Far Cry 6 will see protagonist Dani Rojas take part in a revolution against dictator Anton Castillo, who rules the fictional Caribbean nation of Yara. Based heavily on aspects of Cuban history, the story will see players fight for freedom in a country which has been placed under an international embargo that has rendered it "frozen in time."
Ubisoft will have to tread carefully to avoid some of the colonialist tropes that have arisen in previous Far Cry games, particularly when basing its setting on a nation with such a unique and often simplified role in American popular culture. If Far Cry 6 is going to do Yara justice, it will be necessary for the game to integrate environmental destruction into its main themes.
Yara's Colonial History
Ubisoft has already released the official title sequence for Far Cry 6, which makes it clear that the upcoming game will attempt to present a more complicated view of its setting than previous titles in the series. Despite its success, Far Cry 3 was criticized for presenting the Rook Islands - based on Indonesia - as filled almost exclusively by pirates and an indigenous population who participated in ritual human sacrifice.
The opening shots of Far Cry 6's title sequence make what is at least a cursory nod to Cuba's colonial history. One of the first shots is of the arrival of Spanish ships, another shows the unmistakable silhouettes of armored conquistadors, while a third shows two hands in chains.
It is Far Cry 6's villain who occupies one of the strangest places in Ubisoft's take on Cuba, however. Anton Castillo inherited the position of president from his father, and in turn plans to pass it on to his son Diego. The game's backstory says that Anton witnessed his own father's execution during a revolution fifty years prior to the game's start, which must have ultimately failed if Anton is in power.
This would imply that Anton's father is based on Fulgencio Batista, who was overthrown by the Cuban revolutionaries in late 1958 and who ran the country as a US-backed military dictator. As such, Anton Castillo himself appears to be a strange mix of both Batista and the man who succeeded him as Cuba's leader, Fidel Castro.
Colonization And The Environment
The embargo placed on Anton Castillo's regime is a clear reference to the embargo placed on Cuba when it became a communist country under Castro. Anton succeeding his father's regime from fifty years prior implies that he is not a communist. However, Batista's regime was actively supported by the US government and was open for trade, which makes the embargo seem strange.
It's possible that the details of Anton's politics beyond his desire to "restore Paradise" to Yara will be obscured to avoid any political statements deemed too direct or potentially divisive. Far Cry 6 appears to be aiming to present a fictionalized version of a Caribbean Latin-American nation and its relationship to colonization, slavery, and the United States that avoids the reductive portrayals of previous Far Cry games. To truly achieve that goal, environmental destruction needs to have a key role to play in story and its moral dilemmas.
The history of Cuba's colonization is inseparable from environmental destruction as far back as the arrival of the Spanish. The creation of the country's first plantations required mass deforestation which reshaped the island, and in the 21st century many nations outside of the "First World" face an environmental catastrophe caused in no small part by the standards of living achieved in the United States and European countries. Acknowledgement of environmental destruction and its causes should be intertwined with Far Cry 6's narrative regarding the colonization of Yara and how it led to Anton's regime.
Environmental Destruction In Far Cry 6
The game's commentary cannot be as simple as suggesting that Anton Castillo's regime wishes to destroy the natural environment from the nation's capital city of Esperanza, and that the revolutionaries want to prevent that from taking place. Indeed, Anton's slogan "restore paradise" could even have an environmentalist interpretation to some degree.
The issue needs to be treated with a nuance that acknowledges how little agency many of the nations which face the worst consequences of environmental destruction actually have over their global systems causing that destruction. Yara is under a trade embargo, for example, which would likely necessitate the far greater use of local natural resources. If Dani Rojas and the game's revolutionaries take over the country, they may still be faced with that embargo on top of the environmental problems caused by more powerful nations.
The literal destruction of Yara could work as a focal point for some of the biggest moral dilemmas facing both governments and revolutionaries across the world. Yara's isolation may mean that it is cut off from the rest of the world in terms of trade, but it does not mean that it is cut off from the global environment. Though it may not have an obvious place at the forefront of a story about a revolution against an iron-fisted military dictator, environmental catastrophe poses a problem that could prove unsolvable by both of Far Cry 6's main factions.
Far Cry 6 will also likely have a big focus on generational conflict. The image of Anton handing his son Diego Castillo a live grenade and insisting he hold down the handle to prevent it exploding can easily be interpreted as a metaphor for the climate crisis as much as it can be applied to Yara's unstable political situation.
Environmental destruction and the breadth of factors causing it must be acknowledged as much as the colonial and recent history of Latin-America because it is inseparable from both that history and current reality. With Anton and the revolutionaries presenting alternate visions of the future, the possibility that there will be no future regardless of who wins needs to be a part of the game's story if it's going to avoid making some of the mistakes the Far Cry franchise has made in the past, and treat its subject matter with nuance.
Far Cry 6 is in development for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.