Gamasutra: Last week Ubisoft unveiled the cover art of the latest game in their Far Cry franchise, and the outcry was immediate and widespread. The image of an ostensibly blond haired white man with his hand on the head of a kneeling Nepali or Indian man with a grenade in his hands conjured up accusations of racism, colonialism, and general tone-deafness. And frankly, those readings are correct. After 200 years of being servants of the British Crown, South Asians viewing this cover can’t help but recall a litany of horrors brought on by years of colonial abuse. Just look up the Sepoy Mutinies, or the British theft of the royal jewels, or what they did to Somnath Temple. Not to mention Rudyard Kipling’s Burden.
My own personal history is full of proud, high caste men who knelt at the feet of the stooges of Victoria, hoping that this year the tax burden might allow their villages to keep some grain. People who were forced to harvest cotton for the brits, but only wear clothing made in manchester out of that cotton. People, by virtue of their birth, tasked with forcing their fellow men to serve the white man as indentured overseers. An entire set of nations and kingdoms exploited for the wealth of the second and third sons of some island nation far away, given only pain and hardship in return.
From just one image, all of this.
Ubisoft's latest Far Cry 4 update enables 60 FPS on PS5 after releasing an update earlier for Far Cry New Dawn with similar improvements.
Sony....you're really letting ubisoft out of all all companies to out class you??? Give us the bloondborne 60 fps patch....ffs
I second this (Bloodborne 60fps) plus damn, Ubisoft, you're doing great but now the last thing I want youi to do is mae Far Cry Primal 60fps and AC Unity
Everytime someone asks for a bloodborne patch it gets delayed 1 day.
ETA next century
They know it's gonna cost them sales of the inevitable Remake that'll probably come around the PS6 launch.
Kudos to Ubisoft for once again going back to older titles and then offering a nice upgrade for free. I know the company gets a lot of criticism, in quite a few cases understandable and justified, but in this area of contintued post-launch support for their SP games, they deserve some credit.
Update: Ubisoft has acknowledged that the Japanese version of the game, which includes regional censorship, was mistakenly released globally. The company says it has reverted these changes in the game's worldwide branch.
Ubisoft has quietly removed nudity from Far Cry 4 in a recent update, sparking speculation about Tencent’s growing influence on the publisher.
You can murder, mame, and viciously attack people, but anything that deals with showing a body in a natural state whether for titillation or narrative, is some truly terrible thing. We are so weird with our puritan thought process. Feed our bloodlust and fuel our enjoyment for entertainment of simulating acts of harm and murder, but god forbid you see digitized TnA. It will never make sense to me.
tbh even if they did remove it, it doesnt matter. I dont even remember when there was nudity in the game. If it was there it was so inconsequential.
Agreed. It absolutely makes no sense
Also, even though Ubisoft reverted the changes that removed nudity, there's the bigger issue of developers being able to make large changes to the game you paid for whenever they want.
Stellar Blade comes to mind. This is why buying physical is the way to go.
Far Cry debuted on March 23, 2004, meaning that next week, it will have been 20 years since Jack Carver first washed up on the shore of a tropical paradise teeming with hostile mercenaries.
Yeah, 4 was good, was hard choosing which Golden Dawn member to side with, when they were both pieces of sh!t.
I've beaten all the main entries except 2 and 6, ended up uninstalling 6 to download something else instead.
I'd love a far cry pack with the original PC game (not the half assed port on ps360) instincts, predator even a port of far cry 2 to modern consoles back when these games had their own identity and weren't far cry 3 cut and pastel
Same here, I don't know why these games get so much hate. I've thoroughly enjoyed every single one of them, with only a couple of exceptions. I wish they'd hurry up and announce Far Cry 7. The only thing I'm concerned about is the rumoured time limit.
The Nazis were racist and did terrible things to people.
Therefore, after we fix this cover, we should remove all the Nazis from Wolfenstein because it's "tone deaf"
*sigh*
This cover SHOULD make you feel uncomfortable. The same way Schindler's list can make you feel uncomfortable, or 12 years a slave. It's exploring racism and colonialism and exploitation of the region; it's not a fucking episode of Sesame Street and unsurprisingly an adult exploration of any of these themes involves bringing up uncomfortable ideas. It's unfortunate that the issue of Buddha wasn't explored fully in media, I'm interested by that, but at heart I stand by freedom of expression.
"Looking at that cover doesn’t make me think that the white dude is a bad guy. it makes me think that the artists, directors, marketers and advertisers don’t care about me at all, except as a stock image to exploit. And that hurts"
I actually kind of resent that. Firstly the main character is from South Asia. Secondly, if people are supposed to respect what you 'think' why don't you start by respecting what the artists, directors, marketers and advertisers 'think' and give them a chance to speak on the issue, either directly or through the video game itself.
And finally, it's a fucking cover. Why don't we get some context first. Like some gameplay, or plot. Or literally anything else that lets us understand the actual intentions of the people behind the game. As it stands getting angry at this feels like an exceptional case of a thousand people all too keen to be heard, and not to listen. Which pretty much sums up the reaction to this cover.
Not tracking on the up roar on the cover. Jesus our society is full of babies.
lol... how the writer didnt know this guy was asian -_-