History Headscratchers / FarCry5

* The weapons and equipment of the cult seen so far wouldn't be out of place in a Somalian militia (ignoring that the rifles and submachine guns are generally western and modern models), with technicals, machine gun nests up on roofs, and rocket launchers. Leaving aside of how they got that far without already getting crushed, that's the sort of thing that gets an express upgrade past police, SWAT, FBI/other federal agencies, and possibly even the National Guard. To maintain its legitimacy the USA cannot abide armed insurrection of that scale within its borders for any longer than it takes the tanks, APCs, and helicopters to load up and make the trip. So... where are they? There are signs that the federal government is aware of what's going on - there's a US Marshal tied up on the roof of a truck in one promo poster and a different Marshal sitting handcuffed in the Last Supper parody poster, which also includes ammo containers that are almost certainly looted from an armory (hard to explain the Russian [=RPGs=], though). Given that serving warrants is part of the US Marshal job description, that's probably what they were present in Hope County to do - which means that HQ was waiting for them to return, and when they didn't shit would get real extremely fast. Drone recon is in common use even by state agencies these days (as the protestors of the DAPL pipeline experienced) and would see all the roofs with SINNER painted on them plus the other paraphernalia and aforementioned machine gun nests on roofs. A case could be made for timidity if it was set in the 90s and the government wanted to avoid another Ruby Ridge or Waco, but it's a modern day setting, post 9/11, post Clive Bundy/ the Malheur occupation. Except in story, innocent people are being actively rounded up and murdered by a group whose crazy cult status is literally visible from space (with sufficient zoom). In that situation, in this age, there's no way the government is holding back at all from crushing them before more innocents die. Word is that the DIY and distrust of government culture the development team experienced in Montana when researching for the game informed, which makes sense, as does the idea that locals would to resist - for the day it would take for TheCavalry to arrive. And again, innocent people are actively dying; even the Bundy's would be cheering for the cult to be exterminated ASAP no matter who is doing it.

** I was making somewhat of a joke. Yes, there are police and law enforcement in game, but it's the same general principle that the trope I cited runs on: illegal actions will only draw as big a law enforcement response as is convenient to the plot. It'd be a pretty boring game if all you had to do was make a few phone calls to the national guard and FBI. In universe though, [[GameplayAndStorySegragation the cult is probably less numerous and well equipped than it is in game]], their body count is lower, and the normally isolated country people in the, who haven't totally gotten their cultural heads around calling for outside help, see it as more of a personal problem that a well-regulated militia will handle better than any stinkin' Feds. Hopefully though, there'll be a slightly better explanation that "I didn't vote for our last president, so therefore I'd rather take on an army of wacko's by myself than take a few videos of the cult and drive to the Montana's governor's house for help."
** This could also be WMG, but this is the same universe as Assasin's Creed and Watchdogs. The government could easily be busy dealing with an even bigger crisis, and perhaps the cult is being deliberately enabled by Abstergo to sew the seeds of chaos and discredit religion.

* Montana is a very white state; from 2015 census data, whites are 90% of the population, followed by Native Americans at 6.5%, Hispanic at 3.5% Mixed race at 3%, and every other ethnicity is lucky to break half a percent (this all adds up to more than 100% because more than one ethnicity can be recorded; a person who considers themselves mixed Native and White might check three boxes). Moreover, minorities mostly reside in the cities of the state, aside from Native Americans who largely live on reservations. So how are there two blacks just among the protagonist character set, along with others who have apparently joined the cult? And that's not considering other ethnicities who may be less obvious when you're machine gunning them or are characters that have not been revealed yet. It's fine, just... not very demographically accurate.

The weapons and equipment of the cult seen so far wouldn't be out of place in a Somalian militia (ignoring that the rifles and submachine guns are generally western and modern models), with technicals, machine gun nests up on roofs, and rocket launchers. Leaving aside of how they got that far without already getting crushed, that's the sort of thing that gets an express upgrade past police, SWAT, FBI/other federal agencies, and possibly even the National Guard. To maintain its legitimacy the USA cannot abide armed insurrection of that scale within its borders for any longer than it takes the tanks, APCs, and helicopters to load up and make the trip. So... where are they? There are signs that the federal government is aware of what's going on - there's a US Marshal tied up on the roof of a truck in one promo poster and a different Marshal sitting handcuffed in the Last Supper parody poster, which also includes ammo containers that are almost certainly looted from an armory (hard to explain the Russian [=RPGs=], though). Given that serving warrants is part of the US Marshal job description, that's probably what they were present in Hope County to do - which means that HQ was waiting for them to return, and when they didn't shit would get real extremely fast. Drone recon is in common use even by state agencies these days (as the protestors of the DAPL pipeline experienced) and would see all the roofs with SINNER painted on them plus the other paraphernalia and aforementioned machine gun nests on roofs. A case could be made for timidity if it was set in the 90s and the government wanted to avoid another Ruby Ridge or Waco, but it's a modern day setting, post 9/11, post Clive Bundy/ the Malheur occupation. Except in story, innocent people are being actively rounded up and murdered by a group whose crazy cult status is literally visible from space (with sufficient zoom). In that situation, in this age, there's no way the government is holding back at all from crushing them before more innocents die. Word is that the DIY and distrust of government culture the development team experienced in Montana when researching for the game informed, which makes sense, as does the idea that locals would to resist - for the day it would take for TheCavalry to arrive. And again, innocent people are actively dying; even the Bundy's would be cheering for the cult to be exterminated ASAP no matter who is doing it.

*** I was making somewhat of a joke. Yes, there are police and law enforcement in game, but it's the same general principle that the trope I cited runs on: illegal actions will only draw as big a law enforcement response as is convenient to the plot. It'd be a pretty boring game if all you had to do was make a few phone calls to the national guard and FBI. In universe though, [[GameplayAndStorySegragation the cult is probably less numerous and well equipped than it is in game]], their body count is lower, and the normally isolated country people in the, who haven't totally gotten their cultural heads around calling for outside help, see it as more of a personal problem that a well-regulated militia will handle better than any stinkin' Feds. Hopefully though, there'll be a slightly better explanation that "I didn't vote for our last president, so therefore I'd rather take on an army of wacko's by myself than take a few videos of the cult and drive to the Montana's governor's house for help."

What is the population of Hope County? Montana counties can dip into the hundreds, but Hope County needs to be at least in in range of ten thousand for there to be enough able bodied men in the cult for the player to slaughter as well as enough able bodied men to keep a good mix of victims of the cult. And a "convert or die" approach doesn't exactly generate dependable recruits without sufficient time to brainwash them - lots of people will logically and have historically pretended conversion, many even if they have to do terrible things to maintain the facade, then run/resist the first solid chance they get. The cult clearly has a solid core of supporters, but by the point we've seen they clearly aren't taking enough time to indoctrinate new members.

Montana is a very white state; from 2015 census data, whites are 90% of the population, followed by Native Americans at 6.5%, Hispanic at 3.5% Mixed race at 3%, and every other ethnicity is lucky to break half a percent (this all adds up to more than 100% because more than one ethnicity can be recorded; a person who considers themselves mixed Native and White might check three boxes). Moreover, minorities mostly reside in the cities of the state, aside from Native Americans who largely live on reservations. So how are there two blacks just among the protagonist character set, along with others who have apparently joined the cult? And that's not considering other ethnicities who may be less obvious when you're machine gunning them or are characters that have not been revealed yet. It's fine, just... not very demographically accurate.

Okay, so the cult thinks that the end is nigh, and is being so aggressive because they want to cleanse as many souls as possible in Hope County before the end comes. Okay. But why ''just'' Hope County? Why not the surrounding counties, or the state, or anyone they can reach by any means necessary or possible? A broadcast radio antenna is in the Last Supper poster image, so that's probably come into play.

* Well, people have to start somewhere, right? They probably don't have the manpower or armaments needed to invade the other counties.
* They've got enough people to make a game build around killing them fun, technicals, and World War II planes in the least populous state in the country. If that's not enough to start expanding, what is?

* They've got enough people to make a game build around killing them fun, technicals, and WW2 planes in the least populous state in the country. If that's not enough to start expanding, what is?

[[folder:Population]]]

** Regarding the cult's methods, the Wikipedia article for the game suggests that one of the cult's Heralds is a pacifist who convinces people that cult the leader is benevolent, while the others have set up a fair bit of infrastructure. Given this, I expect that you're wrong to say that the people know the full truth, or that they're new enough that they haven't had time to brainwash people. Lots of people besides just the hard-line fanatics probably support it enough to disbelieve or rationalize anything that conflicts with their position. Even the more critical people likely don't realize how bad it is, and have at least some sympathy for the cult (as well as plenty of fear). While there are definitely going to be people hostile to the cult who know the truth, scattered and disorganized as they are, most probably feel too demoralized to do anything other than hope it goes away without them. Especially since pretty much any meaningful action you can take is personally risky, likely to get people you care about killed, or both.

** For one thing, having a non-white pastor in Montana is more realistic than it sounds: a lot of them get called to serve very distant congregations, so clergy (along with doctors and educators) are some of the more likely members of a rural, overwhelmingly white community to be non-white. It's less probable than having a white pastor, but it's the kind of ordinary improbability you expect to see now and then. As for the cult members - not everyone need have been recruited from the locals. There's no reason to suppose he didn't have some followers of color before setting up shop in Montana.

The weapons and equipment of the cult seen so far wouldn't be out of place in a Somalian militia (ignoring that the rifles and submachine guns are generally western and modern models), with technicals, machine gun nests up on roofs, and rocket launchers. Leaving aside of how they got that far without already getting crushed, that's the sort of thing that gets an express upgrade past police, SWAT, FBI/other federal agencies, and possibly even the National Guard. To maintain its legitimacy the USA cannot abide armed insurrection of that scale within its borders for any longer than it takes the tanks, APCs, and helicopters to load up and make the trip. So... where are they? There are signs that the federal government is aware of what's going on - there's a US Marshal tied up on the roof of a truck in one promo poster and a different Marshal sitting handcuffed in the Last Supper parody poster, which also includes ammo containers that are almost certainly looted from an armory (hard to explain the Russian RPGs, though). Given that serving warrants is part of the US Marshal job description, that's probably what they were present in Hope County to do - which means that HQ was waiting for them to return, and when they didn't shit would get real extremely fast. Drone recon is in common use even by state agencies these days (as the protestors of the DAPL pipeline experienced) and would see all the roofs with SINNER painted on them plus the other paraphernalia and aforementioned machine gun nests on roofs. A case could be made for timidity if it was set in the 90s and the government wanted to avoid another Ruby Ridge or Waco, but it's a modern day setting, post 9/11, post Clive Bundy/ the Malheur occupation. Except in story, innocent people are being actively rounded up and murdered by a group whose crazy cult status is literally visible from space (with sufficient zoom). In that situation, in this age, there's no way the government is holding back at all from crushing them before more innocents die. Word is that the DIY and distrust of government culture the development team experienced in Montana when researching for the game informed, which makes sense, as does the idea that locals would to resist - for the day it would take for TheCavalry to arrive. And again, innocent people are actively dying; even the Bundy's would be cheering for the cult to be exterminated ASAP no matter who is doing it.

** More fundamentally, I don't see what's unrealistic about a racially unrepresentative person turning out to have story significance. It isn't like the author has to throw darts at pictures to determine who gets to be major characters. The author can give anyone in the town a good reason to be part of the story, so the only question is whether it's realistic for them to exist in the first place. While it's not common for a non-reservation county in Montana to have many minorities, it's less common for it to have literally none. Maybe there's only 10 black people in the county (excluding the outsiders), but if Crytek makes one of them an Iraq War veteran, or a paramedic, that could easily justify making them important to the story.

** To your first question, Sanders County fits the bill. In addition to having the right look and feel for the game, it has 11,534 people as of the last census estimate, and it's fairly isolated - no large towns (even by Montana standards), no highways or interstates go through it, and the terrain is fairly rugged. So there are places in Montana with the right population pattern for this.

** Regarding the cult's methods, the wikipedia article for the game suggests that one of the cult's Heralds is a pacifist who convinces people that cult the leader is benevolent, while the others have set up a fair bit of infrastructure. Given this, I expect that you're wrong to suggest that the cult has been fully exposed already, or that they're new enough that they haven't had time to brainwash people. Lots of people besides just the hard-line fanatics probably support it enough to disbelieve or rationalize anything that conflicts with their position. Even the more critical people likely don't realize how bad it is, and have at least some sympathy for the cult (as well as plenty of fear). While there are definitely going to be people hostile to the cult who know the truth, scattered and disorganized as they are, they probably feel too demoralized to do anything other than hope it just goes away without them. Especially since pretty much any meaningful action you can take is personally risky, likely to get people you care about killed, or both.

** More fundamentally, I don't see what's unrealistic about a racially unrepresentative person turning out to have story significance. It isn't like the author has to throw darts at pictures to determine who gets to be major characters. The author can give anyone in the town a good reason to be part of the story, so the only question is whether it's realistic for them to exist in the first place. While it's not common for a non-reservation county in Montana to have many minorities, it's less common for such a town to have literally none. Maybe there's only 10 black people in the county (excluding the outsiders), but if Crytek wants one of them to be an Iraq War veteran, or a paramedic, that could easily justify making them important to the story.

** For one thing, having a non-white pastor in Montana is more realistic than it sounds: a lot of them get called to serve very distant congregations, so clergy (along with doctors and academics) are some of the more likely members of a rural, overwhelmingly white community to be non-white. It's less probable than having a white pastor, but it's the kind of ordinary improbability you expect to see now and then. As for the cult members - not everyone need have been recruited from the locals. There's no reason to suppose he didn't have some followers of color before setting up shop in Montana.

** For one thing, having a non-white priest in Montana is more realistic than it sounds: a lot of priests get called to serve very distant congregations, so clergy (along with doctors and academics) are some of the more likely members of a rural, overwhelmingly white community to be non-white. It's less probable than having a white priest, but it's the kind of ordinary improbability you expect to see now and then. As for the cult members - not everyone need have been recruited from the locals. There's no reason to suppose he didn't have some followers of color before setting up shop in Montana.

** Regarding the cult's methods, the wikipedia article for the game suggests that one of the cult's Heralds is a pacifist who convinces people that cult the leader is benevolent, while the others have set up a fair bit of infrastructure. Given this, I expect that you're wrong to suggest that the cult has been fully exposed already, or that they're new enough that they haven't had time to brainwash people. Lots of people besides just the hard-line fanatics probably support it enough to disbelieve or rationalize anything that conflicts with their position. Even the more critical people likely don't realize how bad it is, and have at least some sympathy for the cult (as well as plenty of fear). While there are definitely going to be people hostile to the cult who know the truth, scattered and disorganized as they are, they probably feel too demoralized to do anything other than hope it just goes away without them. Especially since pretty much every meaningful action you can take is either personally risky, or (if you drop a dime to the feds or something) very likely to kill hundreds of people, including your friends and family.

** Regarding the cult's methods, the wikipedia article for the game suggests that one of the cult's Heralds is a pacifist who convinces people that cult the leader is benevolent. Given this, I expect that you're wrong to suggest that the cult has been fully exposed already, or that they're new enough that they haven't had time to brainwash people. Lots of people besides just the hard-line fanatics probably support it enough to disbelieve or rationalize anything that conflicts with their position. Even the more critical people likely don't realize how bad it is, and have at least some sympathy for the cult (as well as plenty of fear). While there are definitely going to be people hostile to the cult who know the truth, scattered and disorganized as they are, they probably feel too demoralized to do anything other than hope it just goes away without them. Especially since pretty much every meaningful action you can take is either personally risky, or (if you drop a dime to the feds or something) very likely to kill hundreds of people, including your friends and family.

** Regarding the cult's methods, the wikipedia article for the game suggests that one of the cult's Heralds is a pacifist who convinces people that cult the leader is benevolent. Given this, I expect that you're wrong to suggest that the cult has been fully exposed already. Lots of people besides just the hard-line fanatics probably support it enough to disbelieve or rationalize anything that conflicts with their position. Even the more critical people likely don't realize how bad it is, and have at least some sympathy for the cult (as well as plenty of fear). While there are definitely going to be people hostile to the cult who know the truth, scattered and disorganized as they are, they probably feel too demoralized to do anything other than hope it just goes away without them. Especially since pretty much every meaningful action you can take is either personally risky, or (if you drop a dime to the feds or something) very likely to kill hundreds of people, including your friends and family.

** Regarding the cult's methods, the wikipedia article for the game suggests that one of the cult's leaders is a pacifist who convinces people that her brother is benign. Given this, I expect that you're wrong to suggest that the cult has been fully exposed already. Lots of people besides just the hard-line fanatics probably support it enough to disbelieve or rationalize anything that conflicts with their position. Even the more critical people likely don't realize how bad it is, and have at least some sympathy for the cult (as well as plenty of fear). While there are definitely going to be people hostile to the cult who know the truth, scattered and disorganized as they are, they probably feel too demoralized to do anything other than hope it just goes away without them. Especially since pretty much every meaningful action you can take is either personally risky, or (if you drop a dime to the feds or something) very likely to kill hundreds of people, including your friends and family.

The weapons and equipment of the cult seen so far wouldn't be out of place in a Somalian militia (ignoring that the rifles and submachine guns are generally western and modern models), with technicals, machine gun nests up on roofs, and RPGs. Leaving aside of how they got that far without already getting crushed, that's the sort of thing that gets an express upgrade past police, SWAT, FBI/other federal agencies, and possibly even the National Guard. To maintain its legitimacy the USA cannot abide armed insurrection of that scale within its borders for any longer than it takes the tanks, APCs, and helicopters to load up and make the trip. So... where are they? There are signs that the federal government is aware of what's going on - there's a US Marshal tied up on the roof of a truck in one promo poster and a different Marshal sitting handcuffed in the Last Supper parody poster, which also includes ammo containers that are almost certainly looted from an armory (hard to explain the Russian RPGs, though). Given that serving warrants is part of the US Marshal job description, that's probably what they were present in Hope County to do - which means that HQ was waiting for them to return, and when they didn't shit would get real extremely fast. Drone recon is in common use even by state agencies these days (as the protestors of the DAPL pipeline experienced) and would see all the roofs with SINNER painted on them plus the other paraphernalia and aforementioned machine gun nests on roofs. A case could be made for timidity if it was set in the 90s and the government wanted to avoid another Ruby Ridge or Waco, but it's a modern day setting, post 9/11, post Clive Bundy/ the Malheur occupation. Except in story, innocent people are being actively rounded up and murdered by a group whose crazy cult status is literally visible from space (with sufficient zoom). In that situation, in this age, there's no way the government is holding back at all from crushing them before more innocents die. Word is that the DIY and distrust of government culture the development team experienced in Montana when researching for the game informed, which makes sense, as does the idea that locals would to resist - for the day it would take for TheCavalry to arrive. And again, innocent people are actively dying; even the Bundy's would be cheering for the cult to be exterminated ASAP no matter who is doing it.

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