The dread, the separatism, and the coming collapse of America that inspired Far Cry 5

Dan Hay, creative director of Ubisoft’s Far Cry 5, said that the Far Cry franchise is always about the combination of chaos and beauty. His team chose to set the next game — coming February 27, 2018 — in the beautiful fictional Hope County in Montana. Beneath that beautiful surface, a frightening religious cult runs the region, and your job as a player will be to organize the resistance against that cult.

The story is about American extremism, and it is no coincidence that the fears it generates come straight out of the headlines of current events. Hay wanted to convey what it was like to grow up with a sense of dread and a feeling of “us and them.” And that’s what he has created in the story of Far Cry 5. His team traveled to Montana to get a sense of the place, and they envisioned what would happen to it if an armed militia came into conflict with those who won’t leave it alone.