Every once in a while, a video game comes along that reminds you how thoroughly craven the medium can be. Far Cry 5, the latest in Ubisoft's long-running franchise about cathartic first-person chaos across exotic locales in the grip of charismatic villains, wants to tell you that it's swinging big. Where previous games cast you as action heroes on tropical islands or Himalayan villages in the throes of violent conflict against despots and dictators, Far Cry 5 is set in... Montana. Hope County is a fictional region that plays like a greatest hits collection of America's heartland: soothing rivers, scenic mountains, idealized farmland framed by dense forests. Only that slice of Real America is in the throes of a religious doomsday cult, one that has taken over the region by force and trapped you, a lone deputy cut off from the outside world, within its borders. Now, it's on you to fight back and build a resistance—the result of which is a masterwork of contradiction and tonal whiplash.

First, the cult: The Project at Eden's Gate is, on its face, a church led by the charismatic Joseph Seed, a man who believes the end of the world is coming and has begun amassing followers who will ride it out with him. Just prior to the game's start, his cult has become hostile, abducting locals and brainwashing them with a drug called Bliss, closing off Hope County in a Cliven Bundy-esque standoff with the rest of the state. The game begins with your mission to arrest Seed going immediately awry, as an Eden's Gate plant within law enforcement cuts you off from the world and the heavily-armed cult takes your team captive, and you barely escape alive. Rescued by a doomsday prepper named Daryl, he tasks you with the job of kickstarting Hope County's fledgling resistance.

From here, Far Cry 5 stops being a story and starts being a video game, as it swiftly and succinctly introduces you to the way things work—namely, you complete missions and take out cult property in order to build a "resistance meter" in three regions—each controlled by one of Joseph Seed's lieutenants. Wreck stuff in a region for a few hours and that meter will max out, leading to a final confrontation with the region's lieutenant. Take out all three, and Joseph Seed himself will re-emerge for a final confrontation. That's only the spine of the game though. Far Cry 5, like most of the Far Cry games before it, exists primarily as a chaos engine built to power your first-person Rambo fantasy of taking on armies armed with a lot of guns and a little ingenuity. You can fly planes and helicopter;, drive semis with machine guns strapped on; glide wearing a wingsuit; and command snipers, cougars, and attack dogs to watch your back. It's fun in the way video games are, in that it gives you guns and a plethora of ways and reasons to use them. When you think about why, though, it all falls apart.

Far Cry 5 really wants you to believe it has something ballsy as hell to say. Its main narrative arc plays up the "Real Americans" of the heartland, the kind that pundits have eagerly invoked with regularity since Donald Trump was elected. It makes overtures towards religious fanaticism with the Eden's Gate cult, and makes explicit references to America's gun and prepper cultures. It wants you to think it's timely and relevant, but also fun. And that last part is the problem, because fun is where video games become cowardly.