On one expedition, you might find yourself disarming a lock in a heavily booby-trapped bunker by tinkering with a collection of animatronic fish. These special scenarios are dotted liberally throughout Hope County, some offering combat challenges and platforming courses, others leaning towards puzzle solving. The first is a return of Far Cry 5’s “prepper stashes,” reimagined as post-apocalyptic scavenging excursions. When broken down, all that’s happening here is two different activities playing off each other. This process feels natural, more like an actual progression of events instead of merely ticking off check marks on your map. Using what you’ve scavenged there, you might craft a new rifle that allows you to single-handedly topple a Highwaymen camp, securing a cache of ethanol to upgrade your own settlement. There, you might read a note about a hidden stash in a tomb beneath the ground and solve a puzzle to locate the key. You will slip through the countryside and dodge Highwaymen patrols until you stumble upon the ruins of a church. It’s never quite as freewheeling as its closest competitor, Fallout, but there is a clear cadence to the exploration. Wandering the map is a mixture of scavenging and combat engagements that feel mysterious and deadly in equal measure. The first two thirds of New Dawn represent the series’ formula at its most effective. These ambitious goals are tackled with the series’ characteristic clumsiness, stopping just shy of satisfactory conclusions in spite of an earnest attempt. That’s certainly true on some level, but as things progress it becomes clear that New Dawn-while absolutely not a good game-provokes a conversation about its genre, its medium, and conflict itself. Because of this, it is tempting to say that New Dawn engages with post-apocalyptic iconography only as a means to facilitate more stabby, shooty video game fun times. They are the inescapable sin of mankind, made manifest again after the End Times, patrolling conveniently placed outposts for the player to assault. The Highwaymen are the Visigoths attacking Rome. Indeed, it’s a concept as old (and fraught) as communal history itself: enemies are at the gates. Taken on its own, Far Cry New Dawn is as straightforward a post-apocalyptic tale as can be told. Taking control of the security chief of a para-military fixer group lead by the charismatic Thomas Rush, your job is to stymie the Highwaymen and protect one of the last remaining free settlements, Prosperity. Communities there thrived until the arrival of the Highwaymen, Mad Max-esque raiders-led by twin sisters Mickey and Lou- who stomp on whatever idyllism that remains. Yet Hope County is far from a hostile hellscape it is a genuine Eden amid nuclear waste. Its mutations, which include bark-skinned bison and a Borealis’d sky, recall works like 2018 science fiction horror film Annihilation. New Dawn’s Hope County is a pastel wonderland. That game had wistfully golden fields and sun-drenched forest canopies. Set 17 years after nuclear catastrophe shattered the world, Far Cry New Dawn brings players back to the fictional Hope County, a massive tract of Montana that was also the location for Far Cry 5.
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