This had to be the place. If anyone’s slaughtering dogs for food in the post-post-apocalypse, it’s going to be makeshift kennel squatters, blasting Afrikaner electronic hip-hop to cover the sounds of dogs howling in misery. Climbing the hill, gun drawn, the high-pitched squealing of Yolandi Visser rose louder and louder and so did the plaintive barking. Then there was a yelp. Then a buzzsaw. And then I curled my finger around the trigger button and sprayed bullets until a punk rock butcher and a heavily-armed motocross racer fell dead at my feet.

Die Antwoord kept playing as I noticed a dead Yellow Lab lying on a table. I liberated a rambunctious Shiba Inu from a cage, and then followed it to another dead golden retriever who had thrown up the key needed to unlock the other cages. I freed those dogs, and listened to an audio log of Mickey, one of the two leaders of the Highwaymen, disappointed in the production of dog meat. Before this moment, I had wondered if there was going to be a turn where maybe the two black girls in all the teaser art had a chance at becoming protagonists. That a twist later in the game would flip the morality of this narrative on it’s head. But here I realized this was the most daring moral stance Far Cry New Dawn would ever be able to take. There was no interest in redeeming or repositioning the Highwaymen and their leaders later in the story. They were cruel to dogs—to golden retrievers. This was a decision designed to communicate one thing, the Highwaymen aren’t just tacky, assholes with a different world view. To the creators of New Dawn, they were feral savages who had to be put down.