So i just finished far cry 5 i picked the "walk away ending" seems to me the best option of the two even to they kinda force you to pick the resist ending wich is total bullshit but probably a set up to DLC i am guessing ? Why you just woud'nt fly away and call the national guard is beyond my believe but hey it's a videogame...

Kinda not feeling these endings especially the abrupt stop of the walk away one, with a dumb fuck you "this is all a dream man !" ending.

Anyway feel free to post your thoughts in this thread.

I think the implication for the "Walk away" ending was that the song on the radio brainwashes you to kill all your friends in the car.

I think I'd be happier with all the endings being 'bad' if the entire story wasn't ruined by the whole idea that the protagonist could just call the army at multiple points.

Everything about the story in the game is stupid. It is the pinnacle of lazy writing. It's a meaningless choice for the sake of having a choice. But those choices don't mean anything because the game couldn't be arsed to develop any actual themes or have any kind of message to connect them to so its just "A or B" in isolation without context and consequences that are completely divorced from whatever it is you are actually picking.

I picked the "Resist" ending, which is probably even more stupid than the "Walk Away" ending. On the one hand, if what goes down is actually happening, it's stupid because (a) there was never any indication in the game to suggest the cult had the capability to do something like that (b) offers no explanation of how they would have done something like that even had they managed to keep it a secret and (c) pretty much makes all the gameplay and story up to that point utterly meaningless. It isn't even like it would be consistent with any particular theme going on up to that point in the game (to the extent there is a theme going on in the game). It just happens for reasons only the people writing the game will ever actually understand.

On the other hand, what goes down isn't actually happening because you're high on drugs. Or something. Which is equally stupid. Writing a plot based around "because drugs" is right up there with "because Cthulu" and "it was all a dream" on the levels of shitty, sophomo(ron)ric writing.

Either way, either choice felt like a massive fuck-you to the player.

I chose to resist and by this point I was already so done with the story that I felt so apathetic towards it all. Shit blows up because apparently Edens Gate has that power, or was it all drugs? Who the fuck cares, let's hum Amazing Grace for the 50th fucking time, do you get it? I usually do not care enough to get mad about lazy and poor writing, but this game made me so angry I got exhausted. To take an interesting premise and do so little with it. I don't even need the game to take some side politically. I just wanted it to do SOMETHING creative, not just "Drugs, man! Look at these trippy dream sequences!"

I did the ending you could do 10 minutes into the game and I felt that was the most satisfying ending for the game. It’s probably what I would of done. Taken one look around all these greasy bastards, thought to myself “fuck this,” and left.

However, I played 75 hours of this game and went with the “resist” option. I was enjoying the story until I got to the third area of the game, in my case it was Jacob’s territory, and was just so over all the heavy ass drug usage and brainwashing. I also normally don’t care if the character I’m playing as speaks but I really feel like the character you play as should of been voiced so you could call this family out on this bullshit. Amen to those who said that the writing was a sign of laziness.

The Project at Eden's Gate weren't who nuked everything in the end. I just finished the game and picked the "Resist" ending since I was on a warpath after everything that happened in Jacob's territory. However I chose to drive to Joseph's island and if you listen carefully a radio broadcast will say that negotiations between the US and North Korea have completely broken down and the latter may be preparing for a nuclear strike. It's a little better than the idea that the Project did it but still, it's kinda a cop-out that the "Walk Away" ending means WW3 doesn't start. Basically proves that not only does Divine Intervention exist but apparently God really is with Joseph throughout the game.

I actually rather like the endings, though they're odd ducks. It's kind of in-fitting with Far Cry 4 that the best ending is to simply walk away and not descend everything into madness, though it suffers from the Spec Ops: The Line problem of "I didn't buy this game not to play it. I'm not turning around at the outskirt of the town and avoiding the whole game."

As to the two real endings, they're both kind of subversions of the player's expectations... which works for some people and not for others. Some of my friends hated the endings to Far Cry 4 because both were utterly bleak. Either the dude turns it back into the repressive, religious-based state that existed under its previous king (which had almost no rights for women, promoted child brides, and practiced heavy-handed authoritarian tyranny) or the gal turns it into a dystopian, drug-peddling narco-state with child soldiers, extra-judicial murders, and authoritarian tyranny. It turns out that Pagan Min, for all his cruelty and malice, was actually right and the lesser evil. You should have just eaten the crab Rangoon.

I was expecting Far Cry 5 to do something similar, what with you working with local militia groups to squash the power of a para-military doomsday cult and all. Maybe they'd have you go through all that only to discover that your allies are actually no better, if not worse, than the Project. Instead, it just subtly hints at your allies flaws: they dehumanize the cultists as much as the cultists dehumanize them (PEGGIES), they conduct brutal tortures too with no qualms, and they are also obsessed with doomsday stuff and have built bunkers throughout the region... but their obsession is selfish and their bunkers are more for their own individual uses rather than as some collectivist survival thing like the Project. Your allies aren't the subverting factor.

No, the subversion here is that Joseph Seed really is a holy man. He actually does have God's favor, and he's right: God won't let you take him. The cult has no nukes; when you can finally take him from Project Eden, it breaks the proverbial (and perhaps literal, in this case) seventh seal and the world descends into nuclear holocaust (which is hinted as impending in multiple conversations about things being tense all over, like the "world's about to fall into the flames" and all that). If you choose to listen to him and accept his offer of forgiveness and mercy instead, then the seal isn't broken and the world lives another day... but you end up killing all your conspiring friends on the drive out of Hope County when the trigger song on the radio activates your berserker mode that Jacob Seed programmed into you during his mission arc. No Guard is coming, and none will... because Joseph benefits from Divine Intervention even if his followers don't.

It's kind of twisted, but I rather like it. Did make me sad, though. At least my friends in Far Cry 4 lived even though their government inevitably sucked worse than before I got there. In this case, it's much more of a zero sum game. Probably fitting for a game more about doomsday than politics, but I can see why people feel chafed.

On a different note, I hope you not trying to arrest him is the canon ending because I'd love a Far Cry 6. Hm, unless the resist ending portends Far Cry 6: Blood Dragon Deux. In that case, go for it. Mach 5 style.

@therealturk: It wasn't the cult that was dropping bombs. If you listen around throughout the game, you can hear the world is on the brink. Joeseph constantly mentions the news, and it's news broadcasts and such that I figured this out from. The radio man said stuff about how major diplomats were leaving the USA because the international tension was so great. Civvis I also heard talking about how the news has been horribly bleak and scary. Someone above me also said something about a breaking news alert on the radio during the ride to the final mission saying that talks had completely broken down with North Korea and they may be preparing to go nuclear, but I had some catchy 50s song the whole ride so idk myself!

Of course that brings a whole barrel of more BS to sort through like how the sirens go off 30s before impact (And there's no mention on the radio that nuclear detonation is imminent). And of course how NK has so many nukes that they can afford to drop ,was it 4(?), nukes on what is quite literally the middle of nowhere Montana. Plenty of other stuff too.

Not a fan of the resist ending at all... Honestly I'd love for this game to be stripped from what little book of cannon that Far-Cry has. Unless they plan to end the series here of course then a nuclear go out is fine.

So I read through this thread because I have no intention of playing Far Cry 5, and boy, what a weird ending. Sounds pretty bleak. It kinda reminds me of the ending of Hotline Miami 2, where a bunch of nuclear weapon stuff goes down that your main character has absolutely nothing to do with.

@lazyimperial: I feel like the Far Cry 4 endings worked better for a couple of reasons. The first and most obvious is that they gave your character a victory, even if the country went to crap. You return your mother's ashes, fulfilling your objective in coming in the first place. FC 5 just ends with a big F you to everything, which works as a kind of comment on gaming fantasies, but is frustrating and kind of eyeroll worthy (You like the power we gave you to be a super hero? Well we can also strip all agency from you! Hur hur!)

The corruption of the revolution's leadership in FC 4 was also better established, which made the ultimate downer ending much clearer and linked to the ongoing storyline rather than coming out of left field (unless you've been listening to a bunch of radio tower broadcasts).

On a meta level, FC4 also worked as a Burkeian comment on the shortcomings of revolutionary politics, with the secret ending being the best although it left a corrupt tyrant in power. FC 5 lacks that kind of real world resonance which makes its cynicism seem cheap.

BONUS COMPLAINT: The hypnosis thing is lame. I get that someone played Bioshock and thought it was cool, but really?

@esrechtmir: @arsenic: Fair enough, although I think if the entire coherency of the plot hinges on a player listening to radio broadcasts when doing so has been mostly irrelevant to gameplay and 99% of the time consists of panicked NPCs, the 15th different arrangement of Amazing Grace, or looping cult broadcasts, then the writers might have wanted to think about it harder.

BONUS BONUS COMPLAINT: What accent are these people using? If it weren't for the mountains, I'd swear the game is taking place in Ely, MN as opposed to Montana. A lot of NPCs are "oot and aboot" in the great outdoors.

@esrechtmir: I can respect your position. Personally though, I thought Pagan Min effectively squashed the idea of you having a victory in Far Cry 4. If you don't shoot him and actually hear him out, he notes that he used your half-sister's death as his initial reason to engage in endless blood-baths and acts of barbarism. However, he eventually realized he was lying to himself: he may have begun his madness out of revenge and loss, but eventually it was just because he wanted to. Lakshmi became his hollow excuse for his own vices... just like the death of Ajay's mom and her memory were the players initial motivation until the joy of firing grenade launchers from a helicopter and wanton murder kicked in. The player character is no better; Ajay has used Kyrat as his own murder playground.

Took the wind out of my sails, and then the child bride nightmare I stumbled upon at that temple made me recognize that my victory was illusory. I had solved nothing, and made nothing better. I had only worked out my kinks and found my jollies via slaughter, just like my step-dad. Kind of clever, really.

I think Far Cry 5 lays it on pretty thick with the doomsday stuff, from the cult itself to the radio broadcasts and newspaper clips. It's more Doom 2016 about it in some regards (in that the story is more on the side than before and you have to seek it out if you want it), but it's there. One of the last radio broadcasts even mentions Moscow being bombed by the U.S., so the nukes dropping in Montana (where several launching silos exist... making it an actual strategic target) aren't out of the blue... and they keep dropping even while you are underground with Joseph, so signs point less towards him rigging a few to blow to prove himself right and more towards him being genuinely, absolutely, and completely right... just like Pagan Min in Far Cry 4. Running motif.

If I had to critique it negatively though, I'd say that while the story is more ancillary for the player, the endings aren't... and they're tied to the story. That creates a disconnect. It makes sense within the context of Far Cry 5's foreshadowing and set-up (and within the context of Far Cry 4's endings and the two Pyrrhic victory endings for Far Cry 3) for Joseph Seed to be right all along... but it sucks if you were joyriding around the open world as a demigod, only casually looking at the plot wedged in the nooks and crannies, and then suddenly BAM... you lose. Then, yeah... it'd definitely feel like an F you to the demigod player.

So I can see where people are coming from, even though I rather like it myself. :-P

It became clear to me, once I realized that one of the bunkers John Seed has is a decommissioned missile silo, what the ending was going to be. The Faith cutscene with Joseph in front of the mushroom cloud was there to make it even more obvious. And then I just kind of lost the drive to finish the game, because it was clear they wrote the ending first and then tried to fit everything else around it. The reason the game is so politically toothless is that if the cult was really a bunch of white supremacists, the ending turning and going "and they were right all along!" would've been a total disaster. Instead, they went for a goofy mayhem filled romp where you face off against Midwestern Joker and his psychotic army that has just enough people of color that they don't ever have to talk about the race issue. Except now the ending fails, because it's a nonsensical tonal shift that has you thinking "well, this was all pretty stupid."

I always felt the ending to Far Cry 3 was pretty smart, in that it uses the "bad ending" to punish the player for ignoring the many clues that you were doing horrific things just to stay in a power fantasy. You had already done that you set out to do, which was avenge your older brother and rescue your younger brother, but if you let the Rakyat and Citra seduce you, the game pretty much called you an idiot for it. Here, the game punishes you for wanting to stop the evil cult leader who is kidnapping, brainwashing, and murdering people, because it turns out he was actually getting prophecies from God all along.

The series is getting a little paint-by-numbers story-wise. If there's another game in the series, the story structure needs to change in a big way.

I would argue gameplay wise too. I remember feeling that way after Far Cry 4 too, then Primal happend, now this. I feel like Ubisoft always waits until people are completely burnt out before they make any real impactful changes. As for the story Ubisoft themselves have said that they're deemphasising it in their games. So it's no surprise it's shit here.

I do like how over the top the Nuke ending is, the entire game is about people using fearmongering to get their way so it makes sense, although it is a little weird that the crazy cultists get proven right, whether it was orchestrated or not.

The story in this game is one gigantic shrug. I actually enjoyed Faith's area and plot, it was dumb and cheesy but struck the right tone as if it knew it was silly. I did Jacobs last and it was just bad, and the ending (resist) was just bad. I didn't really care by that point I had finished all my open world shenanigans and decided to see the plot through.

I watched both endings, having not played the game, so I'm sure I'm missing some context. But I absolutely despise when antagonists in games do that whole, "You're the real monster here!" spiel. It's obnoxious, it's lazy, and it's completely disrespectful to the player's time and energy put into playing the game. And it sure as hell isn't clever.

@djohnson338: You have a really good point. Far Cry 3 did so well in showing you that Jason Brody was becoming more and more unhinged as the game went on. By the end you are very unconcerned with your original objectives and are simply out to kill for the sake of it. There's a perfect parallel between Jason's friends and the Rakyat as the former wants you to retain the character you arrived with, fulfill your original goals and leave while the latter wants you to embrace the fact you are having so much fun being the perfect warrior. However if you read between the lines the game shows that you wanting to remain powerful in the Rook Islands makes you no better than Vaas and you inevitably die if you want to keep hold of said power. Moral of the story: absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Far Cry 5 totally fails at the same moral. Constantly, you are being reminded throughout the game that violence isn't always the answer and "not everything can be solved with a bullet". However when it comes down to it you have no choice to be violent or not. Aside from the obligatory secret ending where you leave [Dictator] in power of [Location] you have no player agency to be anything other than a warrior.

This was at it's worst in the Henbane River Region where Faith is in charge and the Whitetail Mountains with Jacob. Before encountering Faith you are reminded to never trust her and treat her like any other Seed Family member. However in the end you have no choice but to kill her like everyone else anyway. I would have thought you would be allowed to let her live if you personally believed her backstory and felt sorry for her but you don't. As well as this you have no choice but to defy her when saving the Marshall even though you are actively punished for doing so later. This is also the same case for Jacob's story arc as you have no choice but to succumb to his mind control and kill Eli in your final trial even if you were smart enough to listen to Deputy Pratt's ramblings and not shoot Eli on sight. Both trying to not save the Marshall and save Eli result in a "Game Over" completely ruining any semblance of choice in the game.

This all comes to the ending where one of your few moments of choice in the game leads to nothing. The "Resist" ending plays out more or less like the "Kill Your Friends" ending from Far Cry 3. The game (or in context, Joseph) judges you for not going about this peacefully, stating you are too proud to listen to the game's message of "not everything can be solved with a bullet". You end up being punished incredibly harshly for this as you practically bring about the "End Times", get all of your friends killed and have to spend the rest of your life with Joseph; basically Hell itself. In the context of the game it's a very unfair punishment as up until then the game has forced you to take violent routes to solving problems and showing you that they do indeed work so you would be forgiven for thinking the same would happen here.

The real problem of the game's message stems from the "Walk Away" ending. If you do heed the message that violence isn't always the answer you can take your fellow police deputies and Sheriff and leave. Finally, something DIFFERENT in this game! While it may not be the perfect outcome, walking away with some of your friends is far better than destroying the world and getting all of your friends killed. However, not a minute into this ending you are once again brainwashed and it is heavily implied you kill your remaining friends. So, in the end, both endings lead to violence, officially ruining the peaceful message of the game. The game basically tells you: "Peace is the only good way to solve things. Now, would you like Violent Option A or Violent Option B?"

It's such a disappointment to see how little choice you have in Far Cry 5 compared to Far Cry 4 where in some cases you could let enemies live or die, let corrupt friends live or die and even let the main villain live or die. The ultimate irony is that I had more choice with playing Jason Brody or Ajay Ghale in Far Cry 3 and 4 than I did playing myself in Far Cry 5.

I firmly don't believe the 'good ending' happened the way it did. It seemed obvious it was a Bliss induced hallucination from the start of the fight when he flips the barrels over. After all the constant random hallucinations & brainwashing you just can't trust that entire cutscene. Proof is the walk away option shows nothing happens, no bombs, no fire. Just a song and some mental programing. It's like they say are saying pick hallucination or brainwashing for your ending options. Regardless it felt like a weak end to a fun game. Maybe some DLC will salvage it....

To me the biggest problem is with how they handle stuff like "brainwashing" in a shitty, cliche sci-fi way. On Waypoint, in his post review audio podcast thing, Austin talked about how(which was also discussed on polygon) UBI had press sign legal documents to not talk about some of the stories they used as inspiration, UBI said the devs talked to cult experts, met with people, and were going to do this correctly. They were telling press they were going to take this seriously. I would bet they realized they couldn't because they got worried about the content. So they started hamfisting in stuff like shitty scifi brainwashing with trigger-sounds and drugs, when now we know how cults work, is with social pressure and coercion. This means at the end, they could do a "WHOOPS BRAINWASH TRIGGER YOU KILLED EVERYONE" bait and switch instead of actually facing the issues in the story(how and why did this cult exist, why didnt anyone do anything about it, why wasnt the national guard called in sooner, etc).

The other problem with the "walk away" ending is that isnt world war 3 just going to start anyway? are we supposed to assume that all the impending doom stuff you had heard on the radio was just propaganda anyway? if so, where do you draw the line? was the whole game a farce? The ending is such a cop out for a game that distinctly pushes you away from thinking about the world outside of the county to go "WHAT ABOUT THE OUTSIDE WORLD HUH?!?! NUKES!".

It almost makes me think that the "joke" ending is the 'real' ending. The Sheriff looks at the Marshal and says "if we put the cuffs on him, no one gets out alive" and glances at the player. I like the idea that the Marshal could've just said "fuck this im calling in the national guard and we're taking care of this shit".

in the end I hate that i am stuck thinking about this game so in the afterglow, because i slogged through the story to see the end, and of course i was disappointed because the ending went down like a lead balloon. The game didnt earn this level of discourse from me, but here I am.

I hope they don't pull this "it's actually better if you ended up not playing the game in the first place" stunt a 3rd time

the radio message are kinda easy to miss if you don't drive or just shut off the radio
I think saw at least a dozen discussion with people genuinely doesn't know about those bleak news reports on radio

There is no better and more sensible option than walking away from the beginning with your hands clean, as the player and the character of the deputy can expect something extraordinary to happen. No sensible and healthy individual would believe they're a hero carrying death's banner with a hateful grin out of vengeance, spite and similar reasons towards other human beings.

If you're taking offense to the idea that your power fantasy that's based entirely around mass murder and violence is being doubted and even condemned as sick and wrong, there's no amount of men in the world that can die that will prevent you from feeling hollow inside, not having any confidence and doubting yourself. You just plain hate all men who live and are anti-social. This is why you enjoy murder on paper and treat it as some sort of fun, enjoyable thing.

You're psychopathic if murdering humans somehow can feel justified, sensible and righteous to you and if you take yourself so seriously in life that you hate video games.

what are you trying to say?
everyone's a psychopath for playing/enjoying this game?

I really burnt out on that story. Loved the first area and second area in spite of the story to be honest, but the third (Faith for me) just dragged so much.

The system of getting 'captured' then released every so often didn't work on any level, and didn't work when combined with the story progression. For instance, in the Jacob side, it really made no sense why I would be captured to kill the beard guy. I didn't do a single mission with him because at no point did I have to, but it seems like he was a hermit who was the leader of an organisation. I very much doubt however the that organisation killed 1200 cult members like I did single handily. Why not just put a bullet in my head instead of training me to kill someone minor? Why didn't anyone try to kill me, ever? It also seemed to be going for the 'both sides are evil' angle, which didn't really work when you have a cult drugging, enslaving and slaughtering an innocent population. Not everyone is perfect, but that is bad in anyone's books.

I guess that is a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things. They shot for the stars and just couldn't pull it together. The fact, as Jeff said on this week's bombcast, that the car radio gave so much of the background info was a mistake as I hardly ever drove a car.

One of the best sandboxes in videogames, but the story/writing (of everyone with a voice) seems intent on ruining it. The frequent bugs and glitches didn't help matters, either.

Best way to play is get two animal sidekicks and do sidequests and just roll around looking for trouble.

You really need to break this down further if you want people to understand it.

That ending feels so incredibly unearned. If there was any tonal consistency throughout the rest of the game and if they built it up then it would sit a little better, but as it stands Far Cry 5 loves to swing between Professor Genki's goofy murder funtime and a low-rent version of Spec Ops: The Line. The whole "world on the brink/the news sucks" thing also doesn't really work when every NPC is so vague. Like, yeah, it can be a bummer but I'm not going to make the leaps necessary to arrive at "OH we're about to be nuked."

And to an earlier reply about the experts Ubisoft consulted about the way cults work, it really feels like they just brought them on to look good during press tours since there's a side mission on the game where you "deconvert" someone by playing a videotape for them. If they did any research it must've been tossed aside, which is a shame.

An hour before beating the game, "Onlyyy Youuuuuuuu" began playing over a stereo sitting atop a weapons shop table. At the time I was just chilling with friendly npcs and immediately laughed to myself and wondered why I wasn't sent hurtling into a bloodthirsty rage. Knowing now how both endings played out, you'd think the devs would've scrubbed that track from the in-world radio stations since your programming seems to be so crucial to the story.

I whacked a nearby npc with a shovel anyway for funsies. OH GOD, WAIT JACOB WAS RIGHT

One of the worst set of endings I've ever seen in a game.

I would even take the nonsensical nuke scenario at the end if they had not had the fuckin' gall to sit there and lecture at me about how the villain was vindicated in his beliefs before slamming to credits.

the story in this game was terrible, badly delivered and boring anyway. I cannot for the life of me understand why you would make a videogame where the main plot point involves you being brainwashed and doing stupid things completely against your will repeatedly. Who on earth thought that was fun, satisfying, or anything that should be in a game? The entire plot revolves around taking control away from you arbitrarily and then making your character hold the stupid ball. It's awful, frustrating, lazy and cheap.

The resist ending was at least something, even though they fully cock up the entire foreshadowing of it. I'm glad I picked that one because from the sound of it the walk away ending was a culmination of the utter rubbish that came before, again taking control from your character and making them do something stupid, but this time to end the game.

At least I never have to hear these idiot characters monologue at me about sin and morality and god ever again. Being lectured at the end of the game about how I'm all so violent and awful, oh you solve every problem with a bullet (actually it was mostly arrows and animals mate), when the game has been about this lad and his idiot family torturing and burning and kidnapping people across an entire county is just utter nonsense. Who thought that was a good or clever thing to do? Had they seen the game they wrote that scene for? Sorry if shooting people who shoot at me first and rescuing people from torture and being burned alive makes -me- the monster.

At least the music was good.

I didn't see this game being a prelude to Far Cry 6 basically being Fallout (down to even using a song that was in Fallout over the credits), but I guess that's a way to go with things. I never heard any of these radio messages, so it all felt pretty unearned and out of nowhere.

If they use this god awful ending to launch the next full Far Cry then I am probably done.

the game didnt earnthat read though. It simply waved its hands in front of you a few times and held a mirror up in a "got ya! you are the monster!!!!" moment. It simply played like a run of the mill shooter, at no point in the game did a "Breakdown" happen, like as was done so well in Spec Ops, or even some of the other Far Cry games. You never turned on people in the story, you were always a monster, and the story they were trying to tell doesnt work that way(at least in a game where you are 100 percent supposed to *BE* the PC). You have to change, you have to start out feeling right and BECOME the monster. This game simply posits you were always in the wrong. For the vast majority of people playing the game, that is going to come off as hollow and wrong, because it is. No one THINKS they are wrong at the outset, you need to re-contexualise and show the story from other perspectives to EARN that story beat. They didnt.

Not only that, but any possible "Breakdown" of the PC would be covered in muck by the BRAINWASHING AND DRUGS plots. Its sloppy storytelling.

I thought the Resist ending was neat. Kinda subverted the whole trope that all the preppers in the region are fools. It also hit me with the realization that the boss bunkers weren't just bunkers... That they had dropped hints of the ending throughout the game.

The endings were dumb. So was the rest of the story, mostly. That's not my biggest gripe. I hope that for the next Far Cry game, they flip their script, and now you the player, starts to get all up in the faces of the villains, and you get to spout creepy nonsense.

Had the exact same experience with "Only You" and thought the same.

Generally, while the moment to moment gameplay was fun, the story was utter trash. Having a silent protagonist really hurt the game in my opinion as there's nothing to build around. It's just evil monologue after evil monologue which are shoe horned in with laughable forced kidnapping's. It would have been cool and maybe even an achievement to fight off the hunters and offer an alternative to just getting knocked out and carried to the bad guys every few hours. Maybe if you get the upper hand you could get the jump on them instead (but with a silent character, you'd just be able to stare at them i supose). The ending made you think your entire progress in the game was pointless and that's not a good thing. You saved no one. You solved nothing.

I chose 'resist'. The walk away ending sounds very dull and unsatisfying by the descriptions here, and I had no inclination to pick it anyway. The whole world in danger, and a possible nuclear apocalypse was foreshadowed for me several times, on the radio news mostly iirc. Of course Joseph keeps at his mind games and professes his righteousness, and the protags evil in his final diatribe. I didn't hate it at all, and I appreciated the suggested possibility of the bugout/prepper ideology to have been totally justified. But seeing all the furor over the story is to be expected I guess. As the GB duders have said, it's a video ass video game(and my god that reminds me of Ryan so much). I did find the action and exploration of the world they chose to be very entertaining, despite a few too many bugs and glitches that were totally left unaddressed in the first patch btw. Fascinating reactions in here, very much enjoyed them.

I just finished this today (credits rolling as I type), and a lot of you make great points towards the endings, I sadly as I so often do in real life, didn't pay much attention to the news articles and radio even though I read/heard them.

my biggest feeling right now is I'm so annoyed Joseph "won" whatever that ultimately means, he was just such a self righteous ass I was looking forward to locking him up (or shooting him a bunch either seems appropriate fro how the game played out)

For me it ended up being a power fantasy that ultimately blue balls' you before the money shot, leaving you frustrated and unsatisfied

The problem with the whole "but it's a vidya game" argument is that it goes to shit because the developers tried to make those political comparisons in the first place. There are numerous interviews in which they claim that they were inspired by recent events and there's even a Vice interview where they make a big deal over getting an "expert on cults" to consult over their game.

None of it gets put to good use because FC5 wants it both ways: It wants to be this profound meditation on violence and the player character willingness to engage in it. But it also wants to be this GTA-esque heightened game world where everyone is a sociopath and you just go murder your way through everything--because it's satire. FC5 is terrible at both. The former, for the reasons people have already mentioned, but the latter because the writing is fucking awful since FC5 forgot that it actually has to be, you know, "funny" to pull that off.

Yeah, it's got good gameplay, but so the fuck what? What does that matter if there's nothing compelling attached to it? It just feels like everything that I do in the game has no real purpose.

@bladeofcreation: Amen! I was really digging the game until I hit Jacob's area. So unbelievably lame. And that ending sucked so hard. Talk about taking the wind out of the players sails. They don't earn that at all.

Just finished the game a moment ago, choosing the "Resist" ending (while smirking because I figured that goes against everything the game has been trying to teach me up to this point) and I certainly did not see the nuke thing coming. Caught me by surprise which was nice for a change. Then I looked up the "Walk Away" ending and boy does that one seem dumb and open ended in a shitty way. I took it to mean that the sheriff dude was in on it the whole time and he puts on the music to keep you and Pratt under control and getting help. Meh.

Then I came into this thread to read some thoughts. I see mention of the impending nuclear war stuff on the radio? Can't say I ever heard any of that while playing so that answers the whole "How'd the cult get control of a buncha nukes..?" Surprised they didn't go the route of GTA where important story things were forcefully conveyed over the radio at certain points?

What @lazyimperialsaid pretty much sums it up for me. If I take the "Resist" ending with that context, I think it's decent. I get the whole message the game is trying to deliver, and I kinda agree with it, but I don't think everything leading up to the ending was handled well. All the drug and brainwashing crap is dumb. I'm not into that sort of hokey shit in this sort of story, but a lot of people rather have that type of story telling/gameplay in their video games than more grounded stuff. Saints Row vs GTA for example. I personally think the former is dumb and have no interest in it.

I am kinda into the idea of a follow up sequel/spin-off type game for this where you come out of the bunker and play around in this wasteland. Just because its a more fleshed out pre-apocalypse than anything Fallout has ever done. Seeing the whole map the way it was and then revisiting stuff afterwards. Maybe you're running into a scattered US military in that game and they explain what the hell happened with North Korea, why it got to that point, and possibly explain why there was no national guard assistance or whatever. Stuff that re-contextualizes the events of Far Cry 5. And I suppose you could be fighting against invading North Korean/Russian forces ah la Red Dawn... Yea, I think I'd be into that game.

@phished0ne Could you point me in the direction of this post-review podcast? I don't look at Waypoint so I have no idea where or what I'm looking for. Can't find anything obvious like "Our Far Cry 5 Ending Discussion!" lol It would be much appreciated.

Finished it last night, and have to agree the endings are pretty unsatisfying. Aside from the obvious nihilistic downer, I think (for me at least) its because I see what they went for and how badly they fucked it up.

The 'twist' (resist) ending is supposed be a big reveal that you have fulfilled the biblical prophecy of Revelation, that god actually does talk to Joseph, and that the world is ending. That could potentially be a good twist, except for:

1. They made the nuclear Armageddon too ambiguous. You had to have listened to the radio news broadcasts to pick up on the foreshadowing. With the radio being optional, a lot of players missed it and couldn't tell if it was war, or the Seeds setting off nukes.
2. They cherry picked a bunch of stuff from Revelation and inserted it into the game way too subtly. If they had called more attention to them (e.g. Sherrif Whitehorse is the "White Horse" who comes from the heavens, and behind him is one who "in righteousness he judges and makes war") then maybe the ending would have more impact on the player. But as it is the twist is more like an easter egg since the clues are all hidden and obscure.
3. Most players will not have a passing knowledge of the book of revelations, so you need to expose them to that stuff before springing it on them in the end. It would be like (Usual Suspects spoiler ahead) revealing that Verbal Kint is Keyser Soze, without explaining at all who Kaiser Soze is beforehand.
4. The obvious fact that the ending doesn't fit with the tone of the rest of the game.

So, yeah, the actual ending is that Joseph was really a prophet, and you're the "pale rider" or "death" or "lamb of god" or whatever who comes from heaven with the White Horse, opens the seals, and causes judgement day - which is heralded by "trumpets" (air raid sirens). Joseph is chosen by god, he can't be killed, and everything you did was foretold, unavoidable, etc. The twist isn't really the nuclear war, it's that the war is the culmination of the prophecy of Revelations (so, god is real, joseph was right, and you are turbo-fucked), and since they don't make that clear enough it just feels like a random gut punch, rather than a profound twist.

Whats interesting to me is they are sort of ripping off Kevin Smith's Red State. Bunch of religious cultists, outnumbered law enforcement, teen murder - and in Smith's original ending (that they couldn't afford to film) the movie ends with the biblical Armageddon signaled by heavenly trumpets and the world ending.

I loved the resist ending, the whole time leading up to the bombs I’m dreading the ending thinking I’m going to kill him and it’s over. I would have been sorely disappointed if that would have been he case. The fact that he was right the whole time and now you’re all he has gave me chills. As somebody that cannot stand dooms day prophecies and preppers in general, it had me thinking hypothetically what if somebody was right.

I guess it would have been nice if it was an ending they hid away until you finished every quest, or at least a point of no return prompt. The whole bombed hope county screen is a bit misleading, but you would have to know it’s just going to revert to how it was before.

I picked the resist ending and watched walk away on Youtube afterwards.

Actually, the whole "you kill your friends in the car because of the trigger music" idea of the walk away ending was pretty cool.

Honestly, I don't know if I would've picked up on that without having read the explanation here first. Not because it was overly cryptic, more because I had pretty much checked out of that entire story long before it ended. Jacob's region in particular was awful. And those points in each region were you got kidnapped were my least favourite parts. Not just because of the tedious gameplay, but also the nonsense coming out of the characters' mouthes each time.

Regarding the Father's "you're the bad guy" speech at the end... Yes, it's a cliche speech but I think it was actually done quite well and I did hesitate for quite a bit before choosing my option. If the story up until that point hadn't of been so weak that I had blanked pretty much all of it out, maybe the ending would've had more of an impact on me.

Anyway, I've finished the game and was ready to have finished it earlier. Maybe God of War next...

@kemuri07: Really well said man! ?

I just finished it. The credits are rolling. I can say that at least compared to the several previous Far Cry games, the ending has me thinking about it. That said, if it was real, it doesn't make a lot of sense. You can say that if you dislike depressing endings, this game isn't for you, but it's not the only issue. I don't really get how, presumably, the cult got all those nukes (though was it whoever was behind the button to send them that was part of the cult?) I don't know. The game kind of has the issue of just feeling unrealistic in many ways. The setting itself is the single most 'realistic' thing the game has to offer. I really liked the game a lot, but the ending doesn't make a lot of sense if it was real. Oh, I chose the resist end. I'll have to watch the walk away one on YouTube. The destroyed setting on the main menu is interesting.

Edit - Watched the other ending. Eh, I dislike that one. I feel like that's the less canonical one if one was to be chosen, and it just feels too short. Plus, it doesn't really matter because what happens in the resist ending is seemingly inevitable if there's anyone that ever wants to challenge The Father.

Edit #2 - Okay, so I have been reading some of the posts here. I had no idea that if you drive your car you get some radio talk. I was thinking about walking or driving a car there but thought 'why, I can just fast travel right there', and did that to get it over with. Hmm. That adds more to what could possibly be going on. I say drugs.

It's weird that the developers would even give you a choice on how to get there as this could add to any theories, or make theories incorrect, like mine above.