13) Far Cry Primal (2016)

So, before starting this self imposed challenge, my experience with the Far Cry series was minimal. When Far Cry 2 was released, I decided to give it a shot based on the critical acclaim it received and was interested in the realism that had been gushed over. The idea of travelling around a simulated slice of Africa where I had to ward off disease and repair my vehicle if it broke down was enticing. I stopped playing the game after dying repeatedly and discovering that vehicle repair boiled down to popping the hood and tightening the engine bolt for about five seconds. Since then, I've maintained a healthy distance from the franchise, always somewhat baffled over the praise it seems to continuously garner. I decided to finally take the plunge, and decided to start with Far Cry Primal because the setting seemed novel.

We start the game in 10,000 BC taking on the role of Takkar, a Wenja tribesman who gets separated from his clan by a saber-tooth tiger while out hunting mammoths. This leaves us stranded with no weapons in an unfamiliar land. We save another lone Wenja woman, Sayla, who informs us that the Wenja are scattered across the land of Oros, and it becomes our goal to reunite the Wenja people, survive the wilds, and deal with two other rival tribes that have been terrorizing the land. We then recruit a shaman known as Tensay who, after forcing us to ingest a questionable liquid that sends us on a spirit journey, grants us the title of "Beast Master", giving us the ability to tame animals.

The gameplay from this point on is fairly straightforward. You explore the wild, foraging and crafting while dealing with wildlife and dealing with attacks from the two rival tribes. For progression, you can fight and claim settlements and light bonfires, which increase your tribes population and decreases the amount of enemies in an area. While the game encourages and rewards stealth, there's little to stop you from going in bows blazing, and sometimes trying for stealth and having to improvise when you blow it is half the fun. You're tasked with recruiting specialists, which sees you completing various tasks and expands on your repertoire of skills. They also unlock various skill options to choose from as you level up, giving you more health, new crafting recipes, or adding new animals you can tame. Taming animals is one of the big draws, as you can have any animal you tame travel with you, and while they all have their own stats and abilities, it's generally best to travel with the bigger and tougher animals.

Among the animals you can tame, there are wolves, a variety of large cats, bears, and most excitingly for me, badgers. The taming mechanic is fairly simple, tasking you with sneaking up on a distracted animal and offering it food which instantly bonds it to you. While I can appreciate the simplicity, part of me really wanted there to be more to it, which there thankfully is for a handful of specific animals. The highest tier of animals in the game require you to track them down, fight them, then show mercy instead of killing them. This was far more rewarding, though the animals you get in this way really only offer better stats. You're free to change which tamed animal you want to travel with at anytime, though there's rarely any need to choose a specific one outside of personal preference. Still, I greatly enjoyed this mechanic for what it was, though I must lament that it felt pretty shallow.

Sadly, that sums up a lot of the things in this game. The foraging and crafting lack any real depth, the few characters you interact with are pretty one note, collectibles seem to exist solely for the sake of being there, and the story, while serviceable, lacks any real teeth. You're presented with two rival tribes, the cannibalistic Udam and the ritualistic Izila. While these two tribes are distinct with separate motivations, they're dealt with in pretty much the same fashion. For the most part, you're free to deal with them in any order, and you'll clash with both as you proceed, but it's a little disappointing that you don't get to see them interact with one another. It would have been fun to see the two other tribes clash, which could even allow for temporary alliances, but instead they are kept separate from one another.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the game, at least to me, is the fictional language that was developed and used in the game. It's based on a reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language, which is believed to be a common ancestor to many modern languages. Not only that, but they developed three distinct dialects, one for each tribe, that are designed to have distinct sounds to convey each tribes' culture. I'm a massive fan of shit like this, where you can tell a handful of people on the team were exceedingly passionate about this one aspect. It would have been easy to just have everyone speak a modern language or communicate via grunts, but taking the time and effort into this makes the world feel more real, and by the end of the game, there are a handful of words that you can absolutely know the meaning of. If this level of care and detail went into other facets of the game, I'd be completely on board.

In that same vein, composer Jason Graves does an amazing job of crafting the soundtrack, keeping things simple yet distinct. Each tribe has their own themes, styles, and instrumental profiles. It comes together to create a distinct soundtrack that fits very well with the setting of the game. Oddly, during one of the final missions against one of the tribes, they inserted "The Wolf" by Fever Ray. While, this inclusion works very well and is certainly memorable, it's more than a little jarring to have a song with lyrics playing after dozens of hours, and only in this one specific instance. I think the inclusion works, and I had the song stuck in my head for days, but it comes across as a baffling inclusion.

Despite my nitpicks, I greatly enjoyed my time with the game. It's a fun world to run around in and explore. There were a lot of times where I couldn't help but notice how video game-y things felt, which is fine, but I kind of wish that more care went into making the game feel more real. As an introduction to the Far Cry series, I feel Primal serves to establish what to expect in a mainline entry while also feeling unique. I feel the trappings and conventions of the franchise, while certainly aiding in making the game more accessible, ultimately do a disservice to the setting. I would love to see another game tackle this with a larger emphasis on survival and diving deeper into some of the ideas that are presented here.