FarCry 5 (Spoilers)

[TheFeniX]

Or Fallout: Montana.

I think the last Ubisoft game I bought (for myself) was the original AssCreed. Before FC5, the last game I can recall paying full price for was Brink. Everything else said in this thread, this game seems to have helped my gaming buddy out of his funk, which I won't go into, and that makes it worth $60 there.

The Bad:
1. uPlay: fuck you. No seriously, I don't want your shitty gaming account and your spyware bullshit. I bought the game on Steam for a reason.
2. First time load unskippable Logos. Fuck you even harder. I paid you money for this shit. I want to play the game, get into the actions. Stick them in a load screen for fucks sake.
3. The opening is grating as Hell. Video game writing is bad enough as it is: "Tom Clancy Domestic Terrorist Edition" is not something anyone with braincells to rub together will take seriously. The whole story is moronic at the start (and only gets worse). If it took itself only semi-seriously, I could live with it. But this game is treated as siriusbuziness, so it really grates spending the first 15 minutes of gameplay with no control of the character other than (I shit you not) "Press W to walk." And I started on the hardest difficulty, do not hold my hand.
4. The story makes the average Tom Clancy novel look sane. I don't get why people kicked up such a fuss about it. They made Idiocracy and tried to pass it off as a thrilling expose on the true future of humanity. They should be mocked for being bad writers who don't understand tension outside what a 12-year-old thinks is scary or tense.
5. Microtransaction Monies in a SP/Co-op game..... I mean, 2018....
6. When buying guns, you can get stuck at a "please wait" menu. I have to assume it's another layer of DRM or a recheck so you can buy their currency securely. But, a network connection seems required to purchase items in a single-player game because this is 2018 and there's nothing they can't ruin.
7. I get it "gospel music" and "fucking banjos" because "rednecks." But holy fuck they grate. The music is general is just fucking bad. I doubt they could license any actual country music due to the controversy, or whatever.
8. A heavily armed militia (we're talking machine guns, assault rifles, rocket lawnchairs, helicopters with mounted machine guns, mortars, the fucking works) are taking over multiple counties in Montana, rounding up and killing hundreds (if not thousands) of U.S. Citizens means they send 4 Law Enforcement armed with pistols to affect an arrest warrant on the Cult leader by landing a helicopter right into their main base. BAD SHIT HAPPENS! The comedy writes itself.
9. You can't progress story/mission content as a co-op client. At the least, you earn everything else.

Such a fun and decent game is covered up with piles of bullshit. It's just goddamn sad because the game constantly breaks from fun to remind you "oh yea, Ubisoft made this" because something shitty shows up to ruin it.

The Good:
1. 980ti at 4X max everything. Game looks pretty damn good. And I seem to be able to keep up about 40FPS even under heavy action. I didn't think I'd get half that and be forced to run 2K at the max. If the framerate is dropping into the sub-30s, I can't notice it. That says something.
2. While shallow, when the game isn't focusing on the story, it is so much damn fun in co-op.
3. The gun porn is good, the physics are (mostly) good. The sound is good.
4. There's a wide spread of shallow but fun content. Basically, as said, Fallout (4): Montana. You do bullshit missions, build your resistance, but then you hit a "checkpoint" and the big bads show up (in dumb ways) to snag you and make you go through the terrible story bullshit.
5. The random encounters. And holy shit are they random. Trying to sneak up on 4 bad guys hunting bears, get attacked by a bison, then your co-op partner is mauled to death by a wolverine. Comedy ensues because the bears manage to kill the 4 guys armed with machine guns.

If they had cut out all the standard Ubishit Bullshit, this would be a solid 8/10 (possibly 9/10 if you can get over how bad the story is so far) game. As said, it's good and fun but it constantly reminds you "Hey, you forgot about the Ubisoft vice grip we attached to your balls. We'll just go ahead and give that a quick squeeze so you don't get too comfortable."

I'm in the process of uploading a few video to youtube I've recorded using the shitty GeForce program. This is mainly because..... I've never uploaded a video like this (at least not for a decade) and I kind of just wanted to find out how bad I am at it. Of course, my Internet here is garbage tier, so you can watch them in time for the 2020 election.

[Marko Dash]

played a few hours of it last night and about 10min in had to turn the brain off. i can buy that they could take over a few towns if the local law was in bed with the cult, but as soon as a federal marshal doesn't return within hours of going in to a known hostile area the national guard would have rolled in whether called or not.

they try to pass off that all outside communication has been cut and nobody can leave, which is bullshit and flat out imposible.

and even then one satellite pass over the area and the entire US military would be jumping down their throats.

[TheFeniX]

Yea, they literally have people crucified on the side of county roads. No one has a cell phone? Even before the towers came down, this didn't happen over night. No one has Internet? Land lines? Sat phone (this is Montana)? A CB Radio (which are everywhere)?

The game just shits the bed in the first (excruciatingly long and boring CoD:MW wanna-be flyover) minutes by sending in 4 agents with no backup into hostile territory with a known religious cult packing legitimate military hardware. There's nothing, but geography, to stop them from taking over a major city. We're talking hundreds to thousands of fully-operational assault rifles and even mounted machine-guns in the beds of pickup trucks. They are literally (I assume intentionally) "Redneck ISIS."

And they let the "all clear" fly because one dispatch officer was in on it?

And the ATF, FBI, (and possibly) CIA, local, state, and federal law enforcement just fucking let them stockpile millions in ridiculously illegal hardware? Even if IF IF, I could by something remotely to that effect. The entire place would be a media frenzy as "ATF refuses to take illegally owned military hardware from religious nuts. Where did they even get the hardware in the first place? Uncle Sam making a few donations?" You wouldn't be able to turn on a news channel without 24/7 coverage.

[bilateralrope]

and that makes it worth $60 there.

Question: What is the true price of the game ?

That would be the total price of the game and all the DLC. The price Ubisoft expects people to actually pay. Not the entry fee.

Though I hear that in-game currency is plentiful, so you can ignore the microtransactions.

5. Microtransaction Monies in a SP/Co-op game..... I mean, 2018....

Ubisoft have been making a big deal about games as a service lately. Which means microtransactions and altering gameplay to encourage purchasing them.

6. When buying guns, you can get stuck at a "please wait" menu. I have to assume it's another layer of DRM or a recheck so you can buy their currency securely. But, a network connection seems required to purchase items in a single-player game because this is 2018 and there's nothing they can't ruin.

Can't have people cheating for free when they could be paying to cheat.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I took one look at the £50 price tag just for the standard edition on Steam and went "HELL NO!" . Maybe once the price drops to more reasonable levels I might make the purchase but as it stands, not a chance!

[TheFeniX]

Yea, I told my buddy we could probably wait like a month or two and it would drop WAY down. This is in not worth $60. We'd have been better off buying Divinity, but we're kind of RPGed out right now.

You want to hear some dipshit rant about stupid shit? I was NOT in a great mood after the account creation, logos, and the helicopter ride.

I put the underage tag on because 12-year-old shouldn't watch this... nor play the game because they're the only ones who could be remotely engaged by the writing and delivery.

[Lagmonster]

And the ATF, FBI, (and possibly) CIA, local, state, and federal law enforcement just fucking let them stockpile millions in ridiculously illegal hardware? Even if IF IF, I could by something remotely to that effect. The entire place would be a media frenzy as "ATF refuses to take illegally owned military hardware from religious nuts. Where did they even get the hardware in the first place? Uncle Sam making a few donations?" You wouldn't be able to turn on a news channel without 24/7 coverage.

I thought about it, then decided that the Canadians/French people who made the game probably think the non-American world would by and large find the idea of "American clan of redneck lunatics secretly stockpiles working military hardware" absolutely believable. I've met otherwise well-educated people in my extended family from Europe who would not question me if I said that Americans were legally allowed to own functioning tanks.

[TheFeniX]

They would believe you because you can buy a functional tank. Though I don't know how the ATF handles registration of the "Destructive Device." Does it have to be pre-86? I have no idea, I don't look into such things. But I don't believe there's anything special required to buy a decommissioned (weapons and electronics disabled/removed) Tank that still drives.

Man, the office Internet is so much better. Have a couple more shitty videos.

[bilateralrope]

I'm not too concerned about the implausibility of the US government leaving the whole place alone. Sure, it requires a massive suspension of disbelief. But all the advertising was clear about the situation so you should have known how much suspension of disbelief you needed before even touching the game.

[TheFeniX]

I agree, but it creates a huge problem with tension. Especially when the game wants to go all serious business. Because, and this could be part of their Crazy/"plan," you hit these.... triggers at parts in the story and it's like "you're being hunted" and they send super-duper-magic murder-fuck guys to capture you. And they do it. There's literally nothing you can do.

"Use the Bliss Bullets"
I'm at the bottom of a bunker, one entry, get "hit" by a bullet and fades to black.

This happens pretty much anytime they want to annoy you. You get away all those times because, (After like 15 minutes of dialog vomiting all over you) they can keep everyone else locked in cages, but they take zero precautions with you. They just want to torture you with more story exposition (and it's all boring as FUCK) and they can't think of a way to do it in an open-world game, even though they have dozens of examples to pull from.

And it's all just SO bad and repetitive. Think of every "born-again" Christian cliche and catch-phrase and just repeat it OVER and OVER and OVER and OVER again. "Do you want to say Yes?" "I found my family with Joseph! You will too! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND." That's it, this villains are built up all this time and there's nothing to really come of it. They just vomit the same dialog throughout their "campaign." At least I got a sweet tat out of the deal.**

"Imma send mah hunters after you"
I'm flying in a helicopter, after "Haha, fuck you" nuking the first group, hear a "zip" (like a bullet flying), a thud, and screen black.
So, they shot me unconcious in a flying helicopter..... and I'm somehow still alive. I alt-F4ed after since I'm doing story bullshit with my buddy. I just wanted to catch some fucking Bass.

At least... um,... Faith I think. She's a Bliss Magician, so she summons you to her because she is so good with Fantasy Heroin, she can control it and people affected by it. It's still moronic, but at least it's a change-up.

This game is trying to be... "Misery," or "Silent Hill" or any number of games or movies where the villain(s) is threatening for multiple reasons. But it's all fucked up because the game is essentially "Saint's Row 3+" when it comes to tension. There is none. You can't just throw a cutscene of my character tied to a chair about to get tortured and expect me to care just because it's in 1st person view. Because the stupidity of my enemies combined with their "You're a wizard, Harry" level of competence and magical "catch me a main character" bullshit makes me pull muscles rolling my eyes so much.

Especially since I've seen how it's done incredibly well with other games. Such as Quake4 and the stroggification scene.

**Spoiler

John... or whoever tatoos "wrath" on you. You get to this scene because you KNOW he took over a church. You KNOW he's got dudes all up in everything. You KNOW it's a trap, but the game forces you to go in the front door (of a building with multiple egress points), so some rando can knock you out with a rifle butt to he face.

It's just so fucking comical in how poorly it's written. They must have taken notes from Hollywood in how to write a script:
1. Come up with cool ideas for scenes.
2. Make stupid shit happen in between to tie them all together.
3. Try and count all the money you make.

[PREDATOR490]

Turning the brain off for Far Cry games has become a staple of this franchise. This game however, does manage to raise the bar to the point one has to become brain dead with the lazy effort to create contrived situations by forcing things to happen.

1 Marshal and 3 Local Police going into a Cult HQ to arrest the leader for "Kidnapping with intent to harm" with a cult that is clearly hundreds to thousands strong. Noone with any sense is going into that thinking it will end well.

Although, I do find it funny the game does have a "choice" which lets you effectively end the game on the spot by letting the player choose what would have been the sensible option. I.E "Fuck this shit, we are out". I suppose this could have been a brutal nod to the fact this game IS a contrived mess and the player either goes into the game accepting it or get the end credits and play another game.

That said, the game is really obtuse with the religious bullshit and shoving story exposition down your throat with forced cutscenes via a contrived capture system the player cannot avoid. Each region has 4 levels of notoriety and each level has you get "captured" for some forced bullshit. That is at least 12 times the player is captured and somehow manages to escape.

Story is worthless, just ignore it and grit teeth through the tediously forced cutscenes.

Gameplay - Some of it is okay and just slightly polished carry overs from previous Far Crys as per usual.

Weapons - For a shooter, I find it really damning that the selection is both pitiful and the limitations horrific. Whoever designed the scopes in this game needs a good slap. So much of the shop bullshit could be streamlined down to just selling the attachments separately but the game has made such a simple action way more tedious AND even less rewarding.
Scopes in this game are abysmal and the selection of weapons very bad. This is not about wanting more military equipment. This is about the issue that the game has given all weapons "stats" that are essentially the same for each weapon in every category. The majority of the weapons are just cosmetic skins of the default weapons.

Micro-Transactions - The player can literally spend real money to get cosmetic variants of the normal weapons to bypass the progression lockouts on those weapons. Same goes for the vehicles.
However, the player can also buy those same vehicles and weapons with ingame currency so... I can actually accept this MT system and would even promote as being done right. If someone wants to drop real money to get a cosmetic look faster than grinding for it then I am actually fine with that. That said, the selection of gear in this game is pretty bland and the cosmetics are not adding much.

[TheFeniX]

The Irons are also terrible and the guns take up way too much real estate when looking down the sight. But yes the gun selection is atrocious. You get the M60, Compound Bow, and Rawket Lawnchair so early and they make pretty much every other weapon useless. The SAW (M249) is still locked for me and is actually worse than the M60. You can just save up and bypass the lock on the Grenade Launcher (which can replace the pistol) or wait till Tier 4 and get it that way.

The only gun that seems to be an upgrade and worth diving for is the RAT-4 because it can lock on to targets like those fucking omniscient planes that spot you no matter how much cover you're in. I had no idea WW2 era planes made it that easy to pick out one random asshole hiding in the woods. I guess it's like how players dive through Skyrim until they get Dragonrend because up until that point Dragons are more skin to Cliffracers.

Shotguns and SMGs are just fucking useless (As is the default Rifle you find everywhere), doing little damage and the silencers for them suck either way. If you're close enough to use a Video Game shotgun, you can just rely on the easily abused takedowns or (hilariously) overpowered Shovel. Trying to use a shotgun (maybe it's easier on lower difficulties, I play on Hard) is just a great way to get killed.

But the weapon diversity is just god awful. Like Brink: a whole lot of choices that turn out to be nothing. This same issue was a black mark against Fallout 4. But weapons were modded into that game in record time. Farcry has always had shit mod support. It also makes me wonder how Ubishit would handle people modding the weapons so that the player actually has a decent choice. Even when it comes to just damage, everything seems to be 6 or 7. Many of the other stats don't seem to actually do anything (or are instantly negated by perks) or their difference being so minute, it doesn't matter.

At the least you can cobble together some fun gameplay with all this bullshit. But then the story comes along and neuters it. Because, for some reason I will never understand, the developer determines there are times you should just have no fun. Do playtesters actually like having long stretches of their gaming experience turned into repetitive (even in the same cutscene) info-dumps? I don't fucking get it.

Sidenote: The Marksman Sight for the Bow has to be the worst ever. It's WAY too bright and all the markings cover up most your viewing area. I just use the "irons" because even the standard red-dot has this same issue. Many of the sights are fucking bad though, and since the irons are as well, I end up using nothing but the standard red dot.

[PREDATOR490]

Just did a quest in this game that involves working for a movie director.

The actual rant from the NPC: The director says he does not want to work on Far Cry anymore and listen to opinions on "Player motivation", "Opinions" and "Believe ability"

Kinda telling when something so overt is being put in the game.

[Marko Dash]

that's mostly just self jabbing humour, kind of like in the tutorial when you're reactivating the radio antenna, where Dutch tells you not to worry he's not going to have you climbing towers all over the area all the time.

[TheFeniX]

Yea, I don't know how to take that. But it is kind of like "what is my motivation besides taking off for wherever I original came from once I find the first chopper?" Considering you came into the game (middle of the map, at that) on a chopper. No one could realistically fault you for leaving your comrades, of whom the player knows NOTHING about, to try and get real help. Because Video Game/Action movie logic aside, the player character could not accomplish what he/she does. As the game progresses, it makes it even worse because just flying around you can see all the murder going on, even at night. So, the player had to fly past all that just on the way to the start of the game.

FallScrolls et al have fairly solid reasons why you can't/shouldn't ignore the main quest, as do many other openworld games like MGSV, Saint's Row, GTA, etc. But there's no (sane) reason not to bug out and attempt to get backup at the first opportunity. This is something a writer SHOULD concern him/herself with. Baring some kind of bullshit out of nowhere plot twist, the "you are moving outside the boundaries > RESPAWN" is nearly intolerable. Even something as moronic as "The Air Force is shooting down anything coming out of the area" would have at least been SOMETHING.

When Fallout 4 has better character motivation than you, you're doing it wrong. In fact, Fallout 4 has the problem in reverse: Why are you settlement building or romancing companions when, from your frame of reference, your spouse was murdered and your newborn kidnapped 15 minutes ago? Off-Topic: It would have been hilarious for Shawn to call you out on some of this if you were out doing sidequests for a given amount of time.

Moving on, The Faith fight is a straight rip of a Skyrim boss fight I can't recall off-hand. It was a Draugr fight, but I don't recall it being a Dragonpriest, but one of the sidequests. Maybe the Galdur Amulet ending sidequest. She spawns decoys, you have to shoot the right decoy to damage her, adds spawn while she hurls fireballs (oh I'm sorry Bliss Balls) at you. To be fair, the Skyrim version only had the boss split into a trio with one being the real boss, but I was laughing so hard because what was a rage-inducing fight (the balls two shot you on Hard) would have been a backhand to the face while saying "BEHAVE" fight without the Bliss bullshit because there is nothing physically or psychologically intimidating about Faith.

EDIT: My main point is that this fight has NO FUCKING PLACE in this game. It essentially turns the game into D&D for 5 minutes. Especially since, when you beat her and it fades back to reality, she's all beat to shit. Which means you've actually been shooting her. And since I use an M60, she shouldn't be floating in the water at the end. /EDIT

Same thing with the end of the John fight, I can't stop laughing. When you go to grab his key and he grabs your hand and starts monologging. Had I any control over my character, he would have gotten out a "Y-" before I shot him in his stupid face because that would be the sane reaction given the circumstances. I think every game post Mass Effect 2 needs a Renegade Interrupt option because "fuck you and your bullshit" that's why.

If I miss something important (and I use the term loosely) because I did so, that's on me. But Ubisoft is just generally bad about this "start a cutscene when the circumstances of the situation could in no way lead to said cutscene" since AssCreed. It's a horrible crutch and it makes their shit dumb. Like when I hidden-blade counter a boss in the throat and he's spewing dialog at me 2 seconds later. Ugh....

NOTE: I've kept myself spoiler free, but I'm already expecting some kind of lame-ass cop out ending involving Magical Hill-Billy Heroine where the player character either has been a bad guy or ends up as one in the end. It would be interesting to see something like, the whole Wrath deal, where the Bliss effect on the character makes them Wrath and that explains their seemingly insane desire to continually fight the Cult on unequal footing. But I'm sure the ending will be much more cliche and insulting with "cutscene stupidity" galore. Hey, they set the precedence, not me.

Goddamn.... RE5 set a high bar for the "insane, but ACTION PACKED" cutscenes, I'm basically broken. Wesker was a cartoon villian, but dammit, he was FUN and AWESOME! These guy are cartoon villains, but like... Adam West Batman levels of intimidating.

[PREDATOR490]

I did the John region - Felt it was fairly predictable and boring. Guy is a complete psychopath for torture and mutilation barely controlled by the religious bullshit.

What really annoys me about this game is that the forced capture story progression actually fucks up quest progression. Each region has a gigantic amount of things to do but only a trivial amount of it is required before you go for the forced region boss fight that cannot be avoided. This might work but so many of the quests in a region are built around the idea of the region still being controlled and the boss being alive.

Thus, you kill the boss really quickly and then you do the quests that all keep talking and acting like the boss is still alive and the region is still under full bad guy control. Not counting that some of the story missions actually kill quest givers so you can kiss those missions goodbye.

I restarted the game to see if this was a one-off with a single region - It is not. They all do this at varying points resulting in a player stuck between wanting to do quests but not wanting to get sucked into the next forced story point. Insane meta-gaming at it's finest.

Faith Fight - I kinda enjoyed the Faith region because as a boss she was slightly less obtrusive. You get the magic drug dreams and hallucinations but it is at least passable and plausible IF the eventual payoff is worth it. It is not.

The Faith capture scenes would have made more sense if the final revelation is that they are continuous. Faith captured you a while back and has been drugging you up for a while and the interim is a flashback of what you were doing in the region with a mix of magic fuelled poor recollection. I could buy that.
Instead, Faith somehow captures you multiple times by blowing magic drug dust in your face - How the fuck she does that when I am in a helicopter complete with my two faithful companions... I do not fucking know. Somehow you go through this magic drug dream and keep waking up in different places with no explanation.

Not even going to go into how stupid it was to let the drugged up U.S. Marshal have free reign to run around with a firearm unsupervised.

That said, the fight with Faith was equally confusing as shit. They give you your actual weapons in the dream world but when the dream breaks Faith is slightly beat up as if you have been fighting her for real rather than being shredded going up against someone with machine guns in a white dress. When you are in the mind-fuck drug dreams then reality can bend to the point the developers can pull all the weird shit they like and it be passed off easily. When you start breaking back and forth between dream and reality with things carrying over then things start to fall down really quickly.

I am equally annoyed that the conclusion with Faith ends in her just sort of giving up and... floating under the water before you are whisked away in more drug-dream rubbish. The sense of closure is just not there. At least with John you actually get to properly drop the crazy nutcase.

Going for the Jacob finish now - I did most of the region and the capture scenes are just as bad and predictable. The only benefit is that as predictable as it is, what they are trying to portray is the most sensible villain plan out of the entire bunch.

[TheFeniX]

"Rook, John's called in the BIG GUNS. It's a fucking tank. You need to.."
"Rook, Johns taken over the church, you need to get there and help those people out" and wrap up this whole plot thread.
I never got to fight the tank. I was actually mad about that because I wanted to blow up a tank.

And his ending, while having a form of closure: I really had to get my own. Even though the game wanted me to immediately run to his bunker, my co-op buddy and I just kind of stood there for a second.... then he started shooting the body while I kicked it in the face over and over. I then picked him up and threw his body down a ravine and ragdolled it into Oblivion with an RPG.

Because fuck that guy for magicing up the idea that I would EVER listen to his deathbed confession.

This "you must watch our entire cutscene, because we spent a lot of time and money on it, or we will punish you by skipping the entire thing" bullshit continues to infuriate me. In an open-world game, it's nearly unforgivable. The game pays it's dues elsewhere. But, and only Ubisoft could make me defend Bethesda: even Fallout 4 does it better. When you finally track down Kellogg, he wants to talk and has his robots stand down. You then carry on a conversation before it ends in violence. Except that doesn't have to happen. You can rush in guns blazing and take him down immediately. In fact, from a tactical standpoint, it's a much better route.

When you find "Shaun" in a glass cage and Shaun walks through the door. You can just up and shoot him. The game moves on. As bad as Beth has become with the "essential" NPCs, these types of (even simple) decisions are a big part of pushing story in an open-world game. Even something as simple as cutting off a boring rant with a bullet to the face of an already dieing character is an important part of maintaining agency for the player and the character. When you take control away from the player (once again, this is not a fucking movie) you need to be very careful with why and how long you're doing it for. Especially when you're making decisions for the player during these cutscenes.

A lot of developers forgot this as they continue to try and make movies that are only loosely tied together with gameplay.

[Highlord Laan]

I really, honestly tried to play FC5. I wanted to enjoy it, but my suspension of disbelief was too damaged by the entire premise. The entire first quarter of the game that I somehow managed to slog through only made me think "You see this shit? This is the shit that makes Uncle Sam stuff the Army up your ass. Why am I even here?"

Yes, I know there's the "win in ten minutes" ending, and it annoying. Devs and writers really need to get over the whole 'only way to win is not to play' meme. It was funny with Pagan Min, but in this version it's just plain stupid. Honestly, given the entire premise of the game, the opening scene should have been the National Guard rolling tanks and APC's in as an armed cesna falls from the sky in a ball of fire.

[PREDATOR490]

Finished Jacob and it ended as predictably as it started.

I am really sick and fucking tired of game developers pulling this "Force the player to do things they do not want to do then turn round and say if they do not want to do them. Stop playing."
The audacity to make a game, charge top shelf price for it then pull that shit is disgusting. This is why I find the rant about the director on Far Cry and the fans questionable. It is very hard to see this as a joke because the entire attitude of this game comes across as this NOT being a joke and more of a middle finger to the players.
It was bad enough that this game essentially allows the player to end the game before it starts. That might work as a joke ending. Not as the Developers LITERALLY fucking making it the BEST ending because the entire game is a clusterfuck of depravity and stupidity.

Having fought all the bosses, it is really sad that the south boss A.K.A the YES man John is actually the most coherent and remotely satisfying fight.

Spoilers for the stupid boss fights
Spoiler

John - I did this first originally before restarting. Turns out this entire region is the most consistent and sensible.

This guy is sadistic and tortures people. Fairly straight forward and he does exactly what you would expect from a religious nutcase. You get captured, he threatens to torture you. You escape, he starts inflicting pain on npcs that you are supposed to care about to make you give in.

Eventually, you get a showdown and get into an aerial battle with WW2 fighters. Not the most sensible but compared to the other fights its actually decent. You take out his plane, he magically survives crashing into the ground so you can go and get the monologue bullshit before he croaks.
Cue, the attack on his nuclear silo to rescue one of the people you started the game with. Overall, this region plays out predictably and ends on a barely satisfying note.

Faith - Was covered in a previous post.
However, the overall story is that Faith is mind fucking you with drugs, mind fucks one of the people you arrive with at the start of the game and you rescue them. Turns out that person is still under her control and as a punishment for disobeying the Boss she somehow commands this man to shoot up the compound, kill people and open the gates so the bad guys can storm in and wreck everything. Then this dude shoots himself in the head while you are watching from a drug fuelled omni-present vision. When you wake up you are on the ground outside this compound and have to rush in to clean up whats left.

A) This guy is the U.S. Marshal that you went in with. Not that it matters because you go in with 5 people apparently - Fun fact, I did not even realise another guy was part of the group until I went to the Jacob Region and was trying to figure out who the fuck I was saving after seeing everyone else in the other regions.

B) When this U.S. Marshal is saved, the people in the region KNOW that Faith is able to mind control people and that people that come out should not be trusted. One of the major fucking characters literally says that and he should be watched. Regardless, that U.S. Marshal refuses to undergo treatment on waking up with a "I am fine, I do not need the counter mindfuck drugs" and the idiot story just hand waves that with everyone letting that slide. They then let that guy walk around with a sidearm unsupervised.
The stupid being displayed here is just awful.

The Faith stuff is all about drug induced hallucinations so they game can get away with making weird incoherent shit happen IF you are actually in the drug induced dream. Somehow Faith can mind control using this drug and allow you to have omni-present visions of events happening that she is not there for. You somehow rescue the Marshal after a dream sequence with no explanation of where the fuck this was happening.

When you fight Faith as the boss fight, the terrain is fairly obvious where you actually are and you magically go back into a dream stupor before coming out elsewhere AFTER Faith has died. The result is a confused messed of jarring transitions that make no sense followed by shit happening that could not happen even within the bizarre logic of the literal game your playing.

Faith is a little girl, not a fucking witch and she is using a drug. Not some magic wand or super powers. No indication is made that Faith can even fight or is a fighter.
Somehow she fights you in drug land - That might be fine if it was a metaphor for a mental battle. When that fight ends you see that you have been fighting her for real and she is bruised.

In the dream you were fighting with weapons, when you exit that dream, you have the same weapons. Faith has no weapons on her and is wearing a frilly dress so somehow the game is trying to convey that you were fighting Faith in reality but it makes no sense on how. Faith just lays back in water and sinks until disappearing randomly. No explanation of how she is dying exactly, she has no wounds and your instantly transitioned via drug black out to a new place that is in the bottom of her nuclear silo. No explanation of how you got there, what actually happened to Faith and just a shit show of bullshit.

They way this is portrayed, the game wants to say that you killed Faith but the way it is depicted, she either committed suicide or actually survived and fucked off inexplicably. As boss fights go, Faith is by far the most unsatisfying pile of rubbish.

Jacob - What a fucking disappointment

This guy trains the cult soldiers and has an indoctrination / programming thing going on to make them killers. Fair enough. Nothing original there and it started off fairly reasonable. The first capture scene made sense and it was obvious you were being "conditioned" to assassinate a key resistance member.

The biggest issue I have is that it is instantly obvious what this is trying to do but the game forces you to be captured two more times and go through this conditioning again after getting set free multiple times.

This conditioning is triggered by listening to a specific song... nothing in that conditioning states the player cannot tell people what has been happening. Once again the NPC characters in this region KNOW that the Boss conditions people like this and they KNOW the player has been subjected to it. Regardless, they just forget about it and let the player go on doing his thing until eventually you reach the forced situation of the Boss capturing you for the 4th time and you find out the killhouse scenario your going through is the "real" deal resulting in killing the target.

You literally have no choice but to follow through because the mission is on a timer. If the enemies kill you, it resets but the last target does not attack you. I literally stopped before hand to see if the Developers had even a shred of decency to realise that outcome... it resets.
Naturally, you go out to fight the boss and the forced monologue after another stupid fight.

Jacob is a sniper sitting on the top of a mountain. I have a sniper rifle. I shoot him in the head instantly because... why the fuck would I not ?
The game makes him go down and then get back up again magically. Turns out the developers want you to charge his position and get closer so you can reach an arbitrary point and shoot him. Really goddamn stupid design.

The monologue - Again, the boss tells the player that if he wanted to save everyone he should just commit suicide because everytime you try to save someone it turns to shit.

I have done every boss fight in this game except the final confrontation. Each one has left me unsatisfied.
I looked up the details of the endings of this game because I fully expected some bullshit after the tone this game is setting.

I cannot believe what the developers have actually done for an "ending"

Bottom line: This entire game is drumming the same point of YOUR the bad guy and if you dont like it DONT PLAY. WALK AWAY.

The best ending in this game is walking away at the start - This is not a joke. The other endings of this game are the biggest pile of disappointing shit that makes ME3 look utterly fantastic by comparison.

[TheFeniX]

In my game, I got sucked into Faith's "Jump off a 1,000ft cliff" part and tried to wait it out. My buddy checked our Lord and Savior Google and some guy waited 30 minutes. Nothing happens, she just repeats the exact same dialog. I can understand writers getting all butthurt and raging against their fanbase when they get shit heaped on them, but the idea said fanbase is somehow nitpicking doesn't make sense to me.

This is annoying because there is no reason to jump if given the choice. None. Zip, nada. I don't care if the character is high, I'm not. If I was stuck on top of a statue with no option but jumping, I'd likely starve or die of exposure. I'm not jumping. No one would, at least not within the given amount of time you are supposed to take. The game doesn't recognize this in the slightest. I bitch about a lot of games, but this "but thou must" is actually pretty fucking rare.

We're not talking about some dumb sidequest out of hundreds. Like, I can understand some Fallout 4 dev being dismissive of the stupidity behind the "Kid in a fridge" sidequest. But I can't understand the same mentality applying to the main story. You're trying to sell me a narrative, in a time when publishers are selling story like they're making movies, but with AAA gameplay on top. The "next gen" in storytelling. If you think you want to be Gaming's Speilberg: you better fucking deliver.

The petulance grates as well. I recall one (AAA IIRC) developing crying because "well, Link doesn't HAVE to rescue Zelda," which is true, but Link has a vested interest in doing so. That's the point of a lot of conflict: justifying motives to the consumer of the media. If you can't even handle that one basic task, you do not need to be writing.

And when I can't fall-back on fun and engaging gameplay during your exposition and your exposition is bad: you better be ready for a shitstorm from fans. Luckily for them, rags like IGN are ready to lap up boring and cliche bad guys, good guys, and stories and shit out a 9/10 rating for them. I don't consider "wizards" engaging bad guys, unless they are in Elder Scrolls, Dungeons and Dragons, and... well, you get the picture. That's what the Farcry 5 villains are: they're Wizards. If Joseph had turned out to be... Molag Bal or something and the troll was that Ubi and Beth got together to mess with us, I would not bat an eye. That would make more sense in context than what I've been playing.

I've said it before, but a rather large problem is (along with related issues) is this seemingly bold desire to loosely tie together a bunch of cool cutscenes with a narrative. And a lot of this shit doesn't fit (IMO) into the story they're telling. They just did it because... it seemed interesting at the time. You know what else does that? Those shitty parody movies like Meet the Spartans, Date Movie, etc. But another part of it is how they consistently push fun out of the way for the story. Some of the story quests are fun, but that's only because they are repurposed "open-world" content, given a narrative.

And the amount of exposition padding is terrible during them. "The Cook" quest to unlock Ms. Bow and Arrow is one. Yea, he's evil, I don't need 15 minutes of dialog about it.

I can't understand how anyone could enjoy this game without a co-op partner. It offers the same banality of a FallScrolls game, but with none of the depth (in certain areas such as grinding skills, collecting unique weapons, shit of that nature) that turns those games into a true skinner box. I don't understand how people can tolerate these types of games at the prices offered. Marketting just must work that well on other people because I could not in good faith waste my money on a game like this if not for the ability to share the pain with another player.

Let's face it, I basically paid $60 for Co-op Fallout, which I'm not too butt-hurt about. If Beth said "we're re-releasing Skyrim, but with 2-player co-op" I'd drop $60 faster than you can say "It's about fucking time."

[PREDATOR490]

Another quest: Meet a government secret agent in the area who is on a mission for the president to recover a embarrassing VHS tape.

If you help him he says the government will help you in return. Naturally, anyone with a brain knows that ain’t happening with various plausible reasons why ranging from predictably cliche or stupid.

This game trumped that expectation with another middle finger to the player.

I expected the guy to be lying, the guy gets killed or he stabs you in the back. All completely plausible and works with the setting.

This guy is on the level except you find the tape and he literally is on a PHONE to Washington and gets told to take the video tape out of the area. This guy apparently got promoted to chief of staff and decided helping you is “below his pay grade”.
A helicopter comes and he is supposed to fly out of the area.

I say supposed to because I murdered this fucker before he even finished with the rest of that bullshit except the game decided he can resurrect even when I blew up his chopper in frustrated rage.

With one stupid side mission this game has undermined the entire premise and this mission is located very close to where you start.

The key things you are told: Getting out of this region to get help is not possible. This fucker manages it.

Contacting the outside world is not possible: this fucker manages it with a mobile phone.

The developers cannot even be consistent with their own premise let alone realise that what they are doing results in a complete destruction of belief.

[TheFeniX]

Hehe, you shot that guy too? A bit cathartic.

They have the same problem Borderlands 2 had. They want to have their serious business and their WAKY AND ZANY at the same time. It's like when Roland gets killed, um, the game has established over and over that death is cheap. There's no reason the New-U stations won't work for him. So, why am I supposed to be sad? You tried to create drama in an area of the game you have consistently shown to not have drama. That's not sad, it's just dumb. Then right after this "you should be crying moment" the Big Bad gives you a quest to jump off a cliff. You do so... and respawn. Haha, laughs....?

Actually, FC5 villains have a lot in common with Handsome Jack. They're physically mutilated (except Faith), insane, unthreatening, and repeat the same tired shit at you over and over. Because after comments like Butt Stallion you really can't take a villain seriously. But at least Handsome Jack had the common courtesy to rant at me over a radio, not constantly kidnap me with his Hillybilly Witchcraft.

And I don't get what the point of Joseph spilling to you about murdering his infant daughter has to do with anything. Did we need to know he's even MORE of a murdering psychopath? And that's not what bugs me, what does is how cliche it was. "There was my daughter, so sweet and helpless" and both me and my buddy are like:

Near in unison: "So I killed her."
My Buddy: "You fucking ruined me dude."

There's no point to it, not when it's delivered via the same "inches from your face," low and even vocal voice they been using the entire game. If he had said.... whatever, what's another cheap gut punch...ok... him and the other 2 Js gangraped Faith over the course of weeks: my emotional investment is zero here. You can't just say "they did a bad++ thing." You want to horrify the player, don't be a chickenshit. Do like what Max Payne did: show a bloody crib and a little bundle inside it and a women's body mutilated and covered in blood. That'll fuck a player up.

EDIT: not saying in any way I want to see something like that. But just spewing "I did a bad thing" via dialog at the player is just a really cheap and chickenshit attempt to get "feels" or whatever. If you aren't willing to actually shock the player, and possibly piss off Soccer Moms, just cut it.

[Eulogy]

Reading this thread had made me glad that I didn't bother buying this game.

[TheFeniX]

Is the flamethrower "end" effect a sprite? I honestly can't tell, but it looks like it. I know flames are just hard to do, but I feel like I'm playing Duke Nukem 3D whenever I (rarely, as it's terrible) use it.

Just to beat up on the game more and possibly dissuade others from buying it (because I'm a huge buzz-kill): I still contend that co-op is the only thing that makes this game fun. And there's other (better and cheaper) games you could buy if you have a buddy.

Nothing really feels like an upgrade in this game. Adding to that, there's no real choices. You're either picking "the best" or "I like this, so I'm using it." Like, with planes: it either has guns, rockets, and bombs or it doesn't. That's it. If you're using a plane without guns, it's because you haven't unlocked one yet or you just decided not to. Same with choppers and cars: there's just no reason, other than OCD, to collect a whole slew of them.

You can't pimp them out like in Saint's Row. Many don't even offer purchasable color schemes.

The perks range from "mostly useless" to "mandatory because it's a core gameplay mechanic." It leans heavily in the "mostly useless" area. Like lowering the CD on spawning a specialist. Um, thanks? More Shotgun ammo. Awesome? The only one that really feels like an upgrade is "more health" but that means little on Hard either way. The guns are bad since at the least, a red dot is mandatory. Silencers have no negatives. So... you just buy "the best" ASAP and call it. I finally unlocked the Recurve bow. It shoots no differently than the compound bow that I can see. Supposedly does the same damage, but has a bit better range.

Everything is the goddamn same.

Even the bullshit "Level 1 2 3 4" system of Saint's Row 3 was better than this. Because it lead to very clear and different mechanics depending on the gun. The Deagle Knockoff you start with goes from completely useless to a murder-machine as it gets explosive ammo. The automatic gets armor-piercing. Things like that. With FC5, the best you have is the special ammo.

Which you cannot auto-buy, is very limited, and annoying to swap to with the UI. The "performance boosters" are the worst because I constantly forget they even exist as they are on the second UI. You have yo hold Q, then hit E, then select one. The whole weapon selection interface is terrible and is compounded by the non-intrusive interface.

I'm complaining about a spartan interface... in 2018. That's how badly this game can annoy me at times. I'm a huge fan of clear and concise UIs.

If I could just point out one example that shows how little thought went into this game: You can craft TNT, PLASTIC EXPLOSIVES both remote detonated and movement sensitive, and molotov cocktails. But you can't craft pipe bombs...... I repeat, you can't craft pipe bombs which are, by nature, shit dumbass teens make in their garage.... what.

[Starglider]

Thanks for the reviews, I had fun doing 100% completion on Far Cry 4, but looks like I'll wait for this one to get to budget pricing and skip most of it. I got Doom 2016 (for $10) and completed that instead; surprisingly good, if (understandably) shallow.