A departure from modern times isn’t entirely unprecedented in the Far Cry series. The 2013 spin-off release Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon placed the player in a 2007 seemingly imagined by someone in 1987. It laid the humour thicker than usual and had a zanier air than Far Cry 3. The presentation aside though, it remained consistent with the games that preceded it in its (albiet more “futuristic”) weapons, vehicles, and liberation narrative. However, the degree of departure between Primal and the other Far Cry games is arguably more than exists between entirely discrete titles: League of Legends and DotA 2, Forza and Gran Turismo, Tekkan and Dead or Alive are all closer.

Far Cry: Primal is much more than a simple reskin. Without anything amounting to technology (though you do have a club, bow, and spear), the gameplay loop is shaken up considerably and the sense of self one has as protagonist Takkar is unlike any of the games before it. Far Cry 4, the most recent numbered release, relished in sitting the player on a spectrum of stealth and direct engagement in its approach to combat. The stealth was often punishing in the ability for enemies to detect you but direct engagement was forgiving in the fact that, well shit, you’ve got a grenade launcher. The combat spectrum is dramatically tighter in Primal and sits far closer to the stealth end than previous releases. Every action requires foresight and planning. The wild landscape forces you to think moves in advance, the constant changes in elevation shortening lines of sight and the long grass obscuring prey and enemy alike. With (so far) only a club, bow, and spear to defend yourself with, any encounter that you didn’t initiate can become maddeningly overwhelming without the failsafe squeeze of a trigger to get you out of it. This raises the stakes of each encounter as your capacity to handle multiple enemies is severely impeded by the accuracy and fire rate inherent in the use of manual weapons. For me, this is the core innovation of the game: cutting your hero down to size. Gone is the saviour-drivel, instead Takkar is just a guy trying to survive.