Some of my most memorable moments in my time spent exploring the first of three regions in Far Cry 5 didn’t involve explosions, trigger-happy cultists, or psychotic religious figures. While those moments certainly took place, and with the kind of insanity we’ve come to expect from the series, it was the much more serene and spontaneous times that have stayed with me since Ubisoft Montreal invited us up to play a roughly 15-hour chunk of what the team’s been cooking up for the last several years.
About an hour into my playthrough, I discovered a cool feature where if you pull out the binoculars, and then quick toggle the HUD off, you could walk around viewing the world through what is effectively a camera lens. From that moment on I spent a lot of my time exploring the rugged mountains, valleys, rivers, and open plains as a budding documentarian. And in all honesty, I was surprised how engaging this quiet act of observation could be in a game where I’m also allowed shoot explosive tipped arrows at helicopters while parachuting from a World War 2-era fighter plane I had stalled and ditched seconds earlier.
