The endings suck, here's why and how to fix it.

[Yoshibb]

SPOILERS FOR FAR CRY 5 AND SPEC OPS: THE LINE

Call it a rant, I just need to vent after finishing a game with another one of these last minute nightmare gotcha endings.

No, the ending is not some masterpiece. I'm sick of these types of endings being hailed as some piece of high art like the creators so desperately want them to be. It's not clever, it's not thought provoking, and it's as lazy as a super generic happy ending.

It will never work in a multiple ending, role playing video game. Allow me to explain why:

1) It's a video game
When you start a book, tv show, or movie, you understand that the characters and their fate are in the hands of the author of said media. You can whine about Character A dying or Character B not hooking up with Character C, but you can't do anything to change it. In a video game, things are different. A video game, in a way, is like work or a job. You complete objectives in order to gain rewards. This may be any number of things like money, fame, additional story, or simple completion in the case of very difficult games. Games are there to give you the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction of reaching a pedestal through your hard work. They make life fair.

So what is the ultimate pedestal in Far Cry 5? Rescuing everyone, liberating Hope County, and arresting Joseph Seed. The game allows you to accomplish all of this and then flips you off in the last moment, nuking everything to hell. That 50 hours or work you just did, that $60 of money you spent, haha, it's all for nothing. Everyone's dead and the villian wins.
When the best choice is to not buy the game and look up the first 10 minute intro ending on youtube, it means your conclusion sucks. Congratulations.

2) There is no set up
As much as the creators think a few throwaway lines of dialogue and a blink and your miss it missle in an enemy bunker are set up pieces, they're not. It's the lazy man's set up. A couple of sprinkles so when people cry foul at your ♥♥♥♥ ending you can scream 'but don't you remember that one time they mentioned North Korea on the radio?'

Stop. I know what you want. You want to be Spec Ops: The Line. So many game developers have wanted to have this meaningful, ground-breaking experience but they don't want to do any of the dirty work involved. The reason why Spec Ops: The Line works is, firstly, there is only 1 ending (2 if you count quitting the game) and secondly, the game has a huge amount of build up leading to its gut wrenching ending. The player begins as naive as the protagonist but through a number of set pieces, it becomes clear that you are committing horrific crimes. By continuing the game, you know you are willingly hurting innocent people but you want to see the mission completed. So when the ending comes around and everything sucks, you expect it. You did terrible things and now you are being punished for it. Even Far Cry 3 does this to some extent.

Far Cry 5 does none of this. The villains are always portrayed as psychopaths who murder, torture, and rape innocent people. The villains will occasionally lecture you about 'solving everything with violence' but the game doesn't give you another option. You cannot even do nonlethal takedowns. And your hypocritical enemies only use violence. They nail people to posts outside their gates and decorate them like a Christmas Tree. How is that a method of preparing for a nuclear apocalypse? It isn't, it's simply a sure fire way to make your antagonists look evil. So when the ending shows up and the game chides you for arresting the villain and saving tons of innocent people, you're not thinking 'Oh, yeah, I deserved that.' You're thinking 'Well, what was I supposed to do?' which leads to my final point.

3) It makes no sense (How do you fix it)

There are two possible villains in this game based on the information the storyline gives you. It can be either you(the deputy) or Joseph Seed. In the end, it turns out to be neither. The villain is nuclear bombs. So how does one fix this so the ending does make sense? There are a multitude of options.

- Have Joseph Seed actually be preparing for a nuclear apocalypse. Ok, so, Joseph Seed claims he received a vision from God that shows a nuclear war. So what does he do? Create a bunch of drug zombies and wolves, massacre or torture people to no actual end, and station the majority of your operation above ground. How is that going to help? I guess some of your followers will be in the bunkers when the bombs drop but why are they wasting resources on building large fort like structures and forcing people to join their cult.

If you want him to be Noah, then make him Noah. If a world ending flood is coming, you don't build a giant sand castle. Joseph warns everyone and people will join if they want. Only attack those who are a legitimate threat to your operation. And stay underground behind heavily guarded entrances. Supply runs should be the only reason you are up top. Let the player find huge caches of food, medical supplies, etc. I realize it kills the whole setting of Montana, but you can't have your villain preparing for nukes by turning Hope County into Modern Day Assyria. It's lunacy.

- Make your villains sympathetic and your protagonist morally ambiguous. The villains of this game have no redeeming qualities. They embody every evil stereotype imaginable. They are designed so the player doesn't feel guilty about killing them (even though the game thinks we should?). There is no place for children or the weak. Everyone is either a soldier or a drug maker. There's not even a single character that gives a legitimate argument about why all this is necessary. The grunts are all mindless and the Seed family rambles on with meaningless cliches. Strong over the weak, life is unfair, and this is for your own good. You know people don't just believe in religion because someone orders them to, right? It amazes me that they seemingly made this game without any concept of how religion works. It's not a religious cult. It's just an army of guys who get their jollies off of murdering people.

So give your villains actual arguments. Show them the signs that put doubt in the player's head and make believers out of his followers. Have the player kill good people caught up in the words of a very charismatic man. And not by accident, but because the deputy think their way is the right way. Have your villains emphasize why they are doing these things. Tearing someone's skin off is certainly monstrous but it's pointless in pursuit of the ultimate goal. If you don't want to do this then don't drop the nukes because the only thing you've portrayed your villains as is power-craving, morally bankrupt lunatics.

- Have a separate route where you join Joseph Seed. If you choose not to arrest Joseph Seed, have there be a shootout in the church started by the Marshall. The deputy gets knocked out at some point in the fight and they are rescued by the Seed family. Joseph explains his reasoning and tells you what his plan is to prepare for the vision he says God gave him. You work your way up to his second in command and capture people instead of liberating them. Maybe in this scenario, the national guard shows up to arrest everyone and you need to kill them to protect the cult.

Then after you've done all of these horrible things, let that lead to the best ending. The bombs drop as you are making a last stand just outside the main bunker. You have actually saved the majority of Hope County and you're likely one of the most well prepared societies in America. So despite your cruelty, the ends seemingly justify the means. I think this would be way more thought-provoking than 'lol, life sucks, everyone's dead.'

- Or you know, you could just NOT DROP THE NUCLEAR BOMBS. Have the deputy choose to arrest people or kill them. Show the consequences and the toll your war has taken on Hope County depending how brutal you were. This would obviously be the easiest solution.

I'm sure there are plenty of ways I'm not thinking of that would make this ending believable. But for the love of God, stop doing these damn forced crappy endings because you think happy endings are unrealistic. It's ruining a lot of people's experiences including mine.

[Valen Logan]

I didn't mind the ending so much but you make a lot of points here. more so than points, you offer genuinely interesting solutions. I especially like your idea of joining the cult and fighting the national guard. When I played through the game I was always wondering if there was an option to be corrupted and join the cult.
I definitely agree with you 100% that they should have shown some more redeeming qualities in the cult. Even after beating the game I went around and read all the backstory notes in the world looking for something that would turn them from pure psychos to people. I never found anything. I was even reading the fuzzy print in books and sneaking up behind cult VIPs so I could hear their sermons. Which was really weird to me because they even made a hype video showing them talking with an expert on cults and how they work so there is no excuse for them not using that info.
I think what they did was a conscious decision. They wanted the cult to be unquestionably evil in actions. The squandered cult expert was just there to give them ideas of how extreme cults have gotten before so they know where the bar is at. But the problem there is you can't just throw something in a story without context and the flimsy excuse "it happened in real life". It doesn't hold water because your world is not real life.

[ezen85]

Just had to reply that I think you're right on the money, Yoshibb. Your alternate styles for the ending also would have been worlds better. Hell, I didn't even feel bad accidentally blowing up civilians because there's no penalty for it.

[-=SOF=-WID99]

again many users may indeed .... miss the point of the story that the lead writer was goin for ....
possibly ... this may help you understand where and what Drew Holmes was going with the story ..

https://gamervw.com/2018/05/27/the-hidden-story-of-far-cry-5/

[103rd STDB]

Love your impressive psycho from 2018! But i finish the FC5 today and i like it! Try to play Hatred, there you don't need to be a good with same ending hahaha

[Pronoun Paladin ☯]

While I love your idea of joining John Seed I think you're being unfair.

The Cult was preparing for Nuclear War. You'll pick it up if you read letters, listen to the radio or listen to the cult having conversations. They want to do more then just hide in their bunker, their goal is the save the entire valley. They figure after the bombs drop people will come to realize the Cult was right and all will be forgiven. The reason for training up the wolves and other animals along with the drugs is that life after nuclear war is harsh.

Play Farcry New Dawn. It takes place years after the bombs fell and the world it has is a violent one. And playing that game I couldn't help but wonder how different things would be if the cult hadn't been wiped out. How much better things would be if the Deputy hadn't of gone on his killing spree.

As for the villains some of them can be sympathetic. Faith for instance in a woman who was led astray and while she's guilty of crimes, one could easily see why she went down that pathway. The Seed brother who was in the whitetail mountains was a military special forces type who was forced to kill his own team-mate to survive. Most of all there is father who despite having done evil of his own is for the most part good. He doesn't believe in the violence and even restrains his own brother.

Farcry 4 storyline was very similar to this game and it was a big success. If you stick around in the very beginning of Farcry 4 and wait something like 10 minutes eventually the villian will lead you to your sisters grave. And afterwards you're crowned the leader and together you hunt down all the people you would of made allies with if the player didn't stick around in the beginning.

[Duke Flapjack]

Snow ☯ の投稿を引用：

While I love your idea of joining John Seed I think you're being unfair.

The Cult was preparing for Nuclear War. You'll pick it up if you read letters, listen to the radio or listen to the cult having conversations. They want to do more then just hide in their bunker, their goal is the save the entire valley. They figure after the bombs drop people will come to realize the Cult was right and all will be forgiven. The reason for training up the wolves and other animals along with the drugs is that life after nuclear war is harsh.

Play Farcry New Dawn. It takes place years after the bombs fell and the world it has is a violent one. And playing that game I couldn't help but wonder how different things would be if the cult hadn't been wiped out. How much better things would be if the Deputy hadn't of gone on his killing spree.

As for the villains some of them can be sympathetic. Faith for instance in a woman who was led astray and while she's guilty of crimes, one could easily see why she went down that pathway. The Seed brother who was in the whitetail mountains was a military special forces type who was forced to kill his own team-mate to survive. Most of all there is father who despite having done evil of his own is for the most part good. He doesn't believe in the violence and even restrains his own brother.

Farcry 4 storyline was very similar to this game and it was a big success. If you stick around in the very beginning of Farcry 4 and wait something like 10 minutes eventually the villian will lead you to your sisters grave. And afterwards you're crowned the leader and together you hunt down all the people you would of made allies with if the player didn't stick around in the beginning.

I resurrecting this antique thread because I agree with the OP and disagree thoroughly with this post.

The cult is evil evil evil. There is basically no scenario where the end justifies THESE means. They could have just made their cult and left out the rape, and torture, and drugs, and theft, and wanton killing and they could have probably had a reasonably large population of *willing* people and not had the law after them. There are real-life cults that accomplish this. The cult is cartoonishly villainous. The only member that has any degree of redemability at all is Faith, and not all that much there.

Joseph is an utter monster who killed his own child and drugged and gas-lit a 17-year-old girl. His brothers are even worse monsters. They are the epitamy of "absolute power corrupts absolutely." I don't care what their back-story is. They are just as cartoonishly villainous as the cult is. The violence in this game is just so *stupidly* over the top.

I've complained in the past as well just how stupid the story is and how stupid the characters act. It's undetermined just how long the cult has been brutalizing the county, but it has been for some time and people KNOW. This is the 21st century where people have cell phones and the internet. This should and would have been splashed all over Facebook LONG before the game starts and it would have been *crushed* by federal agents. Does Ubi expect me to believe they send in ONE federal marshal (and a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ one at that) and a bunch of local yokels?? Seriously?

And North Korea?? Please. Is Ubi seriously trying to convince us that North Korea can end the world? It was a stupid concept in Homefront.

Also the moment Rook gets himself an airplane he should have been gone. There's absolutely NOTHING keeping him from just flying out of the area.

Also in Far Cry 4 Pagan was certainly a villain, but in that game nobody is good. You have a choice of creating a drug empire protected by child soldiers or a zealous religious theocracy that kills infidels or joining the brutal dictatorship (which is probably the best ending of the three as it implies the PC can shape the country for the better). In that game, though, all three of the main characters are actually *human* and not monsters. The Seeds (again, with the exception of Faith) are all irredeemable monsters.

The story in this game was dumb and even now makes me a bit regretful I bought the game in the first place. Even now I'm not going to bother with the final fight as I already know the ending and I find it stupid and utterly out of place.

Far Cry 3 worked because it was a small-scale battle in a remote location where the villain (or at least one of them) acted like a human and not an utter monster. Far Cry 4 worked (although I didn't want to play it again after beating it as the ending were both so bleak) because it's a remote location and also because the antagonist is charismatic and acts like a real human. Far Cry 5 is dumb because it is NOT remote and the antagonists are inhuman monsters.

Plus, "it was only a dream" endings are absolute novice-level drivel. The rug is utterly torn out from under you at the end which makes it a terrible ending.

[V1TYAZ ♻]

[Monke-Cat]

sometimes the best thing to do is just walking away

[Monke-Cat]

plus , Joseph was actually getting ready for a nuclear apocalypse , he was locking people up in the underground bunkers
Religion & Drugs both are tools to control the population just like how government is doing the same .
He was no saint or prophet , he was just smart and he was right , have another playthrough listen to everything he says ; that how this world is doomed , how modernization & capitalism have enslaved us all and we are blinded by their media to forget their corruption
when he says : is this the world we have build for our children?! with any sh!thead and corrupt person having a button and the power to end the world in few seconds !

[RPG Gamer Man]

makes you think..nice post..

[findioth8r]

I wasn't initially pleased with the ending for pretty much all of the reasons you mentioned, but it does pave the way for New Dawn. And TBH, after playing it many times, I don't CARE about the ending. The game is non-linear, I can do what I want, how I want. Heck sometimes I just spend a couple hours exploring, looking for things I haven't seen yet, air dropping in to places and soaring across the country. Since I used to jump out of airplanes for Uncle Sam, it's kinda fun. AND if I screw up I don't end up splattered across the countryside in real life! So yeah, I just start the game now, play until I get to the end, sometimes not even then, and call it a day. BTW you did raise some very eloquent points, but reality is that this is a game, for sale, and gaming companies want money. They ended it that way, like it or not, so we would segue into the next game.

[Masa]

Man lets be honest. When it comes to ubisoft We ignore Story. we just look for combat. there is a reason its called Ubi-shiot yk

[Saint.Million]

Maybe lets just not keep bumping threads which were started in 2018.

Idk, it's just a suggestion. It could be a good starting point towards dealing with this kinda shiz. Just saying.

[the bat kite]

SaintMillion の投稿を引用：

Maybe lets just not keep bumping threads which were started in 2018.

Idk, it's just a suggestion. It could be a good starting point towards dealing with this kinda shiz. Just saying.

Well which is is? Is it not good to bump old threads (starting date is old), or it IS good because it's a good starting point towards discussing what is possibly just piles of ♥♥♥♥ house rat droppings that are more than one of these FarCry game concepts? Game 4 shamelessly sucked it's own gonads in public and so did the sequel to game 5.

Ubisoft can't write anything worthwhile. They have failed so many times that they have made fools of themselves in this industry. GREEDY fools too.....on the way out of the business in this most lucrative of all the entertainment businesses (in the USA gaming is) if they don't get their heads out of their asses and hire some damn talent for once.

[SteahmChip]

This particular Far Cry has had the most thought provoking articles, for example

FAR CRY 5: THE PASTOR VERSUS THE FATHER
A Theological Deep Dive into Far Cry 5, The Father, and the Project at Eden’s Gate
gamespace . com/featured/far-cry-5-the-pastor-versus-the-father/

"Separation of Church and Cult:

What is a cult after all? Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton defines a cult with three characteristics:

A charismatic leader, who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose power.
A process [is in use] call[ed] coercive persuasion or thought reform.
Economic, sexual, and other exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling coterie.
It will be important to this dissection to define this terminology on the front end. The line between parody and reality thins as talk of the forgiveness of sin, salvation, and baptism are concerned, but the PEGGIES take a far different direction than orthodox Christianity.


While the PEGGIES view baptism as a punishing means to reveal sin, most of Christendom sees it as a moment of celebration or an outward expression of inward change. In other words, the act itself doesn’t purge sin (how can you pay for something twice?), but signifies the burying of old ways and with the triumphant emergence into a life with a restored relationship with God."

The article may go far more into it than the average "shoot all enemies" gamer may want in their entertainment , but it might be pushing at the envelope of the status quo into something more profound. In my view, at least, an alternative to "kill everything" a capture mechanism as there existed in the first couple of levels of "Judge Dredd vs Death," for example, would be nice to have.

Nevertheless, FC ND pretty finishes off the story though leaves a possibility for yet something else depending upon the last player actions, should there be yet another sequel.