The core pillars of Far Cry-dom – exotic locations, maniacal bad guys (I only had one face-to-face run-in with Giancarlo Esposito’s Anton Castillo, but he was, as expected, delightfully ominous), and a hefty dose of madcap violence – are all still there. It’s a combo that, based on my experience with the first few hours in a recent remote demo, mostly works really well – though I’m not entirely sold yet on some of its newer elements.
Far Cry 6 will certainly feel extremely familiar to longtime fans, but it also takes some big swings at shaking things up. Not everything has been as drastic as Far Cry 2’s choice to abandon the genetically engineered man-monsters of the first, or the introduction of RPG-style skill trees in FC3, but almost every game has done its part to tweak things in some way or another. The Far Cry series has changed a lot over the 17 years since the original launched on PC in 2004.
