Far Cry 5 and the Fallacy of Color-Blindness in the “Multi-Ethnic Cult”

Playing through the opening of Far Cry 5, something kept ringing a bell in my head. As the helicopter went down, and Joseph Seed, “The Father” spoke to the woman in air traffic control and then rallied his followers around him with claims that God would not let him be taken, and that it was time for them to fight back, it became clear: he reminded me of infamous cult leader, Jim Jones. With the constant presence of his tinted sunglasses, and the way he calls for recruiting people into the cult through love, the resemblance was striking. This shouldn’t be surprising. It’s clear that the game is an amalgamation of many real-life cults, yet doesn’t actually acknowledge any of them or their histories. What did surprise me is the fact that this similarity is so apparent, and yet goes utterly unused in the actual narrative of the game.

In an interview with Waypoint’s Austin Walker, Far Cry 5 director Dan Hay said their fictional cult, the Project at Eden’s Gate, was “informed by the cults of the 70s. I’m remembering this concept of inclusion. I’m recalling this idea of ‘bring us everybody.’ And to me that was definitely where we wanted to go.” This is why, despite the overt white supremacist branding that surrounds the “Peggies” (the colloquial nickname for members of the cult), there are people of color within it. This was clearly how Hay and his team were attempting to side-step talking about race relations in their game. But simply adding people of color to your cult doesn’t eliminate the need to discuss race, in fact, as seen by how Jones built his following, racial discourse is critical.

Jones originally founded his church in the 1950’s in Indiana. During this time, segregation was still alive and well. Jones used this to build his following by advocating for people of color and actively fighting against segregation. Because of his work, many establishments in Indiana became desegregated, and his church became largely black. Not only did Jones recognize racial inequality, he acted to help with it and actually built his cult off of it. Multi-ethnic cults have to address these issues because at least some of their members are people of color. Their presence warrants more racial awareness, not less.

The team behind Far Cry 5 clearly wanted to use a doomsday cult as the background for their game, without having to dive into any of the real politics surrounding their creation (which makes the heavy white supremacist imagery attached to their marketing all the more baffling). To side-step dealing with race in any meaningful way, they claimed to take influence from “multi-ethnic cults from the 70’s”, but didn’t want to take into account the realities of what those kinds of cults did in regards to race. Jones and his church faced race head on and used it as an effective recruiting tool. It wasn’t “bring me everyone”, it was “I see that the institutions of this country are ignoring you and treating you badly, let me do something about it”. Instead of the violent “programming” method Seed uses to bring people into the cult (which has been proven to be false time and time again), Jones did what most cult leaders do to get new members: he found people in need, and made them feel seen, heard, and understood. This is why people are becoming more and more concerned with young people who feel socially isolated becoming radicalized online by the far right.  He gave them a place where they felt they belonged. And he did all of this through his understanding of and engaging with racial politics.

All Far Cry 5 wants to be is a fantasy, a potpourri of bombastic misconceptions of how cults work that doesn’t have to engage with reality in any way. Which would be fine, if they hadn’t pointedly branded the game as something it’s not. Using the iron cross constantly, mostly showing white cultists in marketing materials, and giving the whole game a radical militia vibe all screams white supremacist cult, and yet, instead of backing that up in any meaningful way, Hay tried to back out of it by claiming the cult is actually based on those good old 70’s cults that just wanted whoever they could get. While I honestly would have preferred a game that tackled the actual dangers of what right wing, militia-driven cults look like, it’s just as bad to pretend as if having people of color in your cult is enough to disengage from racial discourse.

Imagine if Far Cry 5 had actually devoted its storyline to tackling why people of color joined the cult. There would have been so much room to investigate an angle similar to what Jones did in real life, especially in a contemporary setting. I saw Gita Jackson describe John Seed as “ripped hipster David Koresh” on Twitter, but what if the game had actually framed him as hipster Jim Jones: a “woke”, Bernie supporter who’s allegedly fighting for social justice, but in reality is gathering people for his dangerous and self-serving agenda. There would be so much to dig into and critique there, and while I wouldn’t trust Ubisoft to stick the landing, it’s still something I’d rather see than the weird, faux colonialism the game actually presents (oh no, the scary cult people are coming to take land away from the nice, down-home people!). It was a method they touched on with the villain in Watch Dogs 2, and it would have been nice to see that come through in this game as well.

This game was always going to be over the top and goofy, that’s not even in question. But we have to stop letting that be an excuse for devs to not dive deeper into what they create. So long as we allow people like Hay to hide behind weak excuses like “multi-ethnic cults”, we’re always going to get mediocre stories with arguably fun mechanics. If game creators aren’t engaging with the history of their inspirations, what’s the point of being inspired by them at all?

All images not cited are courtesy of Ubisoft’s Far Cry 5 page.