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I have been meaning to make a post about this on the Friday Fun Thread for a while, but I will just make it here. I don’t think Far Cry 5 meant to make a commentary about America or American politics, I think that was something it accidentally stumbled into by virtue of releasing around the time Trump started to become a controversial figure. Video games have long development cycles of around three to five years.
I think Far Cry 5 was about Syria and ISIS, and attempting to put the conflict in terms and visuals Americans can understand. It’s about a radical group with a bespoke, radical eschatological interpretation of an already existing religion that seizes an area by force and tries to impose that vision.
There are a lot of parallels between Eden’s Gate and the events of Far Cry 5 that parallel ISIS and Syria. Notice:
-Eden’s Gate’s black flag with white lettering, like the ISIS battle flag
-The white Toyota technicals they both use as their primary combat vehicle
-The bizarre inhuman torture and execution methods that seem weirdly sadistic and lurid for a group claiming to be faith based
-The mandatory politically correct disclaimer by the developers that this group does not represent the religion as a whole: the multiple scenes where the Catholic priest is obviously disgusted by Eden’s Gate, and the scene where the cult members literally knock a Bible out of his hands and force him to hold the cult leader’s manifesto instead. Odd for a game made by liberals that is supposed to be dunking on conservative Christians but perfect sense for a game that is supposed to an allegory for ISIS and it’s questionable relation with mainline Islam.
-The government’s complete lack of interest in dealing with the cult despite its violent insurgent behavior, with government intervention limited to a few special forces troops dropped in by helicopter and one CIA agent to assist. The lack of ATF involvement or the national guard showing up in force makes no sense for a game that’s supposed to be set in America but it makes perfect sense as a commentary about Western governments initially giving very little help in fighting ISIS. The CIA officer even specifically says the American government isn’t interested in helping much because it’s too busy with domestic political squabbles like verifying the authenticity of Trump’s alleged pee tape.
-The uniforms and Soviet era weaponry of the friendly militia that helps you fight the cult look strikingly like the Kurdish paramilitary units that were holding back ISIS in Northern Syria. The fact that there even is a “friendly paramilitary militia” that’s unambiguously played as good guys would seem extremely odd for a liberal critique of rural America.
-SPOILERS: The fact that this cult in the middle of some Montana county is somehow (at least metaphorically) destabilizing world geopolitics to the point of a potential world ending nuclear war.
You’re right though, Far Cry 6 is just politically and narrative schizophrenic garbage.
I disagree on the fundamental argument. Progressives/The Left have been making comparisons of the Right to Al'qaeda and ISIS for years, well before Farcry 5 came out.
So when you see comparisons between 'Right-wing Militia' as presented in Farcry 5 and Syria and ISIS, it's not because they're trying to create a parody/satire contextualized for Americans to follow, it's because they honestly think anything affiliated the American Right-wing is like Syria and ISIS.
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I was honestly extremely impressed by how accurately they managed to get some of the Christian iconography; some of it wouldn't look out of place at a standard church (how the church looks at the start of the game, the "Wanted: Sinner" posters, which I've Mandela Effected myself into remembering outside of the game, and then there's the "say yes" arcwords).
Interestingly that's not the impression I got from that, but it had
liberalcross-aisle appeal; sure, "haha the Christians are evil" is a Progressive staple, but physically protecting people from heresy checks a few Traditionalist boxes (also, you fight a literal war on drugs and shoot tweakers).Far Cry 6 would have been drastically improved if you played the entire game as Giancarlo Despacito's kid (who was the most underutilized character in the story even considering how little screentime and interaction you got with Dictator Pollos Hermanos). At least the game is mostly mechanically fine and it looks nice, but the Borderlandsization of New Dawn that carries forward into 6 is not a good direction for the game to take.
For that matter, I'm actually kind of surprised about New Dawn's plot, considering the villains were very literally woke caricatures (and their backstory is what progressives tell themselves). I'm still annoyed you can't just shoot them right at the start of the game though.
Also, I'm tired of the Dora the Explorer shit in every fucking game. They even managed to put it into Cyberpunk 2077, though at least you can kill everyone who speaks like that.
I don't play RPGs much anymore, do explain?
This is the "use one non-English word (generally Spanish) in every sentence even though it doesn't make sense, nobody talks like this organically" thing.
It's not possible to un-notice.
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That’s another thing that makes me think it’s about radical Islam. Trafficking narcotics for funds and using them to hype up soldiers before an attack are something that the Taliban and other groups have been accused of doing.
The Taliban's US-backed opponents were also accused of drug trafficking, rather more credibly.
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It’s interesting, this is similar to my impression of the 2024 film Civil War. A lot of ink was spilled speculating about the degree to which it was an anti-Trump or anti-right-wing film, and criticizing the implausibility of the different coalitions in the civil war. (“Why are Texas and California allied? Don’t these dummies know that California and Texas are politically opposed to each other?”) When to me the film clearly seemed to want to capture the sense of fish-out-of-water befuddlement that journalists experience covering foreign war zones.
Some American journalist covering a civil war in some random African country is sure to have the same sense of “What the fuck is even happening here? Why is the Kibunda tribe allied with the Yojinga tribe, when all my research says these two groups have longstanding enmity toward each other? Why do any of these groups care about these obscure disputes, and why are they willing to kill each other (and innocents) and wreck their countries over something that, to an outsider, seems petty and incomprehensible?” I think the screenwriter wanted to get Americans to consider that their own country’s internal politics aren’t immune to being seen in this same way. To put it in terms Americans can relate to. Just like with that movie though, it sounds like Far Cry 5 hit a little too close to home and people weren’t able to view if with any sort of distance or detachment from current hot-button issues.
My impression on Civil War was that the director understood, quite wisely, that most people wanted a movie that flattered their partisan identity, where what he wanted to show was what an actual civil war would mean for America on a concrete, day-to-day level. He makes the factions a nonsense hodgepodge because he doesn't want people to frame every single thing he depicts as "their wretched villainy/our righteous triumph." By invalidating everything we know or suspect about America's actual geographical fault-lines, he throws people into a limbo where, while groping around for some sense of what's going on, they might actually view the events he depicts with something approaching objectivity.
If that was the plan, though, it didn't seem to work for most people I've seem commentating, who were mostly upset that they didn't get the partisan propaganda they were looking for.
Also, the conventional wisdom about American geographic fault lines is wrong- ideological conflict would be a window dressing for realpolitik interests in an actual federal state failure condition. There’s some baked i with the inter mountain west getting oppressed by the coast, but no inherent reason that the heartland would side with one or the other.
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