Far Cry New Dawn
PC, PS4, Xbox One
The real star of Far Cry New Dawn is a nuclear bomb. Set a few decades after the apocalypse that closed out Far Cry 5, it takes its forebear’s Montana and burns away much of its socio-historical context – reducing a milquetoast portrayal of militant evangelicism in America’s heartlands to the basic principle of conquest that makes Far Cry such a dubious vehicle for political commentary. It features a few returning faces – prominent amongst them a careworn Joseph Seed, erstwhile prophet of a doomsday militia – and makes some show of reckoning with Far Cry 5’ s nipped-off character arcs. But for the most part, it’s a reset: the same open-world map, the same framework of guns, perks, vehicles and outposts, but without all the cavalier, headline-baiting bullshit about cults and radicalisation.
New Dawn’s greatest strength, and weakness, is that it does not regard itself as worthy of serious discussion. It is a sandbox shooter hell-bent on burying its own history as both a world and a game, its grander edifices – including the fortresses where the Seeds once monologued about society and destiny – either ruined or inaccessible beneath layers of eerily fecund topsoil. Its plot is resolutely cursory, save for a few digressions on the subject of bad or absentee fathers. You are here to save a small valley settlement from the Highwaymen, a raider outfit led by two sisters who see the world much as players do: a collection of “problem-solvers” to recruit or protect and “problem-makers” who must be erased.
It’s a game, above all, that trades on colour. Ubisoft’s gameworlds have long been organised according to a distinct palette: handholds that gleam white through undergrowth, enemies with gaudy headscarves or helmets that are easily spotted from afar. In New Dawn, the palette has devoured the setting like a peculiarly calculating fungus. “Rusty” guns are ribald red; enemy outposts are eye-watering splashes of purple, held together by a sky-blue viscera of ladders and ziplines. The geography itself is a blaze of unearthly hues, calling to mind both Far Cry: Blood Dragon and the iridescent hinterland of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation. Rivers glisten in a way that has you reaching for a non-existent Geiger counter, forests shimmer with blossom, and auroras fissure a skybox set to late summer.
The game tries to explain all this as an ecological reaction to years of nuclear fallout – there are mutant animals who sport glowing organs – but for the most part, it feels like artists letting their hair down. Similar sentiments apply to your new hub base, Prosperity, an IKEA-sourced jumble of wooden blocks and fairy lights in which crafting stations are signposted like stalls at a corporate Christmas Fayre. It’s shockingly utilitarian next to the naturalised hubs of previous games, and in that regard, truer to the spirit of a series that has always treated “a sense of place” as grease for the wheels of pillage. New Dawn does not particularly care whether
you find its setting plausible, as long as you find it pretty and know exactly what to shoot.
All of which may sound like a comeback, but New Dawn’s palate-cleanse is too long overdue to satisfy, and for every misguided element the game removes it adds another back in. The emphasis on colour also applies to the new levelling system, which suggests yet another ailing shooter universe trying to one-up Destiny, long past the point when one-upping Destiny made any kind of longterm business sense. Weapons and enemies now have rarity tiers, grey to gold, and to make headway against later foes, you’ll need to search for prepper bunkers or kill rarer animals to upgrade Prosperity’s crafting stations and unlock the best guns and vehicles.
In practice, you don’t need to grind much – the game is generous with resources, especially the points you’ll need for perks like a grappling hook or the ability to pick safe locks. You can also hand outposts you’ve captured back to the Highwaymen in order to recapture them against stiffer resistance for bonus barrels of ethanol, the key settlement-upgrading resource. That doesn’t make it any less annoying, however, when you headshot a bare-headed goon and are treated to a meagre dusting of damage numerals. Nor does it make it any less frustrating when you try to cobble together a gun and are whisked away to the microtransactions screen.
The combat is as chaotic and diverting as it ever was, though it’s sorely lacking a distinctive ability or weapon. The odd linear plot mission aside, Far Cry’s encounters again come in two broad varieties. There are outpost battles – tussles over small playgrounds of boltholes and overlooks where you might sabotage alarms to thwart reinforcements or set up traps. And then there are the roadside scuffles that escalate into pitched battles as AI partners and wandering predators pile in. One effect of New Dawn’s carelessness about itself is that you’re less motivated to be stealthy, and the game rarely punishes you for this on Normal difficulty. Differences in level can usually be gamed by starting a fire or luring wildlife with a hunk of meat – your enemies will still take a while to perish, but they’ll be too preoccupied to shoot back in the meantime.
New Dawn is a clearing of the air after Far Cry 5, but calling it a “new dawn” is preposterous. What we have here is a sideways hop, a purgatory of a sequel in a series that has no idea what to do with itself, beyond giving you another mapful of nodes to flip. As ever with Far Cry, the writing makes helpless acknowledgement of this in the shape of villains ranting about the futility of their and your actions, but the game is possibly more revealing away from the cutscenes. At one point, we turn to find our AI partner standing in the middle of a conflagration, yelling “Quit it!” at the flames. It’s as good a summary of Far Cry’s identity crisis as any.
A sandbox shooter hell-bent on burying its own history as both a world and a game