Far Cry 6 review: A familiar return to open-world stupidity

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  Far Cry 6 is a typical Ubisoft chaos simulator.

Less than five minutes into Far Cry 6, I was iffy about it.

The game opens with dictatorial President Antón Castillo delivering a televised address to Yara, a faux-Cuban paradise saddled with a history of political upheaval. Castillo has reinstated a citizen draft for the ongoing cultivation of Viviro, a homegrown wonder drug that cures cancer. Made by fertilizing Yara’s tobacco crops with a chemical gas, this magic medicine is the key, the president declares, to lifting his broken-down island into the upper echelons of the world economic stage.

But this is Far Cry, well-known for its love of open-world war games, destabilized nation-states, and crackpot despots. And Castillo, played with gusto by Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad), is certainly a tyrant. The truth we’re shown during his address—of citizens being shipped off to the fields as forced slave labor or gunned down for resisting—is a non-revelation given the series’ touchstones.