Likewise, the developers have awkwardly woven some nods to decolonial critique into the game’s progress-through-annihilation gameplay. They varied up the “white male savior” narrative by featuring a Latina protagonist-although the player still has to choose to hit the “gender button,” so to speak, to play as a woman, and the choice notably has little-to-no effect on gameplay and story progression. There is certainly evidence that the Far Cry 6 team has attempted to evolve in response to critics. For example, digital artist and game critic Ansh Patel points out that the “malaria meter” used in the African setting of Far Cry 2 reinforces imperialist notions of foreign lands as inherently hostile and in need of civilizing intervention, while game studies scholar Souvik Mukherjee argues that the representation of South Asia in Far Cry 4 reflects the way video games’ depictions of history frequently rely upon colonial methodologies and assumptions. Best of all, while you sit around at the Heroes’ revolutionary camp, you can partake in some staples of real-life Caribbean culture by learning to play dominoes while listening to some Cuban jazz.īut for years, the Far Cry series has been rightfully criticized for its colonialist tendencies. One day you’re working with the Monteros, tobacco farmers with country roots the next day you’re planning an operation with urban university groups Máximas Matanzas and La Moral and the day after that you’re collaborating with the Heroes of ’67, encamped deep in the mountainous interior of Yara. Yara is also broken into regions of cultural and natural diversity, bringing the player to engage with characters of different generations, races, genders, backgrounds, and abilities in a variety of geographic locales. It is truly noteworthy that all of the main characters-at all points along the moral spectrum of the game-are characters from Latin America, even if the island they call home is fictitious. And therefore you will be familiar with the signifiers that convey the country’s cultural and geographical landscape in games like Far Cry 6: 1950s-era cars, bearded revolutionaries, tropical foliage, salsa music, guerrilla warfare, colonial architecture, the Bay of Pigs invasion, rum, and cigars.Įven still, there are refreshing and novel aspects of the representation of Latin American culture in Far Cry 6. If you have ever played Guerrilla War-or, for that matter, Goldeneye 007, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, Just Cause, Call of Duty: Black Ops, or the Tropico series-you have inhabited a simulation of revolutionary Cuba. has argued, “it is not Cuba that is ‘stuck in time’ but rather American knowledge of Cuba that is ‘frozen in a bygone era.’” And this portrayal of a timeless Cuba is a common thread in popular culture circulated worldwide, from The Godfather: Part II to Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights.Īnd let’s be honest, there’s not that much new in the way Far Cry 6 portrays Cuba. But this dangerous misconception ignores the reality of Cuban people in the 21st century. This is not surprising, since this same wistful vision of Cuba has endured in the imagination of game developers and many others for decades. In this way, Far Cry 6 offers a typical “tourist’s perception” of Cuba: a nostalgic wonderland where you can experience the past, 1950s cars and all! Helmed by an authoritarian dictatorship that has kept it isolated from the rest of the world for half a century, Yara is “an island that is almost frozen in time,” according to the game’s narrative director, Navid Khavari. Yara, a fictional Caribbean island that draws its inspiration from Cuba, is the setting for one of the biggest game releases of 2021- Far Cry 6.
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