What Is New About Far Cry: New Dawn?

“Even if its been blown half to hell, its still kind of cool to go back to Hope County. “

Ubisoft is having a busy year. Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey continues to roll out free and paid content, The Division 2 launches early in March, and Assassin’s Creed III is coming to the current generation. Amid a busy spring, Far Cry: New Dawn launched. This game is a direct sequel to last year’s Far Cry 5, and in many ways feels like an expansion to the previous title. Being a meaty expansion is not bad thing. With a less expensive price point and the lack of a numbered title, Far Cry: New Dawn has no pretension to being a full-fledged new experience. However, like some of our favorite expansions from Blizzard and Bethesda, New Dawn improves and adds to the experience in wonderful ways.

Meaningful progress

Far Cry 5 offered players a few dozen weapons to play around with during the campaign. Players were a little miffed at the lack of certain favorites, like a knife or the popular Vector sub-machine gun. Beyond arsenal options, almost every weapon could be outfitted with a few scopes, silencers, and expanded magazines. Some guns even add optional skin variants for players who wanted to be extra-patriotic, extra-optimistic, or super-fierce. This plethora of options was nice, but ended up losing a sense of progress and achievement. Within a couple hours of the game, I had the loadout I wanted, and didn’t have a lot of incentive to try other weapons.

Far Cry: New Dawn introduces a tiered system for weapons familiar to anyone who played Diablo, World of Warcraft, or pretty much any recent game with RPG-lite mechanics. The path to crafting better weapons forced me to change up my style, introducing me to guns I probably would have ignored, especially shotgun variants, that were fun to use. These weapons aren’t customizable, which also forces players to make decisions regarding which weapons they need silenced, if they want a bayonet. There’s no way to have it all. Add to that the uniquely entertaining weapon designs, including the pieced together weapons and the hot pink unicorn flamethrower, New Dawn finds ways to incentivize players to try everything. This is a rare occasion where limiting player freedom improves the game and creates a much more memorable experience.

Developing the story and world

To be honest, many of us were bothered by the ending of Far Cry 5. It was abrupt, unsatisfying, and frustrating. The bad guy won. Thanos snapped, and Joseph Seed was right. Picking up in the pink-flowered, sandy Hope County of seventeen years later, makes that unsatisfying ending more like a cliff hanger at the end of the chapter.

New Dawn also re-introduces players to characters from Far Cry 5 and lets us indulge a little more in their fictional lives. Picking up with the Rye family is particularly heart-warming and seeing Hurk go balls-to-the-wall with a rocket launcher is just as ridiculous has it has always been. In anthology series like Far Cry, Assassin’s Creed, Fallout, or Grand Theft Auto, players must get used to one-off characters and world-states. Even if it has been blown half to hell, it’s still kind of cool to go back to Hope County.

Let’s get weird

One of the things that makes Far Cry so great is the odd mix of realism and surrealism in their worlds. In Far Cry 4 players faced dizzying odds against armored authoritarian soldiers, but also tripped drugs and journeyed to Shangri-La through the eyes of a mystical warrior. Far Cry 5 certainly had its moments of weirdness, with bliss-fueled fever dreams and Clutch Nixon death races, but overall it was one of the most grounded games in the series. New Dawn takes a moment to get really weird. The weapon designs are fun and kooky. The enemies and environments are vibrantly colored. Even the animal designs get an overhaul from the art department. Every scene in this game pops, creating a more memorable, unique experience that is such a joy to drive, dive, and fight through.

Playing together

What New Dawn improves on the most is the co-op gameplay. Basic complaints are still valid: progression includes materials collected and perk progress, but not story or outpost completion and only two players can share a world and cannot use companions in addition. But New Dawn finally gives co-op games something to do. The outpost mechanics that are staple gameplay in the franchise remain and, improving on Far Cry 5, these outposts can be reset repeatedly. This loop is part of the narrative and the gameplay. The outposts get harder as they reset, and at the top tier can pose a bit of a challenge – even to a two-player team. Additionally, New Dawn adds expeditions – contained snatch-and-grab missions that take place in relatively unique locations across post-apocalyptic America. These can also be repeated at higher difficulties and are really fun to play together. Beyond the joy of creating absolute chaos with a friend, both activities contain upgrade materials for top-tier progression.

Taking down outposts together feels useful and fun to play with friends. While repetitive, these are way more entertaining than repeating story missions, and can help players unlock weapons, perks, and unlock that sweet, sweet Platinum trophy. This game is worth it alone for the co-op gameplay, and we really hope it becomes an even further refined part of the series in future iterations.

We don’t know where Far Cry is heading next. A sequel to New Dawn? A prequel? A fresh start for the series? We’d love to see Far Cry try something different, like it did for Primal or Far Cry 5’s DLC (a Western, anyone?). But with the improvements in New Dawn and the stellar recent work from Ubisoft, we’re optimistic for the future.