Far Cry 5

Far Cry 5 moved the action to the fictional Hope County in American Montana, where the apocalyptic Eden's Gate cult, led by the charismatic preacher Joseph Seed, is preparing to seize control of the area through force and manipulation. Playing a silent deputy sheriff, the player moves through an open landscape of farms, forests, and mountains, liberating regions controlled by Seed's brothers and sister and gathering allies - both human and animal, including the dog Boomer or the bear Cheeseburger, who fight at their side. The game restores freedom in the order missions are tackled, allows hiring NPC companions, and offers full two-player co-op across the entire campaign. The region is divided among three of Seed's siblings, each with their own style of rule and a distinctive area of the map, and the player chooses for themselves the order and pace at which to take on their threat.

Technically, it benefits from an expanded Dunia engine with an elaborate weather system, aircraft, and a rich range of vehicles from tractors to helicopters, supplemented by fishing and hunting as side activities. The plot's religious fanaticism amid an American rural community resonated with the social atmosphere of its time and sparked debates about interpretation, although the story itself tends to avoid direct political commentary. The game also includes a standalone cooperative mode, Far Cry: Arcade, with a map editor built from environments taken from previous entries in the series.

Far Cry 5 was both a commercial and critical success, praised for its variety of content, humor, and the new arcade map editor, although some narrative choices - above all the controversial ending - divided the player community. The sound design and Joseph Seed's voice performance also earned praise, as his seemingly gentle, preacherly tone could prove more unsettling than direct threats. Within the series it stands as one of the most expansive and accessible entries, one that also foreshadowed the direction the series took toward modern, real-world-inspired settings.

Why play it: For its variety of content, humor, the new arcade map editor, and Joseph Seed's disturbingly convincing voice performance, even though the controversial story ending divided players.