Far Cry Primal Review
-For the Uncensored!
While Far Cry is a series that creates many gamers to shake their heads past Far Cry 3, Far Cy Primal, was released by Ubisoft on February 23rd, 2016 and created on the Dunia engine. It’s available on the Playstation, Xbox, and PC. Takkar, the main character, has a voice and it helps to build a relationship with your main character. What Far Cry Primal, as far as a game playing experience is to create a foreign world that is genuinely built of a love for the past and creating so many disadvantages that a First Person Shooter experience has to offer. What Far Cry has an advantage over something like Call of Duty is a vast expansion of geography and proving that survival is always key to the main player, Takkar.
The experience of gaining allies and expanding your territory, with side missions, and improving your gear, is part of modern gaming, but Far Cry Primal succeeds where games like Ark fails to do, while pulling from films like Mel Gibson’s Mayan epic, Apocalypto, and a better version of 10,000 BC. Far Cry Primal proves in the strength of longer form entertainment is that the missions of saving your tribe, the Wenja, in a new world where you fall off a cliff, which would be repeated in Far Cry New Dawn, at the beginning. The side characters are just as quirky as any game could be. The highlight of the side characters is Tensay, a voodoo medicine man who helps you become a warrior, to fight and see beyond your normal perceptions.
But the primitive language, Wenja, is not entirely fictional either. According to Newswise, “The two people intimately familiar with Wenja are University of Kentucky assistant professors of linguistics, Andrew and Brenna Byrd. They imagined and brought to life Wenja and other prehistoric-sounding languages,” which encompassed the game’s dialogue, adding authenticity to the narrative logic behind each character (https://www.newswise.com/articles/uk-linguists-imagine-ancient-languages-for-video-game-far-cry-primal-by-ubisoft2).
Takkar has to gather supplies and materials so that you can help build up your village by building houses for your allies, so that you can gain new gear. Your main three weapons are a spear, a club, and a bow. Upgrading them as they are going to be your main weapons in the fight to build your tribe. Taking place of grenades are bee bombs, a hive thrown at an enemy helping you distract and kill them. What Far Cry did was pivotal as a game that takes the time to avoid modern shooter mechanics that gamers know so well. You don’t have a vehicle so much of the game is done by walking or fast traveling, so taking camps will take out the need for walking. You can ride prehistoric animals too, as one ability allows the player to tame animals to become your allies. The beautiful landscapes are marvelous to behold, even four years after the initial release.
Ingenuity and story are the driving force behind much of the games lush beauty. Far Cry Primal’s language is one that most game developers can never really seem to do. As an aside, this does share more in common with Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto than any other game might. It manages to use a language the developers compiled from many ancient languages. It’s daring to create a game that puts you in an ancient language than having everyone speak English. That alone is where the fascination behind Far Cry Primal is. If units are basically how art is counted up by corporate standards, the infusion of art and commerce with video games is a fickle mistress, at best.
Not everyone has the time to play gems of games that didn’t get the chance to sign. And for the time, more work was put into Far Cry 5’s level design, but if you have never played a Far Cry game and only played Primal, it would probably rank up with Far Cry 3’s ingenuity. If Far Cry New Dawn was merely the excerpt to Far Cry 5’s original story, it meant that Far Cry Primal was more based out of storytelling and language between the actors.
It does seem grand and ambitious on the level of language, as the cut scenes have you dependent on watching the cut scenes because you would have overlooked them in English. I think this is where the strength of the game relies on the player to be in touch with the character of Takkar and how his allies are pushing you toward building up the Wenja Tribe.
Like all open world games, it can feel trite, taking outposts. Far Cry was infamous for relying on climbing towers, while Primal makes taking bases apart of the story, to help build up the Wenja tribe. It feels like there is a missed gem with Far Cry Primal. Like bad timing played apart of the initial release, and maybe a sequel was never planned, but it should be noted that craft and ingenuity should be lauded even after the fact of a late review.
What you don’t see in games is crafting clothes so that you can survive the winter, or a game that emphasizes building skills so you can continue on more missions. What is interesting is that when I play the game, I’m stunned at how inviting it is, even with an extended break in between playing. I should be thinking about futuristic games, but it’s fun to live in a time that doesn’t exist beyond human knowledge.
I do not blame gamers for probably overlooking Far Cry: Primal and while Far Cry 5 and New Dawn are very polished, I think Primal is as seductive and just as risky as any modern shooter, it succeeds in new territory even after its 2016 release.
-Louis Bruno is the author of more than 15 books, including, The Michael Project, The Michael Project: Book 2: The Lost Children of Eve, Thy Kingdom Come, The Disintegrating Bloodline, Apocalypse Soldier, Hierarchy of Dwindling Sheep. His books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Lulu. He can be found on Gab, https://gab.com/thereallouistbruno, Minds https://www.minds.com/lbruno8063/. Instagram @lbrruno8063 and @louisbrunoofficialbook. Our Freedom Book https://www.ourfreedombook.com/thereallouistbruno17. He has written for the Intellectual Conservative and Ephemere. Also, he writes on https://louisbruno.substack.com, where you can support him directly, and where he will post one article sporadically (the bulk of his work will appear on substack officially). His next series, City of Sand is out now: https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/louis-bruno/city-of-sand/hardcover/product-rke9jz.html?page=1&pageSize=4. Also, if you can’t subscribe so that you can get members only content, please be sure to share the articles, as well. Every little bit helps.