The next installment in Ubisoft’s open world shooter series, Far Cry 6, was officially announced over the weekend at the Ubisoft Forward event. While we didn’t see any gameplay on that show, it did give us an incredibly striking cinematic that helped set the tone for what we can probably expect. The game will take place in a fictional country called Yara, where some type of political revolution is taking place that has turned violent. And the game’s Narrative Director Navid Khavari talked about where that came from.
On the official Ubisoft blog, Khavari broke down what inspired this entry’s backdrop. As many suspected, the game drew heavy influence from Cuba and the political strife the country has seen over the years. Apparently, some of the development team were allowed to go into Cuba, get a lay of the land, the people living there, and its culture, and even talk to former guerrilla warfare fighters. That went into Yara, as well as what he felt like was a world that had somehow become frozen in time.
“When you’re talking about guerrilla warfare, you go to Cuba. We were very, very lucky to be able to fly down to Cuba. I spent about a month down there with the team, circumnavigating the island. We got to meet so many amazing people and experience the music and the culture, and we also met actual former guerrillas.
“And that really was the jumping-off point, because for our island of Yara, not only did we want to tell a story of a modern guerrilla revolution, but also we want to tell a story about an island that is almost frozen in time, like a living postcard from the ‘60s that players can experience and walk through.”
Far Cry 6 is looking to change things up a bit, such as villains that actually stick around as well as third person cutscenes, but I imagine roaming the vast space of Yara will be more than allowed. The game launches February 18th, 2021 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PC, and Stadia.