#anton castillo

Hoyt chokes up when he mentions how “wonderful” and hardworking his was, apparently looking up to him, but at the same time, according to what I’m told is an official description, he had a “brutal upbringing by his father” and “swore to outdo him”.

Pagan murdered his dad because he saw him as an obstacle to his ambitions, and it seems the Twins killed theirs, whom Gina says was not as sadistic as his daughters, for similar reasons. Ironically, Vince was the one who turned little Michelle and Louise into the violent “problem solvers” Mickey and Lou. In New Dawn, Ethan also betrays New Eden and ultimately dies because he resents Joseph for being the Father instead of his father, and he feels neglected.

The Seed brothers had a violent, alcoholic, and very religious father who would regularly beat them when they were young, and the abuse they suffered because of him, whether directly while they lived with him, or indirectly when they ended up in foster care after he was arrested, broke them in various ways, but all irreversibly.

Interestingly, it wasn’t because of hate or abuse that Antón’s father, Gabriel Castillo, turned him into a villain. On the contrary, he admired him, but it was mostly the desire to take back what the revolutionaries stole from him and his family that led Antón to become a tyrant. That’s not his dad’s fault, but it’s still partly because of him that his son turned out that way.

In Far Cry 6, what’s interesting is that we also get to meet the child of a main villain. Diego too has a complicated relationship with his father, who can simultaneously tell him he loves him and get him nearly killed, or tells him it’s his fault if innocents get hurt every time he disobeys. The boy wants to leave Yara and disagrees with some of what his father says and does, but he also has undeniable love and compassion for him.

In the game, we see events that are potentially as life-changing as the ones other previous antagonists told us about. Remember that time Antón made him watch as Julio was being beaten, then put a gun in his hands and asked him to shoot, but since the 13-year-old boy couldn’t bring himself to do it, he had to witness even more violence and presumably someone being beaten to death? That’s a story I think he could have recalled, as an adult, the same way John talks about the day his parents tortured him in their kitchen and he had an epiphany.

Killing Julio would have been traumatizing, but so was watching him suffer a longer and even more painful death because Diego didn’t pull the trigger. In both cases, he feels guilty and responsible. Had we met him years later, maybe he would have talked about that day and how it changed him forever. Maybe he would have said his father had taught him a valuable lesson, for example that “cowardice” only makes things worse and that it’s always better to take action, even if it seems bad, or that sometimes, you simply can’t win because the world is evil, or maybe that murder is mercy. Who knows what that trauma could have done to him, in the end?

Diego admitted his father was a monster, saying it was because “he was raised that way”, but as much as part of me believes Antón did love his son, there’s no denying his guilt-inducing and violent parenting methods were disastrous and could have had the same effect on Diego. I want to hope the boy could have broken this cycle of violence and escaped Antón’s toxic influence, but he could also very well have become a tyrant himself.

.09 "There Is No Past Anymore"

Given I love Pagan and all the villains out there I'm not about to say him being a dictator is an issue though he is definitely a worse one