animal pelts, collectibles, completing missions, or by retrieving assets left behind in stashes. Be sure to loot any enemy corpses for cash and materials for crafting. Micro-transactions are available if you want to quickly customize your guns and vehicles/planes/helicopters/boats.

Besides buying gear and accepting story missions at bases, you can also stop by the arcade. The arcade has a map editor and mini-games that can be enjoyed solo or with friends. The ability to join a friend’s world is pretty nice too.

If multiplayer is not your thing, the AI companions are competent and can usually hold their own in battle without needing resuscitation very often. It should go without saying that some characters are more reliable than others. There are human and animal companions and each one has their own quirks and commentary. Pairing them together (after you unlock that perk in the tech tree) often yields some hilarious but sometimes repetitive dialogue. As cool as it is to have a dog, cougar, or bear fighting alongside of you, a plane or helicopter flying companion is necessary for some air battles.

As you unlock achievements you’ll earn perk points which can allow you to activate abilities in the tech tree. I recommend going for the multiple companions, repair torch, and additional holsters (carry more weapons) first. There are so many helpful perks that it’s really hard to choose. Increasing your health and weapon efficiency are good options too. If an AI companion gets killed they can respawn after a set amount of time. There are perks to reduce the cool down period for each companion.

The characters, environment, and maps look astounding. The Dunia Engine is pretty powerful and everything looks very believable and life-like. Every time I looked over at whatever game my husband was playing, it paled in comparison. The level of detail goes both ways as things can look pretty beautiful, or very gruesome. There’s a ton of blood and gore and each of the ringleaders will give a short speech as they go to meet their Maker and they can be thankful that their tattered and bloodied human body is being left behind.

Sometimes the violence isn’t visual, but mental. There are some vividly descriptive stories and my imagination was painting some pretty grotesque pictures. For example, one of the characters recounts how they prayed about and ultimately decided that it was God’s will for them to kill their newborn child. The process of ending their firstborn’s life was recounted step by step. The language isn’t always violence centered as there is some pretty crude and sexual dialogue from the companions and other characters in the game. Adelaide is a divorced woman who is very happy with her new lover, well at least with some parts of him as he isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Her commentary on yoga positions with him and other bedroom activities are a bit awkward at times.

Other than a birth scene that shows a brand new baby girl (that wasn’t murdered), there are no children to be found. That’s probably a good thing since all of the adults have foul mouths that drop a cuss word or blaspheme in every sentence. As taverns are liberated the locals tend to party by drinking the night away. Last but not least, there is a drug called Bliss that is grown and processed locally. Several quests involve destroying the fields and processing plants used for creating it.

With many quests to complete, multiplayer games to join, and weekly tournaments, there’s plenty to do in Far Cry 5. I completed the story quest in twenty-four hours. In that time I only ran into a couple of glitches. In the beginning Steam wouldn’t show me as out of the game until I exited Uplay. The other glitch I encountered a couple of times was dying by deploying my parachute on a really short jump. In the end, Far Cry 5 is a very mature, but enjoyable game. As a gun owning Christian I aligned with the resistance more than the cult and was happy to see that not all of the Christians were portrayed as loonies as many of the other/normal people wore cross necklaces.