“New Dawn” is an apt subtitle for Far Cry’s latest outing; a spin-off/sequel to Far Cry 5 following its nuclear fallout ending that shocked the gaming community. New Dawn aimed to steer the series in a fresh new direction, while retaining its narrative connections to its predecessor. With an emphasis on light RPG mechanics, a visual overall that bombards your senses with plenty of pink, and two new nihilistic villains at the forefront, there was potential here for something truly remarkable. The result is great, for the most part, though fatigue has clearly begun to set in for this once beloved, chaotic series.



Far Cry New Dawn puts you in the shoes of the Captain of Security, a male or female custom-created character that joins a rebellion against an oppressive group of raiders called the Highwaymen, led by the terrifying twins, Mickey and Lou, who have stormed through Hope County to seize control over the region. The rebellion’s base of operations, Prosperity, will need to be upgraded and beefed up by collecting a vital resource called Ethanol, and populated by various guns for hire and talent that can protect and further advance the objectives of the rebellion.

It’s immediately evident that you’ll need to suspend disbelief for some of the more bold narrative turns...

New Dawn opens with a great cutscene that sets up Mickey and Lou as unforgiving, ruthless, and a bit cynical in their approach to human life and casualties. They make a big entrance, but unfortunately that’s all we really hear from them for a while. The campaign, consisting of various story missions sprawled out across Hope County’s notably downsized region, takes the story in plenty of interesting twists and turns, though rarely lands its mark outside of making you completely baffled. It’s immediately evident that you’ll need to suspend disbelief for some of the more bold narrative turns, but for the most part, it’s structured like a typical Far Cry game – go from point A to point B, clear out enemies, find some McGuffin, and rinse and repeat.



Most of New Dawn’s entertainment comes in the form of its biggest changes. The introduction of the awesome Saw Launcher allows you to send saw blades flying at enemies as it ricochets off of the environment, causing a string of damage in its path. RPG mechanics have also been introduced in New Dawn to mix things up, and I honestly loved this new spin on the series. Enemies now have varying difficulty levels, and in order to do any sort of meaningful damage to the higher-level foes, you’ll need to upgrade your weapons accordingly to their level too. This added a nice slice of challenge and progression to the game, making sure players don’t stray too far off the beaten path without facing some dire repercussions. Like Fallout, New Dawn also emphasizes collecting scraps in the wasteland to craft better guns. It’s not a groundbreaking mechanic, but it is a nice change of pace to Far Cry.

The introduction of the awesome Saw Launcher allows you to send saw blades flying at enemies as it ricochets off of the environment, causing a string of damage in its path.

New Dawn has not ditched some of its core gameplay elements that have come to define the series, for better or worse. Outposts are still sprinkled around the open world, tasking players with either stealthily or bombastically taking out waves of enemies before claiming them. To put a spin on the formula, the game allows players to either scavenge the outpost for additional Ethanol, or simply set it up as another base of operations. When you scavenge the outpost for all its Ethanol, though, it leaves the base open to attack from Highwaymen, meaning you’ll have to really decide how to manage your resources, and make tough calls on whether or not it’s beneficial towards upgrading Prosperity, and in turn, your own weapons and skills.



New Dawn is a visual spectacle, and might be one of the prettiest games in the series, second only to the snowy Himalayan alps and rich landscapes of Kyrat from Far Cry 4. Thanks to the blooming of a certain plant in the region, Hope County has been struck with stunning vistas of pink. This translates over to enemies and objects as well. Some enemies dress in all-pink, destroyed pink cars are littered around the world, and giant pink eyes sprayed on buildings and mountains make everything pop in a bright pink. What I’m trying to say is, New Dawn is very pink, and they want you to know that. This not only sets it apart visually from its predecessors, but it also coats the game with a fresh aesthetic that explodes on 4K screens.

The game is quite short, and should take you around 8-10 hours to complete the main story.

For all its new RPG mechanics and lovely visuals, New Dawn falters in the story and mission departments. The game is quite short, and should take you around 8-10 hours to complete the main story. However, it’s the structure of these missions that holds it back from being fun, and borders on annoying at the worst of times. Once in a while, the main story tasks players with recruiting guns for hire, collecting resources, and doing remedial tasks and optional quests in order to progress past certain points in the story. This came across as frustrating because it felt like padding more than it did a natural progression of the story, just proving to be roadblocks in the way of consistent pacing.



New Dawn also can’t seem to escape the shadow of Far Cry 5, both in its returning characters and narrative ties to its predecessor. It holds New Dawn back from having a true identity of its own; it has all the makings of a glorified expansion or DLC to Far Cry 5, which is bizarre considering that it released as somewhat of a standalone product. At a fairly lowered price point below the full premium, though, some of these nagging issues can be forgiven, but don’t expect another Far Cry Primal because it doesn’t feel nearly that large in scope or impact.

To address the major concern with New Dawn, Mickey and Lou are good villains that are marginally better than a majority of other triple-A video games in the genre, but they don’t make their presence known enough to have any sort of lasting impact. The few encounters you do have with the twins are exciting, but they’re short lived before the game throws you out into more generic and dull missions involving killing enemies or rescuing someone, or something. It’s clear that Ubisoft has become stuck in trying to make their villains seem unique or exciting, but they’ve chosen to just adapt nihilistic traits from Vaas and Pagan Min and call it a day. This is a bit disappointing as I’ve always favoured the Far Cry games for their great villains, so it saddened me to see Mickey and Lou – who could’ve potentially been powerful antagonists – dwindled down to the same villainous routine of previous baddies.



Far Cry New Dawn isn’t going to win over naysayers, but it does provide a slice of good open world mayhem that we’ve come to expect from Ubisoft’s action-packed franchise. The visuals are spectacular, the open world is lush and vividly detailed, and the sense of chaos is a big plus to its unrelenting entertainment factor. Sadly, New Dawn doesn’t leave much of an impact after the credits roll. You can find plenty of fun in it while it lasts, but don’t expect anything meaningful to come out of your return to Hope County - other than a new sea of corpses in your wake.