Despite using the real-life stories of Cuban guerilla fighters from the 1950s and 1960s as inspiration, Far Cry 6’s narrative director Navid Khavari has said the team is not trying to “make a political statement about what’s happening in Cuba” with their new game.
Speaking to TheGamer, Khavari said that, while he wants Far Cry 6 to feel authentic and pay homage to guerilla fighters from around the world and throughout history, the team also doesn’t want to make it specifically about the current issues in Cuba or any other real-world location.
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“The original inspiration was Guerilla Warfare and what is that guerilla fantasy, which is obviously tied to revolution,” Khivari said. “When you talk about guerillas, you think of the guerillas in the 1950s and 1960s, we actually went down there to speak to actual guerilla fighters who fought back then, and we just really fell in love with their stories.
“But we also fell in love with the culture and people we met,” Khivari continued. “When we came out of that, it wasn’t that we felt we had to do Cuba, we realized it’s a complicated island and our game doesn’t want to make a political statement about what’s happening in Cuba specifically. Beyond that, we’re drawing inspiration from guerilla movements around the world and throughout history. For us, it felt like doing the island of Yara would help us tell that story while being very open with our politics and inspiration.”
However, this doesn’t mean the team plans on pulling its punches in regards to exploring how a revolution impacts the people involved and surrounding one.
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“A revolution is complex, and the people you’re going to engage with are also complex. I use this line of philosophy, which is that every character has their own heartbeat, you just have to find it,” Khavari said. “We have this melting pot of motivational complexity where we tried to translate that into the gameplay and the story. So tonally, it sort of already existed. But for us, thematically, unifying that into the guerilla fantasy felt pretty natural.”
This follows similar comments from Ubisoft for games like The Division 2 and Far Cry 5 staying politically impartial. However, Watch Dogs Legion creative director Clint Hocking said, “I believe that it’s our responsibility as creators of culture to talk about stuff that’s real, and that matters to people. I think Ubisoft is a bold company and has a willingness to explore issues and allow creative teams to engage with challenging subject matter.”
For more on Far Cry 6, which now has a release date of October 7, 2021, check out our first hands-off preview of Far Cry 6 and why it featuring the largest location yet in Yara is the right step for the series.
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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.