YMMV / Far Cry 5

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
  • It's sometimes better to let situations deescalate instead of trying to solve them with violence. Joseph Seed turns out to be 100% correct in its message of destruction.
  • Having enough guns and crazy people to follow you means you don't have to follow or obey the law anymore. Note this applies to the good guys as well as the bad.
  • Living under an oppressive, violent dictator is better than resisting him as long as he's keeping you safe.
  • Joseph could actually have divine forces backing/protecting him, since not only does anyone trying to stop him face terrible suffering, but he also survives every ending. Is the story actually meant to portray the futility of fighting against a higher power that has different standards for good that clashes with what most humans would consider good?
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Invoked with Faith Seed. She claims that she was Forced into Evil, and being a child at the time Joseph started his religion, there wasn't anything she could do about it. On one hand, Faith is a Consummate Liar, a known drug addict even before she was in the cult, and several trustworthy people tell the player never to take her at face value. On the other, just because Faith is a liar doesn't mean she must lie all of the time, and the people who tell you she's a liar have a vested interest in making her look as bad as possible. As seen with the rest of Seed family, any one of them is ruthless and violent enough to force someone to perform tasks against their will. Was Faith forced into the cult or not? Does she commit her deeds because she's forced to, because she believes it brings salvation, or because she enjoys killing? Is her cheerful attitude an act, or is she really that giddy when she drives people like Marshal Burke to murder and suicide. What role does Bliss play in exacerbating her condition?
    • Tracey states that Faith would have to answer to Joseph for the Junior Deputy's destruction of his statue in her territory and the burning of her copy of his book, and Faith's reaction to those things seems to suggest that she does genuinely fear Joseph's reaction. Also, certain lines spoken by Faith during her boss battle implies that a man was responsible for forcing her into evil at the age of seventeen and would punish her for failure. Could that man be Joseph? And if so, assuming that Faith was not lying on that occasion, how much of a Big Brother Bully was he to Faith to shape her into the way she is? And, of course, that assumes she's telling the truth in the first place.
    • This would be a stronger argument without the sequence in which her followers attack the jail: not only does she force Marshal Burke to kill Virgil, but she also sadistically taunts you throughout the event over the people you failed to save. Whether or not she was a good person before the cult, she isn't one now.
  • Jacob Seed. Is he just a sadist who believes in social Darwinism? Or was his heart permanently hardened during his tour in Iraq, where he ended up having to kill and eat his best friend to survive in the desert? Being on Bliss the whole time doesn't help with either scenario.
  • Were Jacob and Miller actually chased by wolves? He explains that while he was Iraq, he and his friend Miller were shot down and ended up lost in the desert. While they were lost, Jacob realised that only one of them can make the journey back to the base and forced himself to cannibalize Miller so he can survive. He claims that he was pursued by wolves at the time but he only mentions them as "By the eighth day, the wolves were closing in". It's hard to believe that two starved men can fight off a pack of Arabian wolves by themselves and if they were fending off wolves, why didn't they try to eat the meat. Was Jacob actually under the effects of heat exposure, sleep deprivation and starvation and simply believed he was pursued by wolves or does he use the wolves as a metaphor for his instinct to survive. Since he uses wolf imagery to indoctrinate his victims during his trials.
  • Joseph Seed's quoting of scripture in times of duress. Is it a sign of his arrogance, assuming that he's such an ordained figure in God's eyes that nothing can touch him? Basically viewing himself in the same vein as Jesus that he can call upon a legion of angels to rescue him if trouble arises? Which might not be that far off given what appears to be a nuclear explosion goes off when you try to arrest him in the ending. Or is Joseph Seed so deeply troubled by what he perceives to be the end of the world that he's calling upon God to show him mercy? And he really isn't all that confident that God will save him, simply praying in the off chance that it does work? Given the thousand yard stare he has in most instances the latter is very likely too.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Think the Fall's End Testicle Festival is made up by the developers for the funny name "Testy Festy"? Think again.
• Angst Aversion: The fact that both main endings are a Downer Ending that render the player's actions irrelevant led to many people refusing to play the game once this became more commonly known.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: Hurk, AKA "Brobot", in the Lost on Mars DLC. Unlike most Guns For Hire in the base game, Brobot does little more than serve as a temporary distraction to the enemy in combat. That's not the problem - not every companion can be a death-dealing murder machine - but his incredible stupidity, infantile humor and, well, just being himself gets grating very quickly. Even when it's been made abundantly clear that ANNE isn't the virtual goddess he's trying to impress but actually trying to kill not only him, but all of humanity does he change his behavior in the slightest. Long story short: if you don't like hanging around a whiny Too Dumb to Live Manchild with an It's All About Me attitude and serious daddy issues that never shuts up, you may find yourself shooting Brobot more often than the Arachnides.
• Ass Pull: While the nuclear attack in the Resist ending at least has some build up, what does qualify is Joseph somehow Blissing out every major character and abducting the rest of the police as hostages even though they were all in secure, heavily fortified places or places he couldn’t reach or didn’t know the exact location of. It even happens if you bring a Gun for Hire with you.
• Audience-Alienating Ending: Several players and news outlets such as Polygon expressed this upon reaching the endgame, as none of the multiple endings provide a satisfactory conclusion or bring Joseph Seed to justice. As result, many who have played the game told those who hadn't to not bother with it at all, resulting in a noticeable sales drop from its very popular predecessor.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • The Seed Family. Some feel that they are fascinating, and at times sympathetic characters, and worthy successors to previous Far Cry villains. Others feel that they lack the charisma that made previous Far Cry villains, such as Vaas and Pagan Min, so entertaining and compelling, and other still (such as Yahtzee) who feel that all four of the villains are EXACTLY the same villain: irritatingly soft-spoken religious types who talk condescendingly at you. Then there are those who like them as characters, but dislike the game's attempt to make their inhumane actions come off as justified.
  • The Lost on Mars DLC pushed Hurk into this territory. While his prior appearances were largely inoffensive, Lost on Mars saddles the player with him through the whole DLC and takes his more annoying aspects up to eleven, making him a ramble on for minutes at a time with Borderlands-style humor that fell flat for some players. Fans are split if he's still funny or needs to be toned down for future games.
• Catharsis Factor: Lost on Mars provides one to players who don't like Hurk by giving them a Zerg Rush of Hurk clones to mow down in the final mission. After hours of having to listen to the moron's inane drivel, this feels immensely satisfying.
• Complete Monster: The Cook is the villain of the sidequest "A Dish Served Cold", and the most despicable member of Eden's Gate. An utter madman who specializes in starving innocents he is given charge over before crucifying and burning them alive, the Cook has served Eden's Gate for years, killing countless people—often against his superiors' orders. The Cook earned his moniker due to an event where he kidnapped a family of four, starved and tortured them for days, flayed and mutilated the parents before force-feeding the parts to the children, then burned the parents alive while laughing at the children's screams of horror. His only motivations being sadism and a sick desire to use his victims' screams as "hymns" as he ascends to Heaven, the Cook makes the most of his limited screentime to be a repulsive psychopath, even in the ranks of Eden's Gate.
• Contested Sequel: While the gameplay and the world design is generally considered better than Far Cry 3 and 4, its story (which is often seen as preachy and unrelentingly brutal, yet also actively trying to avoid taking or making any kind of "political" stance or statement) is highly divisive, and some of its new features (chiefly the Marked system and its subsequent unskippable cutscenes) are seen as obtrusive and irritating.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The game's soundtrack. Singing songs about burning sinners and the end of the world? Creepy. Singing songs about burning sinners and the end of the world in the style of a Gospel choir? Hilarious.
  • The entire "Testy Festy" mission, which has the player harvesting bull testicles for the people of Fall's End to eat. From still living bulls. That must be killed by being set on fire, ran over and mid coitus. Yeah.
• Critical Dissonance: The last DLC, Dead Living Zombies, got mixed reviews from critics but terrible reviews (reaching Negative in Steam) from players due to blatant event flag and extremely linear missions, with the saving grace that the weapons from the DLC are available in the main game after finishing it.
• Delusion Conclusion: There was a popular theory that much of the "Resist" ending was a Bliss-induced hallucination due to two barrels of the drug being knocked before the gunfight, which would explain the Playable Epilogue and the faulty logic behind most of the ending. That theory, however, was killed when Far Cry: New Dawn was released.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Chosen warplanes that spawn once resistance level 2 is reached appear out of nowhere, are hard to shake, have very powerful weapons and take a crapton of firepower to shoot down. If you critically damage them during their strafing run and fail to notice it in time, they go kamikaze on your ass. To top it off, they don't even drop any loot to make up for all the expensive ammo you just pumped into them.
  • Like in previous games, the heavy enemies take a lot of damage to take down. Here though, sniper rounds to the head won't kill them in one shot. This makes takedowns the only means of eliminating them quietly. They can be one-shotted however, via the tactical use of a thrown shovel.
• Disappointing Last Level: The final Lost on Mars mission is a bit... lacking, compared to pretty much everything else you had to do to get to this point. ANNE turns on you (big surprise), you shoot two dozens of her bots with your Game-Breaker armory, destroy three teleporters in the immediate area, go inside the control center, kill a hundred Hurk clones that just mindlessly charge at you through a narrow corridor, and... that's it. Aside from the potential Catharsis Factor of finally killing Hurk a hundred times, the mission feels pretty anticlimactic.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: "Keep Your Rifle By Your Side" is enjoyed unironically by the exact people its meant to be satirizing, owing to the fact that it's actually a pretty damn jaunty country song and that the satire behind it only comes through if you know that it's sung in-universe by a fanatical Apocalypse Cult.
• Don't Shoot the Message: The fact that the only ending with a somewhat positive outcome is the secret ending wherein the player doesn't try to arrest Joseph Seed and instead leaves the compound to get reinforcements from the national guard. While the story was supposed to show the importance of procedure and how bad an idea it is to fight crime on your own, many players instead misinterpreted the story as "You're better off surrendering to a dictator and should leave well enough alone."
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Despite having no plotline relevance, the three Fangs for Hire are positively beloved by the fans for being both adorable and useful. It's rare to find anyone who doesn't love them all. Boomer in particular is the poster boy for this system, being in much of the advertising and having a memorial dedicated to him in New Dawn. He's become so beloved that he actually returns in Far Cry 6, not even as any type of exclusive bonus; you can recruit him in the base game!
  • Among the human characters, Sheriff Whitehorse, Pastor Jeffries, Mary May Fairgrave, Jess Black, Nick Rye and Sharky Boshaw are among the more popular characters, with Jeffries and Mary May being the focus of a prequel novel (albeit one generally considered to be non canon).
• Even Better Sequel: Arcade is seen as much better than the map editor for previous games, due to being surprisingly in-depth and comprehensive and having an equal focus on it as the main game, rather than being a side option for the player to partake in post-game.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Given the above mentioned Audience-Alienating Ending, many fans have chosen to disregard the idea that nuclear war broke out in the Resist ending, and instead choose to stick with the idea that it was all a Bliss-induced hallucination. While the conclusion of the sequel helps soften the blow and end the story of Hope County on a more positive light, many fans still prefer to go with the hallucination idea. Even Ubisoft seems to be ignoring it, or at the very least steering attention away from it, given that early previews of Far Cry 6 have no mention of nuclear war, either impending or past.
• Foe Yay Shipping: There's a huge number of fics where the Deputy and one (or more) of the Seed siblings get together. Mostly applies to the female Deputy and Joseph, Jacob or John, but sometimes Faith is involved and sometimes the Deputy is male instead.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Attacking anything fortified above ground (outposts in particular) becomes a cakewalk while Nick Rye is in the sky. His four bombs alone can wipe out half or more of most bases' garrison and give you ample opportunity to snipe the frantic survivors without being detected. As long as you keep neutralizing all Peggies that attempt to man a mounted gun, there's little that can threaten him during his subsequent strafing runs. To put icing on the cake, he's also reasonably effective against the Chosen warplanes that begin to show up in advanced game stages.
  • The special cluster ammo for the rocket launcher. The guided version in particular is heinous, if the enemies are in the right spots you can take down an entire outpost with only one or two launches. The rocket flies up into the air before dropping a huge area of effect attack with either shrapnel or fire bombs that will blanket the area in flames.
  • The good ol' M60 LMG, the game's entry-level machine gun, can be unlocked within minutes of entering the open world by looting it from the lone Heavy in the back of Merle's trailer park. Take it, slap on an extended magazine, the competition scope and a freaking silencer, and you just got yourself a peerless stealth weapon with high per-shot damage, a massive 200 round belt box, and the precision and zoom of a sniper rifle that can take down absolutely anything with contemptuous ease. LMG ammo is among the more expensive ammo types, but it's still fairly easy to keep this beast fed for continuous use.
  • A stealthy playstyle in general breaks most of the game's difficulty into little pieces, especially now that every single firearm (with the exception of the D50) regardless of type can be outfitted with a silencer. Even end-game missions can be finished without ever being shot at this way, and you don't even need any perks to become the ultimate ninja. If you do take them, it just gets more ridiculous.
  • Cheeseburger is a throat-ripping bullet-sponge bear, and Peaches is a throat-ripping super-stealth cougar. With the right perk you can have both of them with you at the same time, and they can clear out most outposts with very little help.
  • Thrown shovels, for whatever reason, will kill any human enemy in one hit. They are also significantly more accurate than an aimed arrow shot.
  • The Martian weapons that become available once the Lost on Mars DLC is installed, but especially the Obliteratorrrr. Classified as a pistol, it functions like a rocket launcher with an explosive shot that will One-Hit Kill just about everything in the game. It has infinite ammo, and between its blast radius and recharge rate it will almost never overheat. Once you have it, the only parts of the game that remain a challenge are scripted events when you're separated from it.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Faith has "C17H21NO4" tattooed on her left forearm, which is the chemical formula for a cocaine molecule, hinting at her past as a drug addict or maker.
  • One for the Lost on Mars DLC. "Hemo", as in hemoglobin (the stuff that enables your blood to carry oxygen through your body), is derived from the Greek word for "blood"... which raises the horrific possibility that the hemoleum you're looting from Arachnide corpses is actually their blood. Yes, for all we know, you're running around with guns and equipment crafted from Alien Blood. Worse, ANNE has been exsanguinating legions of the buggers for aeons. Looks like she got her just dessert when they finally overran her.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Before the final mission, Joseph furiously screams that the Deputy has taken his family from him. Not quite. Fast-forward to Far Cry: New Dawn, and we learn that Joseph had one remaining family member still alive: his bastard son Ethan. And by the end of that game, Joseph loses his son at the hands of the Captain.
• He's Just Hiding: Some fans think that Whitehore, Hudson, and Pratt survive the car crash in the "Resist" ending.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Jacob Seed being voiced by Mark Pellegrino. Apparently, Lucifer is now working for a man who claims he listens to God.
  • One of the Fangs For Hire is a dog named Boomer. Flash forward to 2020, and the term "Ok boomer" is now a popular term of mockery.
  • Greg Bryk is the third actor from a Saw film to work on a Far Cry project. Bryk had played one of the Fatal Five test subjects in Saw V and later Saw 3D, while Emmanuelle Vaugier, who acted in the Uwe Boll 2008 film adaptation Far Cry, played Addison Corday, another Jigsaw victim, in Saw II and Saw IV, and Shawn Ahmed, who portrayed Allen in Saw VI, went on to play Darpan in Far Cry 4.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The game having a "Secret Ending" returns. This time around it feels tacked on and irrelevant, more as a check box to satisfy the expectations it would have one just like the 4th game. Unlike the previous ending which made sense in the context of the story, this one is less an ending and more like the characters decided to abandon their mission for no reason.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The use of shovels spawned an amusing Steam review that made its way around the community.
  • Many people jokingly refer to this game as a prequel to Fallout, as the "Resist" ending has several nukes go off and the main character ends up in an underground bunker.
    • The jokes only returned when it was revealed New Dawn, a direct sequel, would be set after that ending. Also Rage 2, was shown off to have a similar visual atheistic of bright neon colors and trippy fluorescent in a post-apocalypse has been getting comparisons as well.
  • "I'm Scootin'!" ^note Often said by certain random Guns for Hire when they move.
• Misaimed Fandom: As part of the game's promotion, Ubisoft released the "When the World Falls" album, consisting of songs sung by the Hope County Choir. However, it's clear that the Choir is sympathetic to or outright members of Eden's Gate, making all of their songs propaganda for the antagonists. In reality though, many of the game's more conservative, religious, and pro-gun fans have enjoyed much of the music, "Keep Your Rifle By Your Side" in particular. As one of the top-voted comments notes:
  "If Ubisoft didn’t want us to identify with it then they shouldn’tve made it such a banger."
  • Notably, the channel the album is featured on disabled comments on all of the songs.
• Moral Event Horizon: Whomever started the nuclear war at the end of the game crossed theirs by doing exactly that and killing possibly millions of people. The question remains, however- who did it? Was it Joseph, some world leader, or someone else? The answer is later revealed in Far Cry 6- it turns out the nukes were owned by Pagan Min, and whatever nutcase got control of Kyrat did it, but only Montana was nuked.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The cheerful little ditty that plays whenever an outpost is liberated.
• Narm: While The Cook's backstory and the reason behind Jess hunting him is pretty horrific at first, with him feeding a couple of children their own parents after tying the latter to poles to roast in the sun, the fact that he played This Little Piggy with the parents and cut off their toes one by one can plunge it into downright comedic territory. Jess' serious and brooding tone while telling Deputy all of this doesn't help either.
• Older Than They Think: That badass metal song that plays during the Clutch Nixon challenges? It's not a Far Cry original, but rather the Road Vikings' "Ballad of Evel Knievel" from 2014, updated to use Clutch Nixon's name instead.
• Paranoia Fuel: Eden's Gate not only seem to always know where you are, constantly sending out attack vans and enemy groups to take you down regardless of where you may be, but once you're Marked, they will get their hands on you regardless of how safe you think you are. In the ending, even if you've whittled down Joseph's forces to their last stand, he still manages to also capture every single one of your buddies, and brainwash everyone but your fellow officers on Bliss. To say nothing of the "Walk Away" ending, where Jacob Seed's brainwashing is still in effect long after he's dead. Even when Joseph Seed should be dead to rights, nothing stops the Peggies from getting what they want.
• Player Punch: Jacob Seed tricking the Deputy into killing Eli Palmer. The player is caught up in the carnage so they often don't realize they're attacking Eli until it's too late.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Mechanically, 5 is seen as a solid Ubisoft open world title and one that does fix some mechanical issues (albeit at the cost of being very similar to past games, which is nothing new for Ubisoft games), but the story has been derided by many and is usually seen as the weakest story in the series, partly thanks to the Seed family constantly kidnapping the Deputy and many idiot moments.
• Realism-Induced Horror: When it comes down to it, the various radio broadcasts about the declining state of foreign affairs that lead to nuclear war. Granted, it's a bit of a stretch- terror attacks are mentioned to be a key factor, never mind that they became far less common in the years after the game's release and that no sane country would fire nukes to start a war they can’t win, let alone North Korea.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Guns for Hire in 4 were more or less Red Shirts that you could only hire one at a time, and they often died within seconds. Here, Guns for Hire are far more badass, being able to take quite a few hits before getting downed (and they can be revived. They can also revive you), having varying personalities and unlockable perks, and having memorable banter. That's not even getting into the unique Guns for Hire, characters with their own side mission, perks and weapons, and generally being even more powerful.
• Rooting for the Empire: Project at Eden's Gate has its share of fans, for reasons from their catchy tunes, to being accurate on the nuclear apocalypse, to being sympathetic to their cause had it not been for them being super-violent with those who disagree with them. This is taken further as of New Dawn's release, given how comparatively shallow the Highwaymen are.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • In previous games, story progressed at the player's choice of pace. But since territorial control has been revised for this game to be more dynamic as the player goes through them, this also means the developers opted to have major scenes with the Seed family always occur by having the player kidnapped, though the game has the time to tell you you're Marked. When this happens, it doesn't matter if you're in the middle of a fortified and controlled town with your allies around, armed and ready to take on all cultists, or even flying in the sky away from anyone able to reach you; you're getting sacked to see these villains monologue no matter what. You basically have no choice but to drop everything you're doing and let yourself be captured, and this happens a lot throughout the story. Admittedly, it is different in each region (John’s cultists capture you the moment you take damage, Jacob's send a few after you until you are overwhelmed, and Faith’s instantly happen after a certain period of time), but it is so minor that it doesn’t really matter. Unsurprisingly, there's a mod on the PC version that greatly reduces the amount of RP gained by doing mundane things such as saving civilians and destroying Cult property, allowing the player to do more sidequests in the process.
  • The overhauled perk-points-instead-of-experience system was not well received by players who resent being shoehorned into specific play styles. If you want to unlock all perk points, you're forced to kill a lot of enemies with weapons, equipment and abilities you'd never even touch otherwise because they're too awkward to use, too situational or just plain useless for normal gameplay (the Sabotage skill is a prime offender in all three categories). Thankfully, one can get by for the most part with the perk magazines found in prepper stashes, but the system's mere existence tends to be regarded as a step in the wrong direction by this particular group.
  • Unlike in previous games, there are missions tied to certain NPCs that die later in the game. Forgot to start all of Eli's and/or Virgil's missions before they got killed (or were trying to but couldn't because of max resistance)? Too bad!
  • Multiplayer matchmaking for Far Cry Arcade. First, a few random players are chosen to be Map Pickers, though a cumbersome UI and a very tight time limit make this more difficult than it needs to be. Then five maps are voted between players in the lobby. Except for whatever reason, choosing other player's maps or even your own are near-constantly hijacked by Ubisoft's own created maps - even if you create a private lobby (which involves making a password and having to tell everyone the password to let them in), it can be near-impossible to play user-created maps properly. In some cases, the system refuses or fails to acknowledge a pick and just slots a Ubisoft map instead. This, alongside other flaws in the system, completely torpedoes any sense of variety the multiplayer could've had.
  • NPC vehicles and objects (including lootables) tend to disappear the moment you turn your back, especially on consoles and low-end systems, though it's completely random whether it's happening or not.
• Scrappy Weapon: The Kriss Vector, for consuming a lot of ammo and, being added post-game, rendered redundant by the existing SMG types.
  • The D50, as it cannot be fitted with a silencer.
• Sequelitis: Not the game itself, but the DLC Dead Living Zombies has been nigh-universally considered terrible. Chief reasons including the levels being extremely linear in an antithesis of the trademark open world Far Cry gameplay, poorly-implemented scripting, unfunny attempts at Affectionate Parody, Deconstructive Parody, and Lampshade Hanging, and unlikable characters. About the only redeeming factor is that the purchase can be bundled with the compilation featuring all of the DLC (or also New Dawn) and the rewards gained from beating the DLC can be carried over to the main game.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • Regarded as the video game adaptation of the Paramount Network miniseries Waco. Ironically they both debuted in the same year with Far Cry 5 coming a few months after Waco.
  • Alternatively, this could also been seen as video game adaptations of Banshee and Longmire, since they also also deal with the sheriff's department being involved in the crazy antics found in a small county and the protagonist being a Cowboy Cop to get things done.
  • The game - depending on your end-game choices - could easily be a prequel to The Handmaid's Tale.
  • A pretty good video game adaptation of Red State.
• Squick: After the three Heralds are killed, Joseph weeps openly. And snot comes out of his nose.
• That One Level: The opening mission of all things is extremely difficult on anything above Easy, for one reason alone: part of it involves being in the passenger seat of a truck driven by an NPC, leaving you completely unable to take cover as dozens of Peggies try to gun you down, most of them chasing after you in trucks of their own. You have no body armor and only three medkits to last you the entire segment, and even on Normal you will probably use them all before you're even halfway through (and if you've just gotten done playing Far Cry 4, you may think you have to use a medkit to heal). Unless you are very good at shooting out of a moving vehicle or very lucky and have the enemies miss most of their shots, you'll be restarting this one a lot. Luckily there are no difficulty-based achievements, so if you do eventually break and go down to Easy for just this part, nobody ever has to know.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Most of the Clutch Nixon stunt challenges are insanely frustrating, mainly because the vehicles you're given have absolutely awful handling. Probably the worst offender is the wingsuit parkours due to its total lack of reference elements in its HUD that makes it very difficult to judge where exactly you're going at any given moment. That the mission rewards consist of nothing but negligible amounts of cash and superfluous vehicle reskins doesn't help the matter. Thankfully, they're entirely optional, and you only need to complete one per region (three in total) to unlock the corresponding achievement.
  • Willis' mission, Patriot Acts has also achieved a good amount of hatred. For one, the mission is bugged, as sometimes the vehicle you need to pursue the helicopter sometimes doesn't spawn, making it near-impossible to keep pace with it. Secondly, actually keeping up with the helicopter is extremely difficult, as doing so involves a lot of off-roading, and if you hit an obstacle and get spun around, good luck trying to catch up without failing the mission.
  • Catching The Admiral Sturgeon is an absolute nightmare. First off, this quest involves fishing, which has a lot of Guide Dang It! elements to it, requiring a bit of research. The player is absolutely crippled in terms of preparation, as there is only one skill buff dedicated to fishing, and fishing rod options are scarce. The only readily available option is a mid-tier rod, as the third one is rewarded from this quest itself, and the other is rewarded by beating the state record on Hard fishing spots. The Admiral itself is probably the heaviest fish in the game, rendering your rod's line as fragile as paper, and consistently has a ton of energy.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Resist ending can be hard to stomach, seeming to validate Joseph's belief that the bibical God willed him to kidnap and murder people and the Deputy's resistance literally causes nuclear war to break out. Until New Dawn confirmed otherwise, a valid reading of the ending was that Joseph has acquired nukes (Montana is in real life home to some of the US's deprecated nuclear silos) and sets off the nukes just within Montana when the Deputy refuses to leave. This even helps explain why the deputies and Whitehorse take him with them instead of just killing him, as for all they know his death will cause more nukes to go off. And it still has the same underlying moral of not rushing headstrong into a volatile situation, while not being a downer ending where the whole world literally dies as the murderous, brainwashing cult preached.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: When the game was announced in May 2017, news outlets pointed out what could be seen as political commentary. In the wake of the 2016 US presidential election, it's not hard to see why people would think this. But Ubisoft denied it, as the game had been in development for three years (producer Dan Hay further elaborating that the story was fleshed out two-and-a-half years before being announced) and in concept for years longer. There was some influence from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation, nationalist reactions to the 2008 financial meltdown, and the spike in militias during the Obama presidency, so technically it is political, just longer-term than people assumed. This also makes ISIS/ISIL a likely source of inspiration, as they had become a global concern by then and the Edens Gate cult greatly resemble a Christian ISIS with a coating of Branch Davidian trappings. And while the creators did add some tongue-in-cheek jabs at the Trump administration later in development, the game's overall political commentary is mainly about what happens when beliefs are taken to the extreme. ^note Which could mean anything from a take on the Branch Davidians (notice the similarity in the flag design) and their compound in Waco (though that story is more about government/law enforcement extremism than the cult's), or People's Temple and their settlement informally known as Jonestown. Both cases ended with massive deaths of the cult members.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: As this article details, the game's infamous Diablous Ex Machina Downer Ending makes a lot more sense if you believe that the game is adapting events detailed in the Book of Revelation.

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