I've just started on FC5 and had been trying to push past my fairly negative impressions of the first couple of hours when I stumbled upon this Clutch Nixon mission:

On top of really hating how the plane controls, I am utterly baffled by the tone of this. I can't even tell if it's trying to be over the top in an ironic way, or if it's earnestly embracing a "fuck yeah!" attitude. Maybe they're trying to accomplish both at the same time?

Either way, holy shit what a mess. Do they realize the setting of the rest of the game? I have seen people talking about tonal problems in this game, but since I haven't seen anyone specifically mention Clutch Nixon, is it safe to assume that the game does other, equally jarring shifts?

(Whew, there, I succeeded at having my post not just be "Holy shit, Clutch Nixon, WTF?")

I agree that these side missions are jarring and pretty lame in terms of tone. Maybe if the whole game was set as a sort of late 70s country daredevil romp, I might be in, but as it stands, these missions just highlight the lack of a singular vision for the tone and thematic scope of the game. I feel a little bad trashing the game since I am having a lot of fun running around and blowing stuff up, but almost all of the story and side missions have been insufferable.

I just got into my first plane last night but haven't run across this specific mission. I've already done a couple of vehicle retrieval missions and they definitely seemed over-the-top, but then this is the same publisher that had Wildlands stab at real-world cartel issues and then followed that game up with a DLC focused on extreme sports and monster trucks. I guess they're being a bit more compact with their storytelling this time around.

Anyone playing this with MKB on PC? I noticed that the flying was much touchier with the mouse than the rest of the game; thinking about leaving my controller attached for those segments but I'm not sure it lets you hot swap.

@rorie: Yeah, I had to switch to controller for the flying. Hotswapping was not a problem.

For some reason, that wildlands DLC strikes me as Tom Clancy's Point Break, and I am weirdly OK with that :-)

The Clutch Nixon missions are some of the least fun in the game, without even getting into the tonal issues they present. I don't know if it's any different with a controller, but the driving controls feel pretty bad with the mouse and keyboard. I'd have my AI partner drive around most of the time.

It seems pretty clear that these are supposed to be over-the-top, but yeah, they do reinforce that this game is tonally all over the map. I imagine the "let's have a fake Evel Knievel in the universe so we can put some random stunt challenges in" idea came up when they were trying to figure out ways to back off the hard-hitting, potentially controversial narrative that they initially presented. I get why they ultimately went that route, but it is a bit jarring to go from cultists crucifying people in the street to this. Still, it's Far Cry, so it's not that surprising, and it's not like sending your pet mountain lion to maul some drugged-up, heavily-armored cultist can be taken all that seriously, either.

Also, the game definitely gets weirder than the Clutch Nixon stuff. That said, I'm still having a great time with Far Cry 5. Yeah, it's wildly inconsistent in tone, and some of the worst parts of that range from middling to bad/lame, but I highly recommend trying to have fun with what the game is instead of lamenting what it isn't. However, Ubi deserves the criticism there for presenting this game WAY differently than what the final product turned out to be, and the remnants of that don't fit with much of the other general silliness.

@rorie:

The only way I could manage the plane controls with M/KB was to just take my hand off the mouse.

Oh man, those missions... I wish I could ask the designer behind them if the main idea was to make them as shitty as possible to see if people would still do them. They're all purposefully designed to be challenging by making the controls terrible, which is pretty much the most frustrating way to design a game. When was the last time you heard a racing game praised for controlling as well as a boat sliding down a sand slope ?

It seems totally fine on a controller, I've only seen plane and car so far but I really just sort of walked through them. Even missed a checkpoint on the plane run and it didn't matter much.

To me, they seemed to clearly be cheesy and over-the-top on purpose. I have done 3-4 so far, and they do not seem to be that challenging. The only one I had a slight issue with is one where you use an ATV. That thing wanted to fish-tail like nobody's business.

I hate these missions. That song is so bad.

is it some kind of American self-loath?
I find these mission kinda funny, the song too

clutch nixon is no testy festy

also you dont actually have to go through all the rings, so just make sure you go through enough to keep the timer up

I'm guessing most folks complaining about controls are using mouse and keyboard? I'd recommend grabbing a controller if you're having trouble with these. I was able to breeze through all of these on my first attempt, with the exception of the first wingsuit one because I didn't know how to open the wingsuit.

I'm with you on the tonal inconsistencies though. Also they make almost nothing in the game worth doing because all rewards are meaningless. There's like four different vehicles that are just reskinned, and the same basically applies to the weapons. If you're not having fun with something, just move on, there's no point otherwise.

Evil Kenevil is from Butte so he's sort of an important figure in Montana. I wasn't in the least bit surprised that they had some sort of nod to him, and of course you're going to go for the big, over the top presentation for a character based on him.

I thought they were the worst thing in the game - felt like a thrown together mess.

There's alot of snobbery in Giant Bomb forums.

Eh, I think these are awesome. :-D

Look, if the game was just endless doomsday cult shenanigans and mutilated bodies, it'd get monotonous. It'd be like a DC movie. I'll admit that it took me a while too to get used to tonal shifts in Ubisoft games, but I'm genuinely grateful for them nowadays. The silly in The Division and Ghost Recon Wildlands kept me on my toes and wondering what bizarre thing was around the corner. I love things like Clutch Nixon, so I guess to each their own. *shrug*

Lmao! It's like you people have never played a Far Cry game before. Even Far Cry 3, the most beloved game of the series, was criticized at the time for being tonally inconsistent as well. It's Far Cry. It's intentionally ridiculous and silly behind its "serious" story. It's supposed to be and is one of the main things the series is known for. If you don't like that you should have done your homework first.

@hazygrove Yep - this is the same ridiculous stuff Far Cry has been pulling for years now. I assume it's annoying people this time because they chose to shit in America's backyard this time instead of Africa (FC2), Indonesia (FC3) or Nepal (FC4). When the joke is on you it's not so funny, but it's the same joke they've been using for years now.

Sounds like you just don't like the game, leave it at that and move on