Ever since the original Far Cry (2004) I have had a bit of a love affair with the series. My favourite thing has always been how Ubisoft were never content with releasing the same game over and over which kept me stoked. However with the release of Far Cry 4 (2014) my love affair with the series started to wane a little as I dreaded that Ubisoft found a winning formula and were going to fall into the copy and paste nature that so many series have fallen into before now. This changed a little with the release of Primal (2016) but sunk back into dread once I realised the game was a caveman rehash of Far Cry 4.

However, I have been keeping a very close eye on Far Cry 5 and the stir it is causing, not only in the games industry, but throughout the world in general and I can safely say that I have faith Ubisoft seem to have revisited the drawing board and everything I have seen has made Far Cry 5 my most highly anticipated game of 2018.

The first thing that truly caught my eye with Far Cry 5 was the setting of the game, gone are the huge jungles of Rook Island and the mountains of Kyrat, in place of these wide open, lush and often lonely areas is Hope County. I love the idea of playing through the game in this terrifying, isolated county but what really gets me about the game is the idea that with everything going on in the world currently, a lot of the game’s themes are far closer to home than the previous 3 titles, and this really hits me right in the hype.

Now we all know that the Far Cry games have had fantastic campaign modes but beyond this the game has been a little lacking and, with the exception of Blood Dragon, the DLC has not really pushed the boat out and tried anything daring in quite a long time, so colour me suprised when I read through the press release detailing the DLC plans for the game. Everything about the post game support for the game has me absolutely DROOLING with anticipation. Using Far Cry’s exceptional game play to journey into Vietnam, take on Zombies or go to Mars? Where the hell do I sign up! It really feels like Ubisoft have taken a leaf out of Wolfenstein‘s book to showcase “what if” scenarios using the game mechanics and this is EXACTLY the kind of chance I want to see more developers taking instead of the usual bull of trying to sell me a boring 2 hour story increase that really does nothing to the overall plot… I’m looking at you Square Enix.

THEN there is the insane map builder that was announced as Far Cry Arcade which allows us to build intense arena’s featuring items from other Ubisoft IP’s including Watch Dogs and Assassin’s Creed and includes both single player and some sort of multiplayer segment. (More on this here)

My hype recently reached peak fanboy however, when I accidentally stumbled (no idea how I missed this) across the live action short film on Amazon which I thought was done incredibly well – and as someone who works in marketing myself, I must say that this was an absolutely exceptional piece of marketing material that really has set a new standard for video game marketing. If you have a chance I REALLY suggest you go and watch it.

Literally everything that has been release about Far Cry 5 so far has me absolutely fanboying over the series once again and it has been a VERY long time since any game has done that.

Bring it on Hope County. I can’t wait.

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In case you wanted to see any of the things I have been super stoked about, I’ve dropped some of the trailers by Ubisoft below!