Far Cry 5 Hands-on Preview: Take in the sights as you slaughter

The Far Cry 5 E3 2017 demo started with a choice: which one of three guns-for-hire, recently revealed by Ubisoft, did I want along for the ride?

For me this wasn’t a hard choice; I picked the dog, Boomer, and together we began the monumental task of freeing a small town, Fall’s End, of crazed cultists.

As I slowly clambered over the crest of a hill and hid in the shadow of the town’s water tower, I inspected the chaos below. There were at least ten threats present — and a few hostages too — so I decided to keep it stealthy… for the moment, at least. I noticed a huge gas truck in the intersection of the main street and kept it in mind as I slipped past the baddies and onto the roof of the church at the foot of the hill.

From this vantage point I started to put a solid plan in motion, observing any remaining cultists obstructed by the church earlier. I only had a baseball bat, compared to the automatic weapons the bad guys were brandishing, so I decided it was time to see what Boomer could do. I easily directed my companion to take out one of the crazies on the outer edge. To my delight, he did so silently and with little trouble. He looted the corpse and brought a shiny new weapon to me at the bottom of the ladder.

Good dog.

Now that I was packing some firepower, I decided it was time to drop the stealth shtick and have some fun. I used the high ground of the church to take out the closest enemies and sent Boomer to pick off any targets I happened to see by themselves. Reinforcements started to arrive in pickup trucks by this point, but they were all parking near the intersection because the gas truck blocked the way in all for directions.

I unloaded on the truck in an attempt to blow it sky-high. After punching an entire clip of flaming holes in the side of the truck, it hadn’t yet exploded. Tha called for plan B — I threw a stick of dynamite directly at it and the truck’s resulting explosion engulfed the remaining enemies and all but one of their vehicles.

I was so intensely focused on ridding the area of villainous cult members, I completely forgot about the wildlife. Speeding down a road in my newly-acquired truck, I got a quick reminder as some deer ran out from the trees in front of me and onto the road; not far behind them, a pack of wolves hungrily followed. I had only a second to appreciate the beauty of this scene — something straight out a David Attenborough documentary — before I swerved in an attempt to kill both predator and prey with my truck.

A few of the deer got away and a lone wolf was displeased, to say the least, before joining his dead friends with a few extra bullet holes. I got my rewards from the unfortunate beasts, slammed the door of my truck and continued pumping the black keys as I sped towards my next encounter.

After ridding the next area of threats once again a friendly pilot and I get to talkin’; before I knew it, I was flying around, bombing the hell out of Montana. This isn’t exactly a covert operation and all this explosive justice has attracted the attention of a rival pilot. After an incredible dog fight, the demo ended and I returned to real life. Needless to say, 27 February can’t come soon enough.

Far Cry 5 will release on Windows PC, Xbox One and PS4.

Stevivor was flown to E3 2017 as a guest of Ubisoft to cover the entire event. This relationship does not prevent Stevivor from covering other publishers’ titles, nor does it impact the opinions of any other of our authors covering E3 2017.