The Dark MillenarianĀ Message at the Heart of Far Cry 5
At the beginning of Far Cry 5, I was already tired of the gameās narrative. After having widely heard of the joyless vapidity and scattershot nature of Far Cry 5ā²s story (and having watched the opening cutscene) I was already in that very specific rebellious mood in which I didnāt want to do anything the game told me. So, when presented with the button prompt to cuff cult leader Joseph Seed, I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms. I pouted, staring into the screen, thinking how stupid it was that Joseph was talking about how I had a choice when I clearly didnāt. As the dialogue went on, suddenly the scene progressed without my input. I had stumbled upon the gameās secret ending, in which you simply leave Seed be and the credits roll immediately. As the credits roll, this song plays:
First, I was shocked at how good the song was. Meredith Godreauās vocals are majestic, and the lyrics actually say way more about the beliefs of the Project at Edenās Gate than any of its forgettable, blandly written and acted leaders.Ā āIn the west shall rise/ A sinister creed/ The rich will get what they want/ The poor will lose what they needā: this first bit of lyrics contains more actual ideology than the entirety of the cultās speeches that Iāve heard in my 20 or so hours with the game combined. It invokes something real, that being class conflict. When the P.E.G. leaders talk about greed, or sin, or whatever dumb buzzword is tumbling out of their bland boring faces, they donāt mention anything specific or tangible in a way that would give the cult any relatable face or plausible ideology. This song is anything but revolutionary, but itās remarkable how much it gets what makes the P.E.G. an interesting idea considering how little the game cares about making them anything other than detestable villains.
The song and itās lyrics get at the heart of what the P.E.G. is about, which isnāt really faith or sin or God or societyās corruption. What the cult is really about is Millenarianism, preparing for the apocalypse.Ā āThe Reapingā, the cultās seizing of people and capital that kicks off the game, is essentially a project to build up an Ark of human beings, livestock, food stores, and weapons meant to ensure the survival of the cult as a group in the coming apocalypse. Itās prepperism on a communitarian scale and basis, with individuals being subsumed into the collective of the cult in exchange for surviving the coming end of the world.
And the really wild thing is that prepperism is the main thing that the cult and theĀ āresistanceā of Hope County citizens have in common. Youāre rescued by Dutch, a prepper so committed heās taught his six year old grandson to shoot during visits and given the young boy nightmares about nuclear war. The gameās main collectible side missions areĀ āprepper stashesā, with some kind of bunker being under nearly every house Iāve found in the game. If there isnāt a bunker, there are piles of ammunition and assault rifles proudly displayed in every home.Ā āGoodā characters like the hunters that serve as a roaming gun shop talk about how theĀ āpeggiesā say itās the end of the world... and that they might be right. Multiple notes found in prepper stashes say the same thing, and the ubiquity of homemade bunkers in the area seems to reinforce the fact that theĀ āpeggiesā arenāt the only Millenarians in Hope County. The game is pervaded with this tone that every person is convinced the world is ending, though they may not be in agreement on why or what to do about it. Even the shockingly unfunny goofball side characters like Larry or Zip are still convinced that some kind of globe threatening calamity is around the corner.
This, combined with the gameās endings, serves to give the game a really depressingly pessimistic tone. In theĀ āgoodā secret ending, the only semblance of law and order leaves Hope County to the ravages of a cult built around ritualistic torture and murder. In the main ending in which you confront and defeat Joseph Seed, he and every other prepper are proven right when a nuclear war breaks out and the whole mountain range is engulfed in a massive firestorm. Seed then captures you, promising to rebuild humanity from Dutchās prepper bunker with just you and him forming his newĀ āfamilyā. In the secondaryĀ ābadā ending, you take Seedās offer to leave him be and then... pass out with a blurry red screen? Part of the frustration of writing about and playing the game is itās total lack of focus and competence in telling itās relatively simple story, but all the bumbling in the world canāt conceal the basic point that the game seeks to communicate through these endings: sometimes itās better to leave well enough alone. That theĀ āwell enoughā in this scenario is a large cult of psychotic torture murderers taking control of a large portion of a US state is largely ignored by the game, and I think I know why.
The ending most illustrative of how the game feels about prepperism and millenarianism is the nukes ending. In the version of the game most players would likely engage with, that in which they fight and defeat the villain (and one in which they see all the playable content), the world ends in a nuclear firestorm. One of the characters keeps loudly screamingĀ āHe was right! He was right!ā during the climactic race through the blazing countryside, referring to Seed. And by having this ending, the game says of the P.E.G. and preppers by extension: they might seem detached from reality, but they in fact have a point. That point being that the apocalypse is indeed near, that our current moment is the twilight of our civilization. At no point does the game present this as anything but a rational conclusion.Ā āYou can feel it, canāt you?ā Joseph asks the player. Lines like this, and lines sayingĀ āLook at whoās in chargeā, seem to try and tap into the current cultural moment, and in doing so the game has seen fit to mine the deep vein of liberal pessimism that has arisen since 2016.Ā
The amount of doom and gloom unleashed in the liberal west by the election of Donald Trump is truly harrowing in the depth and breadth of self pity it contains. With the defeat of the cherished Obama legacy and the liberal symbol of Hillary Clinton, a tide of pessimism and fear rose as though the world itself was ending. Now Donald Trump had his finger on the nuclear button, and all bets were off. The climate apocalypse, the internet apocalypse, and the just plain apocalypse apocalypse all rose in prominence in a western culture that had already indulged these ideas before. Far Cry 5 not only says that this fear, and the feeling that our society is on the brink, is justified, but that the solution of digging a hole and praying is a proper one. The citizens of Hope County are in fact without hope, hope that they can change their world for the better or save it.Ā
Most games are about saving the world, while Far Cry 5 is about saving yourself and giving up on the world in the process. The game has as deep a faith as theĀ āpeggiesā that our society is about to burn, and at no point does it ever pose this as a solvable problem. It would be different if the ending used a meteor or some other more clearly supernatural deus ex machina, but itās use of nuclear weapons is particularly troubling. Far Cry 5 pessimistically posits that yes, humans are in control of nuclear weapons, and that thatās precisely why weāre all fucked and canāt do anything about it. Thereās no room for protest, or pressuring the government away from deterrence policy and towards disarmament. Thereās only room for regular folks in American flag t-shirts with assault rifles to huddle in their bunkers as the world burns around them, unwilling to try and save it.Ā
