Video Game / Far Cry: New Dawn

Due to the nature of this game's story, this page contains unmarked spoilers for Far Cry 5. You Have Been Warned.

Welcome to the new natural order.

"I led us into the new world. I thought that it would be glorious... I was wrong."

— Joseph Seed

Far Cry: New Dawn, released on February 15, 2019 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows, is the seventh installment in the Far Cry franchise, serving as a direct sequel to the story of Far Cry 5.

Seventeen years have passed since the world erupted into nuclear war. The aftermath was harsh, deadly, and unforgiving - but eventually, the chaos gave way to new life. In Hope County, Montana, survivors began to rebuild, forming a new society in the form of a town called Prosperity. Unfortunately, not everyone shared their ideals. A group of vicious anarchists known as the Highwaymen soon began terrorizing the region, threatening everything that the people of Prosperity had struggled to build.

You take the role of the Captain of Security for a faction of survivors led by Thomas Rush, who has spent the last decade helping survivors rebuild across the west coast. Responding to the locals' cries for help, you arrive in Hope County to find Prosperity on its last legs, all but destroyed by the Highwaymen. To survive this harsh new world, you'll have to gather like-minded survivors, fight back against these psychotic raiders, and rebuild the American way of life...

Trailers: World Premiere, Gameplay.

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Far Cry: New Dawn provides examples of:

• 20 Minutes into the Future: New Dawn takes place roughly in 2035, 17 years after Far Cry 5.
• Abnormal Ammo: The various saw launchers launch circular saw blades that ricochet to other nearby targets with amazing efficiency. Advanced models gain additional firing modes like simpler non-ricocheting blades that stick in any hard surface they hit for easy retrieval, guided blades that acquire up to three targets simultaneously, or boomerang blades that automatically return to the weapon if they didn't hit anything.
• Accidental Murder: The easiest way to stop the roving prisoner transports is to shoot the driver from the front. Thing is, the prisoner always sits directly behind the driver, so unless you're extremely careful with your shots, most attempts will end with both the driver and prisoner dead... or even just the prisoner in particularly bad cases.
• Action Bomb: High-level Highwaymen stronghold occasionally field dogs with Explosive Leashs that deal extreme damage to everything in a considerable radius. They spell instant death on all but the lowest difficulty setting, and even there they put the Captain into last chance mode where any additional hit is lethal.
• After the End: The game takes place in the aftermath of a nuclear war that destroyed civilization, which only just now began rebuilding itself.
• The Alleged Car: Most of the Rank 1 vehicles, but special mention goes to "Carmina (The Plane)". It's Nick Rye's old plane...without wings. It's essentially an amphibious airboat, though it does have some directional control when going off ramps thanks to the intact tail surfaces. Hurk also introduces himself in a mission where you drive a car that he claims is ridiculously fast...and it only goes about 10 miles an hour, leading to a very slow-moving chase scene.
• Anarchy Is Chaos: The Highwaymen seem to have no interest in restoring order in a world gone mad.
• Animal Motifs: The twins mockingly call their enemies "rabbit" due to their elusiveness and perceived weakness.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • A minor complaint regarding the last game was that none of the Fangs for Hire could ride in a car with you. Not so in this game; Timber can hop into the passenger seat of a car, and even the sidecar of a motorcycle, though unfortunately none of the available vehicles have a proper space to support Horatio the boar.
  • Once you've cleared out most of an outpost's defenders, the game will automatically tag the remaining one or two mooks so you don't have to sneak about forever to track them down without blowing your Undetected bonus.
  • A little more on the meta side, but Expeditions are this for players who complain that Stealth is the only advantageous way to play. No matter how stealthy you are it's extremely likely that the Highwaymen will find you (due to the target item having an alert GPS attached to it) and you'll have to fight your way out loud and proud. This also means Guns For Hire like Gina Guerra, Pastor Jerome and Hurk can be much more useful.
• Apocalyptic Log: Inside Dutch's Bunker are various notes from someone who is heavily implied to be the Rookie, where they go from desperately trying to survive, to succumbing to indoctrination from Joseph Seed.
• Apocalypse How: Somewhere between Class One and Two. Likely most of the world has been knocked down to hunter-gatherer-subsistence, but people are already putting society back together within a generation (and have the advantage of modern firearms and even motor vehicles, thanks to homemade fuels).
• The Apunkalypse: Anarchic raiders, garish hairstyles, spray paint, and rusty jury-rigged weapons. Seems familiar, [[doesn't it?
• Armor Is Useless: Nope, as you'll quickly learn once level III enemies start showing up. Their heavy armor lets them soak up much more firepower than their lower-ranked pals, and their helmets make One Hit Kills impossible unless you use AP ammo.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Piercing ammo rips straight through Brawler shields and helmets, making it borderline mandatory for sniper rifles once the Highwaymen start fielding their Level III troops.
• Artificial Stupidity: Sometimes you'll encounter an ethanol convoy and some wandering civilians simultaneously. Take out the truck driver, then the rest of the convoy, and watch how one of the panicking civilians hijacks the truck and drives off with your ethanol while you're still shooting it out with the remaining Highwaymen.
• Artistic License – Nuclear Physics: A majority of the specialists from Far Cry 5 were able to survive the nuclear blast without being burned horrifically and getting cancer from the radiation. That being said, it's heavily implied that the ones not the member of the US Marshals aren't actually there during the infamous final fight against Joseph Seed.
• Attack Its Weakpoint: Monstrous Animals have large glowing areas on their bodies that serve as their very visible weak spots. However, hitting them gets trickier the more powerful the creature gets. Monstrous Boars have theirs on their upper back, Bisons and Cougars on their flanks and belly, and Bears only on their belly.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: The Twins are the leaders of the Highwaymen and by far the two toughest members of the gang; when you finally throw down with them, each of them can soak multiple full mags of assault rifle fire before going down. Unlike previous games, the fight doesn't take place inside a hallucination so for the first time in the main series there's no diegetic justification for why an ordinary human not wearing an EOD suit can soak several dozen bullets without dying.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The Saw Launcher fires one, later three or four saw blades at a time. They will ricochet wildly around an area, instantly killing most enemies nearby. They will also instantly kill hostages and allies.
  • Nana and The Judge are intended to be stealth specialists, firing a suppressed sniper rifle and a bow, respectively. Early on they are very fit to purpose; players can clear out level one and two outposts simply by hiding in the bushes and directing either of them via binoculars. Once level three enemies start appearing, however, they mostly lose the ability to eliminate enemies silently because their weapons are not able to penetrate helmets, even after you have upgraded your Guns For Hire to "elite" status.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: The penultimate story battle plays out this way.
• Bayonet Ya: Besides being able to kill mooks with bayonets, you also get the "Get to the Point" achievement/trophy by killing an Enforcer with one.
• Big Good: Thomas Rush, who is the leader of a faction that seeks to help liberate the country from those taking advantage of the power vacuum. Hope County is their latest stop and you are playing as Rush's second-in-command.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: The Twins depicted in the cover, Mickey and Lou, are the leaders of the Highwaymen chapter in Hope County and therefore the primary antagonists.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Highwaymen are defeated and New Eden has been disbanded, plus Joseph is either dead or being forced to live with the guilt of his actions, but Rush is dead and society will have to go on without him.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Enforcers for the Highwaymen, Monstrous Animals for, well, animals.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: As usual, the Ubisoft shop offers a premium currency for real money that can be used to unlock numerous epic-level weapons and vehicles from the get-go. A small amount of these FCND credits can be salvaged from the ten prepper stashes in Hope County, enough to permanently unlock one of a handful of very powerful weapons like the Blood Dragon Recurve Bow with its whooping 1200 damage, which is sufficient to one-shot anything short of Enforcers and the largest animals. However, the game's weapon challenges also subvert this to an extent by forcing you to kill a lot of enemies with basic, advanced and optimized weaponry in order to earn perk points, so if you use nothing but those weapons, you'll end up missing out on a lot of character progression.
• Call-Back: The premiere trailer has a shot of a survivor finding a pair of Joseph Seed's sunglasses in a ruined church. The words "Father was right" can also be seen graffitied onto a fallen weather vane.
• Colony Drop: One of the seven expeditions is set around the crash site of the ISS space station that apparently went through atmospheric reentry sometime after the nuclear apocalypse. The consequences of such an event are severely downplayed, however, with the station modules being mostly intact and no impact craters in sight. In fact, most of the damages to the station seem to stem from Highwaymen salvage efforts instead of the crash itself.
• Color Motif: New Dawn uses hot pink as its primary color both in its logo, the flowers seen growing around Hope County, and the smoke used to mark objectives.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: The Project at Eden's Gate was a Christian doomsday cult trying to prepare for and survive the apocalypse. The Highwaymen are a roving band of anarchists driven by hedonistic survivalism. In practice, however, they operate very similarly; if you're not part of their cult/gang, you're either someone to take supplies from or someone to be kidnapped and tortured into joining their ranks.
• Cruel Mercy: If the player chooses to spare Joseph Seed at the end of the game, he'll be distraught because he can't live with what he's done but doesn't have the courage to end his own life.
• Cutscene Incompetence: The game would end really quickly if The Deputy just shoot or kill The Twins as early as possible.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Conversely, the Highwayman is portrayed as an unstoppable force of evil raiders in cutscene. Yet far before even the Deputy made contact with New Eden, once the Deputy save Thomas Rush, they can regularly overpower the Highwayman with ease after upgrading Prosperity and its features to the maximum level and unlocking the Elite tier weaponry.
• Cutting Off the Branches: The game follows up on the "Resist" ending of Far Cry 5.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The "open parachute" button has been changed since Far Cry 5, leaving people who were previously playing that (IE, the target audience) liable to plummet into the ground when attempting low openings.
• Dangerously Garish Environment: The game has a lavish setting filled with vibrant flora that blooms around the post-apocalytic landscape. It's this setting where the player must defend his turf against the brutal Highwaymen.
• Dark Action Girl: The twin sisters Mickey and Lou are hedonistic thugs who revel in anarchy.
• Deadly Disc: The new signature weapon of the game is the Saw Launcher, a buzzsaw-launching crossbow.
• Deal with the Devil: Openly stated to be what dealing with New Eden is.
  "A deal with New Eden... is a deal with the Devil."
• Delinquent Hair: The Highwaymen leaders, Mickey and Lou, have dyed blonde cornrows that cap off their dangerous, punkish appearances and personalities.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The slingshot is this in the early to midgame. It deals Scratch Damage on body shots but is a guaranteed One-Hit Kill if you hit the head, plus it is completely silent and has unlimited ammo, making it a powerful stealth weapon if you're skilled enough to consistently and quickly line up headshots.
• Disney Death: Considering the previous game pretty much ended with Rocks Fall Everybody Dies for everyone except the Deputy and Joseph Seed, New Dawn reveals that a surprisingly large number of your Hope County allies ended up surviving the nuclear holocaust and the subsequent post-apocalypse.
• Double Jump: After eating the Fruit of Eden, one of the abilities the Captain can get is this, which is called the Leap of Faith. Arguably even more useful than the increased jump height/distance is the added ability to neutralize Fall Damage regardless of height by hitting the Jump button just before you hit the ground. There's even an achievement for pulling this off after a drop of at least 30 meters.
• Duct Tape for Everything: Duct tape is one of a handful of resources required for crafting and upgrading most weapons, and it often shows on their models. A lot of other tech in Hope County is also obviously held together with duct tape and wishful thinking, as befits a post-apocalyptic world where original spare parts are in short supply.
• Dying Reconciliation: Ethan Seed, the Bastard Bastard of Ex-Big Bad Joseph Seed of the previous game, lies dying after a prolonged battle with the Captain, who shoots him repeatedly after he eats a mystic apple and the darkness in his soul turns him into a monster. Joseph runs to his son's side, and Ethan begs his father's forgiveness for selling out New Eden to the Highwaymen out of resentment towards him for not making Ethan the heir to his kingdom. Joseph tearfully agrees, whereupon Ethan dies in his arms, and Joseph descends into a guilt-and-grief-induced Villainous BSoD and carries his son's body away to mourn and convince the Captain to kill him too.
• Effortless Achievement: You get achievements for Herculean tasks like dropping three smoke bombs or crafting ten medkits.
• Enemy Mine: New Eden, the post-apocalyptic version of Eden's Gate are now allies with you against the Highwaymen. They're still a violent cult of brainwashed lunatics, but now you have a common enemy.
• Evil Luddite: New Eden have sworn off all technology, relying on bows and arrows for weapons and wearing primarily furs.
• Eye Scream: A disturbing number of takedowns involves the victim taking the Captain's railway spike to the eye.
• Fallen Hero: The Gun For Hire known only as "The Judge" is the Junior Deputy from 5 after being brainwashed by Joseph sometime after the 'Resist' ending of the previous game.
• Fiendish Fish: The lakes in Hope County are occupied by demon fish from earlier games that will attack you and any Guns for Hire to step into their water.
• For the Evulz: The Twins are going on and on about having to squeeze the world dry of resources, but it is outright confirmed since the first supply drop that the Highwaymen as a whole are actually self-sufficient. They have reliable food and water supplies, enough electricity to blast their music into the world 24/7, and all that ethanol you keep looting from their outposts? They produce the stuff and bring it with them when you "scavenge" an outpost to let them take it over with stronger guards. Taking all this into account means that they Rape, Pillage, and Burn because they like it, not because they have to.
• Full-Boar Action: One of the new Fangs for Hire is Horatio, a wild boar who can gore your enemies.
• Game Mod: Like Far Cry 5 before, it has "Scavenger Mod" that incorporates selections of new content and changes to apply.
• Genre Shift: New Dawn incorporates action-RPG elements rather similar to those from Borderlands, a first for the series. The fact that enemies bleed numbers now might be rather jarring for people who were used to the previous games.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Activating the Wrath ability restricts you to melee combat with your fists^note unless you're driving or flying a vehicle at the time, in which case you can freely use its onboard weapons, but your punches deal more damage than bullets and can send even the largest enemies flying. You also take significantly reduced damage while the ability is active, which makes it actually a viable method for hunting Monstrous Animals because slaying animals without firearms nets you twice the amount of loot.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Highwaymen have chapters all throughout the United States, and Mickey and Lou are merely the heads of one of them, meaning they're answerable to some sort of centralized leadership.
• Grim Up North: The northern part of the map is New Eden territory that's been completely filled with Bliss.
• Hijacked by Ganon: In the last moments of the final act, Ethan Seed rats out New Eden to the Highwaymen, and Mickey and Lou are fought there. They both fall, and Ethan Seed is the next biggest threat. After defeating an enraged Ethan Seed, Joseph Seed is the last loose end to tie up, either to be put down, or to drag him through Cruel Mercy.
• Honor Before Reason: The game would have probably been solved earlier if the Captain was fine with killing the Twins in exchange of collateral or not complying to all their demands the moment they have a hostage.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: The Twins are distinguished by their outfits: Mickey wears a blue hoodie while Lou wears pink extreme sports gear.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: 17 years after escaping punishment for his atrocities, Joseph Seed can finally be brought to justice- either by shooting him, or letting him live with nothing.
• King Mook: Enforcers are this to normal Highwaymen just like Monstrous Animals are to normal specimen of their species. They even have the same golden crown as their HUD symbol.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: It is hard to describe the setting for this game without giving away the ending to Far Cry 5.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: While the Far Cry games are largely implied to be in the same universe (primarily through recurring characters like Willis and Hurk), this one is the first to be a direct sequel to the events of its immediate predecessor.
• Lost Technology: Numerous notes tell how most of mankind's advanced tech now falls under this trope. Special mention goes to carbon fiber materials and semiconductors, two examples of sophisticated technologies that require knowledge and industrial infrastructure to manufacture that simply don't exist anymore, leaving scavenging the dwindling stockpiles of what survived nuclear armageddon as the only remaining source. Other characters mention that even something as simple as a radio is virtually impossible to replace because once the last spare parts run out, there's nobody left who knows how to build these parts from scratch. And unlike the rest of society that appears to be rebuilding slowly but surely, nothing suggests that mankind's lost technical knowledge will be regained anytime soon, if at all.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: The Brawler type of Highwaymen carries melee weapons and a huge riot shield. They're slow and harmless at range, but their shield is bulletproof unless you have AP ammo at hand, and if you spend too much time focusing on the gun-toting Highwaymen first, you're in for a nasty surprise when these suckers suddenly start beating the crap out of you. You can pick up dropped shields to use yourself, and you can even throw them at enemies for an impressive amount of damage. Killing five baddies this way nets you an achievement.
  • Also somewhat subverted if the Captain is accompanied by the mighty mutant boar, Horatio. Horatio can gain the ability to simply tear the shield off their arm and toss it aside.
• MacGyvering: The loss of most of Earth's advanced manufacturing capabilities means that what tech remains functional is often jury-rigged from whatever junk could be scrounged up. Vehicles have been crudely refitted to burn ethanol instead of gasoline. Firearms mount scopes fashioned from water pipes. Kitchen knives or half pairs of scissors have been duct-taped to barrels to serve as makeshift bayonets. Suppressors consist of spray cans, bottles or just a bundle of tarp. What body armor appears is almost completely repurposed sports equipment.
• Magnetic Weapons: The basic saw launcher is essentially a jury-rigged crossbow built to shoot circular saw blades instead of quarrels, but the advanced models use magnetic induction to propel their projectiles, making them a weird type of coil guns. It also provides a superficial justification at least as to how they can guide or even recall their blades as if they were boomerangs.
• Malevolent Masked Men:
  • One of the Guns For Hire is "The Judge", a New Eden cultist who serves as Ethan's enforcer who is completely mute and always wears a mask. It's confirmed in-game by numerous characters that The Judge is the Deputy from 5 after having been successfully brainwashed by Joseph Seed.
  • An even straighter example are the Highwaymen themselves. All of them from Level II upwards wear either ballistic masks or helmets, and NPs often refer to them as "masked freaks" or variations thereof.
• Make Way for the New Villains: The premise of the conflict in the story. What's left of the Peggies have settled in New Eden and only fight the Highwaymen, the new threat, who plunder people indiscriminately. Joseph Seed has become reclusive as Mickey and Lou's forces ravage the wastelands like a sandstorm.
• Master of All: Highwayman Enforcers are the real deal. They have more health than any other human enemy, the sight range of a sniper, smoke grenades to cover their advance or retreat, access to the entire range of weaponry, a powerful Healing Factor, and helmets to prevent a One-Hit Kill without AP ammo. They also can't be tagged permanently, making it much more difficult to keep track of their movements. Long story short: these guys should always be your priority targets wherever they appear.
• Mercy Kill: Joseph Seed considers the protagonist shooting him to be this, and even asks for God's justice.
• Mission-Pack Sequel: While New Dawn does bring some new mechanics and a post-apocalyptic coat of paint to the table, it heavily reuses the core gameplay, map and many of the assets from Far Cry 5. This makes it more of a spin-off than a full-blown new entry in the series, and it's presented and priced as such.
• Money for Nothing: The two primary currencies are ethanol and copper. Ethanol remains useful throughout the game because it can be used to upgrade weapons indefinitely once you've fully upgraded Prosperity. Copper is required to purchase any and all types of ammunition, but since most enemies drop the equivalent of one to two basic resupplies, you'll quickly amass enough copper to single-handedly restore Hope County's power grid (unless you make a habit of plinking Enforcers to death with Tier I weapons).
• Mordor: The "Radiation Zones" that serve as this game's Border Patrol are a blasted wasteland of charred forests and cracked grey earth. Probably not a coincidence that they bear a suspicious similarity to Fallout 4's Glowing Sea.
• Mythology Gag: The powers granted by the Apple of Eden aren't exactly new; most of it first showed up all the way back in the first game's console port, Instincts.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Implied by the trailer. Joseph Seed seems to regret the world he and Eden's Gate ended up creating.
• Nerf:
  • Takedown animations are even longer than before making it increasingly unviable for stealth runs especially when weapon challenges require you to master different kind of weaponry.
  • Unlike Far Cry 5, you can only bring one character from your roster, and the second button is re-tooled into the button to call your companion back.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: At least one crocodile lives in John Seed's partially flooded bunker, along with a few rattlesnakes. There's a lot more of them swimming around in the swamp near the crashed government plane that Roger Cadoret brings the Captain to investigate.
• New Eden: Unlike most apocalyptic settings, where the world is reduced to ashes and society collapses. The world was able to terraform and nature was able to regrow. Society wants to just rebuild and find peace. Unfortunately, the antagonists think differently and challenge this new society.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In the finale it's made clear that a civilized, non-psychopath like you would've never had the strength to overcome the Twins and their Power of Hate if not for the Power Born of Madness that Joseph Seed bestowed upon you as his own warped way of atoning for all the trouble he's caused.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: Despite the fact that the setting is a post-apocalyptic world where resources are scarce at best, the Highwayman are powerful enough to not only have forces all across the United States but also capable of having fleets of fuel-intensive vehicles such as trucks and choppers.
• Oh, Crap!: The scene where the Captain suddenly breaks out of the Twins' handcuffs and proceeds to beat the everloving shit out of them is a small series of three for them. Starting with the Captain shredding the handcuffs like balsa wood, then when they catch Lou's helmet and begin crushing it with their bare hands before flinging her against the wall and kicking her around until Mickey blasts the Captain out a window, and the third being a quieter, more grim one when they suspect that the Captain's newfound powers likely came from New Eden, who are pretty much bogeymen for the local Highwaymen chapter.
• One-Hit Kill: The game has a much higher percentage of weapons that can facilitate this than previous titles had, most notably the various bows and saw launchers. Weapons can also be upgraded indefinitely with rare materials for +5% damage each, so if you're willing to grind an insane amount of resources you can go to town with a 9mm pistol that can explode armored trucks with a single shot to the bumper sticker, or kill minibosses by grazing their pinky toe.
• Pinball Projectile: The Saw Launcher's blades will ricochet against anything it hits to hit the nearest enemy unit. This includes other enemy units, meaning it's capable of taking out small groups in a single shot.
• Player Headquarters: Prosperity, which is the Seed ranch repurposed into a small village that the player builds up by crafting upgrades and finding others, allowing them to gain new skills and weapons.
• Ragnarök Proofing: Averted for the most part. Even after only 17 years, most of the wooden structures in Hope County that weren't blown over by the nukes have decayed or been buried (or both in some cases) to the point of being nearly unrecognizable. The few places that have survived intact are hardened structures like missile silos and prepper bunkers, or places that have been rebuilt, such as in the case of John Seed's ranch, which is now the location of Prosperity.
• Real Is Brown: Strongly averted. The world is quite vibrant in color thanks to elements of the setting like the super bloom and the characters' attire. And although what's left of Hope County is surrounded by a monochrome, blasted, irradiated hellscape, you will underwent expeditions towards several remnant sites throughout the United States, and they're just as vibrant as ever.
• Real Men Eat Meat: One note left by a Highwayman is about making sure no vegetables are anywhere near the feast the high command is having and goes on a rant about how they only eat meat since they are badasses. The animal companions are also saved from being slaughtered for meat. Their mindset is at least partially justified; numerous Highwaymen complain that it takes a lot of vegetables to make enough Ethanol for all of their vehicles, meaning that they see Highwaymen who eat vegetables as "problem-makers" who take away from the fuel supply.
• Scary Black Woman: The Highwaymen leaders Mickey and Lou.
• Scenery Porn: The world is just beginning to recover from nuclear winter, with fields of flowers blossoming all over Hope County. This is actually Truth in Television: the real-life super bloom phenomenon, caused by heavy rainfall, sees flower bloom in dry locations at an unprecedented rate, much like what might happen after a nuclear winter ends.
• Self-Made Orphan: The Twins killed their own father.
• Sequel Hook: Mickey and Lou are only in charge of their particular chapter of the Highwaymen, meaning that there's still plenty of them elsewhere to menace the former Hope County.
• Sequel Logo in Ruins: New Dawn‘s subtitle is made from faded pink spray paint, and the background is the same as 5‘s, but with everything in ruins to reflect it taking place in the post-apocalypse.
• Sequence Breaking: Certain story missions can be completed before they're required by the game to move forward, such as visiting Dutch Island to hear about Joseph Seed's prophecy before being prompted to make an alliance with New Eden, or doing Irwin's fights in the arena before upgrading Prosperity to Level 3 and before Rush's death.
• Shout-Out:
  • Hurk mentions in a conversation with Gina that he named their child "Blade" after the comic book character.
  • A double Shout-Out in the "Crashed Government Plane" expedition. Not only is the titular plane the Paladin itself, but Sam Fisher mentions making contact with Division units to discover the fate of Chicago.
  • The Highwaymen Hellhole Prison in the southeast of Hope County is called the Bullet Farm.
  • Two of the books found in the shelves of Prosperity are Trials of the Rakyat and Blood Dragon 2: Darling Revengeance.
  • Doubles as a Call-Back to Far Cry 3, Thomas Rush's jacket has a Task Force 141 patch on it.
  • The mission to recruit Sharky Boshaw (who is watching Blade at the time) is called "Adventures in Babysitting".
  • As usual, the achievement list has a field day with them:
    • Principal Skinner^note later changed to Master Skinner, probably due to copyright issues
    • All Your Bases
    • It's Super Effective
    • Good Job, Cap, for killing five enemies by throwing a shield at them
    • Fly, You Fools!
• The Siege: The Highwaymen lay siege to Prosperity early in the story in revenge for the Captain interfering too much with their operation.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: You didn't really think the Highwaymen manufacture their war material themselves, did you? They use slave labor for that, probably all the people they captured but couldn't (or didn't want to) induce into their ranks. Ambient chatter in their local ammo plant paints a grim picture of innocent people being worked to death, kept like cattle under horrible conditions and given barely enough food to survive, if even that.
• Somewhere, a Herpetologist Is Crying: In order to recruit Selene, you have to collect her medical supplies from John Seed's flooded bunker, which has a few rattlesnakes and a crocodile living in it. Apart from the fact that American crocodiles are only found in Florida, not Montana, it would not be healthy for a bunch of reptiles, including a crocodile as large as that, to live in an underground bunker far away from sunlight.
• Smoke Out: Smoke grenades can be used to break enemy sight lines to allow for a safe(r) retreat. Using three of them actually unlocks an achievement. Special enemies like Scavengers and Enforcers also use smoke grenades with abandon against you.
• Spin-Offspring:
  • Carmina Rye, the daughter of Nick and Kim Rye from the previous game, is now 17 years old and one of the new Guns For Hire.
  • New Eden is led by Ethan Seed, adopted son of Joseph Seed (who disappeared some time ago). Unlike his father, he's not a religious fanatic and is simply using the cult for his own purposes.
  • Hurk now has a child called Blade, who his cousin Sharky is helping raise. By Sharky's account, he's growing up to be exactly like his father, as gunfire and explosions are "like swaddling to him."
• Spiritual Antithesis: The story and pacing of New Dawn very much contrasts that of the previous game. For the latter, the player is no longer rushed into chunks of the main story when antagonizing the enemy, completing missions, or liberating outposts, and is encouraged to thoroughly explore the map for resources and complete challenges. For the former, the Highwaymen are all chaotic and unapologetic in their antagonism, contrast with the Peggies who had the pretense of a righteous cause (and were somewhat correct in their paranoia). Only Mickey and Lou represent the Highwaymen in terms of conflict and battle, a far cry from the diverse Heralds of Eden's Gate. The Captain is blessed with Joseph Seed's power-enhancing fruit, while the Deputy was constantly picked and tormented by the herald's brainwashing. Finally, no matter the player's choice, the story is given a happy ending, which is a relief coming from 5's Morton's Fork endings.
• Starts Stealthily, Ends Loudly: As usual in Far Cry taking outposts can go like Rambo: stealthy with a bow and end up with you shooting everything with a machine gun if you mess up and get found.
• The Straight and Arrow Path:
  • New Eden live a deliberately low-tech lifestyle, eschewing firearms and relying on bows and arrows as their main weapons.
  • All bows available to the player have received a massive damage buff, enough to enable them to kill any humanoid enemy of the same level in one body hit (two for elites) or one headshot, making them much more viable for stealth play styles than they were before.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Given the general tone of the game and unlike many other forms of post-apocalyptic media, New Dawn still takes a note at the short lifespan of petroleum and oil-based fuel^note For starters, using expired fuel would not power the engine, if not malfunction. with many machines having to rely on home-made ethanol to make up for it. Most if not all the vehicles appear to have their engines modified to run on ethanol, and some characters will comment with dismay on how an ethanol-burning engine sounds "different" from a traditional petrol-burning one.
• Take Your Time: After rescuing Rush and upgrading Prosperity to Level 2, a sudden large scale attack by the Highwaymen is happening, with The Twins promising to come back even stronger and Rush presenting the mission to ask New Eden for help as an urgent thing... However the game straight up encourages you to recruit all the specialists beforehand, and even before you make contact with New Eden, you can steamroll the Highwayman with regular and relative ease with the large force of Highwaymen never coming back until you follow the plot.
• Throwing Your Shield Always Works: Brawler shields can be picked up by the player and thrown at enemies. Killing 5 Highwaymen in this manner unlocks the Good Job, Cap achievement.
• Too Dumb to Live: The Twins massacre Rush's group by destroying the train they are riding into Hope County. They later gloat to Rush over his foolishness in basically announcing his arrival into the area with the train, making it easy to ambush him.
• Violation of Common Sense: Seeing how tough Enforcers are, many players' first instinct will be to aim for the head, and if they have a sniper rifle with AP ammo, they'd be right. However, archers are much better off going for body shots because two hits are enough to kill an Enforcer and the first one will stagger them, allowing a safe follow-up shot before the detection meter fills up.
• Whatever Happened to the Mouse?:
  • There are only a handful of survivors from Far Cry 5. The only confirmed survivors are Nick & Kim Rye, as well as their daughter Carmina Rye. Others like Hurk and Sharkey were able to survive, and finally Grace Armstrong (albeit blinded by the nuclear fallout) and Pastor Jerome.
  • The others are unaccounted for. Since 17 years have passed, Boomer and the other Fangs for Hire are certainly dead, having died of either old age or from the blast itself. Adelaide actually left Hope County with Xander to find a "sex resort island" near Cuba. The only specialist left unaccounted for is Jess Black, who would be 44 by the events of the game if she survived.
• Wham Line: "Yeah, you might be New Eden's Judge and all, but I know deep down there's still something left of that deputy I heard so much about."
• Wide-Open Sandbox: A Far Cry standard, but for the first time, players will be able to make expeditions outside the base area, accomplished using a helicopter. Some of the location revealed thus far are a Louisiana amusement park, the Grand Canyon, and Alcatraz Island.
• William Telling: The cover art depicts the Twins doing this to a poor sap strapped to a car. He's got the classic apple on his head, but judging by all the bullet holes surrounding him, it seems the Twins have been tormenting him for kicks. He also looks surprisingly like Joseph Seed, though he isn’t him.

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