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 Much Cry 6 , I was iffy about it.

It opens on dictatorial President Antón Castillo delivering a televised address to Yara, a faux-Cuban paradise saddled with a history of political dissent. 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 raising his broken-down island to the upper echelons associated with the world economic stage.

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