Far Cry New Dawn is indeed the post apocalyptic follow up to Far Cry 5 we all assumed it was, set 17 years after Hope Valley was engulfed in nuclear fire during the climax of the last instalment.
New Dawn will tell the story of what it’s like to to fight, rebuild, and survive in a world that is recovering from the fact that it pretty much destroyed itself.
It might sound like a Fallout game on paper, but it certainly doesn’t look like one. I’d imagine Ubisoft has consciously embraced a much more vibrant colour palette so as not to draw too many comparisons with Bethesda’s own nuke-happy franchise.
The game is still set in Far Cry 5’s fictional Hope County, but it’s a world that’s been destroyed and then reclaimed by nature once more. I’m personally all for a post apocalyptic game that isn’t just muddy browns and sickly greens.
It’s the players job to attempt to restore some kind of order to Hope County. A group of raiders known as Highwaymen roam the wasteland doing whatever they like, so as in Far Cry 5, it’ll be up to us to build up a resistance and fight back.
There’ll be new friends to recruit, and even a couple of new animal chums to get acquainted with on the way.
Judging by the end of the trailer, it looks like Far Cry 5’s terrifying antagonist Father Joseph Seed will be returning, too. Whether as friend or foe is unclear, but he certainly sounds like he regrets kicking off a nuclear winter – which I’m sure we all would, to be fair.
Moment to moment gameplay looks to be exactly what you’d expect from a Far Cry game – run around and shoot people in gloriously violent set pieces – but it does look like there are gonna be plenty of cool Mad Max style twists on weapons, vehicles, and the like.
I, for example, am a big fan of the CO2-powered crossbows that shoot saw blades, and I look forward to seeing how much damage they can do. Probably a lot.
Far Cry New Dawn hits PS4, Xbox One, and PC on February 15, 2019. Just to rip this particular band aid off now by the way, Boomer is almost definitely dead. Sorry.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.