#dan hay

Hey! Thank you :D

I said the cult had been in Hope County for at least 9 years because there’s a note at the Sacred Skies Youth Camp written in August 2009 that mentions them, and it’s the oldest trace of their presence we can find in the game:

In this interview, the Lead Writer Drew Holmes mentions a “20-year history” for Eden’s Gate but says they’ve been in Hope County “for about 10 years”. In this other interview, this time with Dan Hay, Creative Director, Executive Producer, and Writer on Far Cry 5, a “fifteen-year history” for Joseph in Montana is mentioned instead. For what it’s worth, in the prequel novel Far Cry Absolution, the protagonist has been a member of the cult for 12 years.

In the cut in-game encyclopedia, it was also said Eden’s Gate acquired the Sacred Skies Youth Camp, Gardenview Ciderworks, and Harrison Lookout Tower about 10 years ago, which is also when they closed down the Throne of Mercy Church. As for the Silver Lake Summer Camp, they bought it 8 years before the events of the game.

And so this is where the “9 or 10 years” estimation comes from :) As for the cult itself, it’s probably about 15 years old, but we know (partly thanks to The Book of Joseph) that it didn’t start in Hope County and they only moved there at some point, so that works.

Since he’s already shared a lot of anecdotes in interviews and live videos on Instagram, I thought I wouldn’t learn anything new... but I did, so here’s a summary of what he said about his experience playing the Father.

We knew that the dev team (he specifically mentioned Dan Hay and Drew Holmes) had struggled to find the “right” actor for the role, but what I don’t remember ever hearing before is that, after two years of unsuccessful search, the project was almost cancelled for this reason!

Thankfully, that was when Greg Bryk auditioned. He had already said the script they gave him (and that he thought was “amazing”) was what became Joseph’s monologue in the mission “We Must Be Strong”, but he gave more details about what was originally in it. In this early version of his backstory, Joseph was 23 years old and working two jobs to support his family. One night, exhausted, he fell asleep on the couch as his pregnant wife went out to get ice cream. He was then awoken by a knock on the door, told she had been in an accident, and taken to the hospital. The rest of the story is what he says in Far Cry 5: when he arrives, his wife is dead, their premature daughter is “stuffed with tubes”, he hears God’s calling, and understands he has to make this sacrifice.

So he got the role, and when they called him again to record a sermon (my guess is it was this one, but I’m just speculating), he saw what the game looked like and thought everything and everyone was “incredible”. Over time, as they got to know him, they even changed the character and partly rewrote the Father specifically for him.

The team was also very accommodating. For example, the scenes are usually shot in the huge performance capture studio, but for the Heralds’ eulogies, which are much more intimate, they built a small room so he felt like he actually had something around him instead of a big, empty space.

A day before the game came out, the cutscenes were already available online and he watched some of them. He was very impressed by the last eulogy (or, as he calls it, “snot monologue”) in particular because of how “vivid” and “human” it felt. It brought tears to his eyes and he recalls his wife was “blown away”; it was “special”.

As for the fans, he thinks they’ve been very supportive and welcoming. Some have told him they felt heard and seen by Joseph, and he believes it’s because he’s a character who loves people for who they are. At this point, he and the co-hosts agreed that being an actor was a gift because it gives an opportunity to make people’s lives better, especially in video games because there’s a unique connection that doesn’t really exist in movies or TV series.

Marwen Heni mentioned that, while most villains want you to hate them, Joseph, on the contrary, wanted you to reflect and think that he might be right. Greg Bryk admitted that he believed everything he said, especially about family and technology. Sometimes, people are isolated or only have online connections, so having someone tell them, “I see you and I love you for what you are” is powerful. In his opinion, this message resonated with a lot of players because it’s a simple truth and we all want to be part of a family.

Joseph doesn’t control his followers with fear, Marwen Heni commented, but with devotion, and that too makes him compelling. As he was playing Far Cry 5, he started questioning whether or not he (as the Deputy) was right for opposing the Father, which is something Greg Bryk says he saw a lot in comments. He believes there’s “an intimacy to the relationship” between Joseph and the player, a “seduction” in the sense that we all want to belong. He’s humbled by the impact his work had on people.

When asked if he would be open to reprising the role, this time, he answered, “Absolutely”. In fact, and this is news to me, he revealed there were discussions about turning Far Cry into a TV show, and the different games would have been standalone seasons. That said, he added that, at a certain point, it’s necessary to let characters go and that he was grateful for what he had already experienced playing the Father.

Marwen Heni then asked if Joseph, who is very complex, was entirely fictional or if it was Greg talking through him. He answered his characters are always him, to a degree, because he wants to connect with the material so he never lies and can work from things that matter to him. He never judges them and tries to think about what he wants to express through them. He’s interested in their humanity and what motivates them. “We’re all broken,” he said. “Some are much more broken than others, and sometimes those broken pieces are very sharp and jagged, and they lash out.”

He also revealed he had “very specific rituals” to help him become a character and then let them go. He mentioned a few prayers that one of his friends, who is a Wiccan, taught him. In fact, and all the co-hosts agreed, it can be very hard to “disconnect” from a character sometimes because actors aren’t just pretending; they’re using real emotions.

He had already said his son Dempsey had done the mocap for John and Jacob in the Collapse DLC and that he felt carrying Ethan’s body in New Dawn was a way for him to honor his “boy”, his dead dog Lucky, since he deeply regretted that he couldn’t be there to take him to the veterinarian the day he passed. What I didn’t know, however, is that it was Greg himself who had asked if Joseph could carry Ethan, and the team made it happen. He also explained that, when it was time to play this scene, he tried to imagine what it would be like to actually lose his son.

But who is Greg Bryk’s favorite Far Cry villain? Well, when he auditioned and started researching the franchise, he was interested in Vaas because of Michael Mando’s performance. He still doesn’t know him personally but has a friend who worked with him and who spoke about “how electrifying his talent was”. There’s something “unhinged” and “primal” to him as a performer; he’s a “wild” and “special” actor.

This interview with Drew Holmes, now the IP Director of the Far Cry franchise, is two months old and I haven’t talked about it yet, but there are a few things he says that I really like and think (hope) bode well for the future of the series!

In the first one, we see early designs of John and Faith (who has a longer dress and a gun, for once), and in the second one, we see Joseph.

In my opinion, the Father looks more intimidating here than he does in the game, partly because he’s holding a rifle, but what I find curious are the hooded people in the background. I assume they’re his flock, but they don’t look like the cultists we see in Far Cry 5 at all. This is what a lot of people tend to imagine when they hear the word “cult”, and maybe it’s even what some of the devs had in mind at the very beginning of the game’s development. But to create the Project at Eden’s Gate, they met with cult experts and learned that “a bunch of people running around in these weird robes” was, in fact, “a very cliché version of a cult”, as Dan Hay explains in this video.

When he’s asked if he has “any interest in unifying the larger world and creating a larger meta-story between all the games” and if they’re all “in the same universe”, Dan Hay answers he’s “just gonna smile at that”, and after talking a bit about how invested the team is and how smart he thinks players are, concludes, “But your question is very intriguing, and it makes me smile.”

He then happily explains Far Cry is “near and dear to [his] heart” (he even has it tattooed on him because he lost a bet) and that he “[plans] on working on it for a long time” because he “can’t think of anything else”.

That was in 2014.

In June 2021, it was officially explained that Far Cry games were only loosely connected and each had their own world. In November 2021, Dan Hay left Ubisoft.

During my research for my post about the evolution of John Seed, I stumbled upon behind-the-scenes pictures for Inside Eden’s Gate, the Far Cry 5 “Anything Can Happen, Everything Will” live-action TV spot, and a few press events on Instagram.

I’ve already shared some of them, but if you’re interested, here’s everything I found :)

(This is just an overview - all the links are given below)

The photos were posted by:

Adam Dorsey (Jacob Seed): 1 (reposted from Greg Bryk; the original was deleted) - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5

Alexis B. Santiago (Hannah): 1 - 2 - 3

Casey Lynn Stuckey (Makeup Artist): 1 (3 pictures) - 2 (2 pictures) - 3

Dan Hay (Executive Producer, Creative Director, and Writer on Far Cry 5): 1 - 2 - 3 - 4

Greg Bryk (Joseph Seed): 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 (10 pictures) - 5 (deleted picture; reposted on IMDb)

Jarrett Worley (Mark): 1 - 2 (reposted from Ezra Olson, Still Photographer; the original was deleted)

Mackenzie “Kenz” Lawrén Johnson (Faith Seed): 1 (8 pictures)

Nina Shyne Alviar (Makeup Department Head): 1