As written, that pitch goes like this: Past games in the series spanned the globe, taking open world exploration and first person shooting to “exotic” locales, where you blew up shit in the name of beating the Bad Guys. Now the action is coming “home” to a fictional county in Montana, where you’ll team up with everyday Americans to face down a nefarious doomsday cult called the Project at Eden’s Gate. It’s a group led by by a man who stands in front of an American flag and, wielding preternatural charisma and commanding the baleful force of his loyal soldiers, preaches on faith, freedom, firearms, and the end of the world.

When I sat down to play a few hours of Far Cry 5 earlier this month, I couldn’t shake the initial pitch Ubisoft made for the game last year.

In between a three hour gameplay session— which you can read about right here —I was able to sit down with Dan Hay, director of Far Cry 5, whose deep voice slipped in and out of a prophet’s cadence, speaking with dry certainty about our own moment of crisis. I was also able to speak briefly with Mia Donovan, director of the documentary Deprogrammed and consultant on the game, whose passion and expertise were obvious in her eagerness to dig into the complex material at hand.

But that pitch doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s modified by its context. We’re four years removed from Cliven Bundy’s militia-backed standoff in Nevada, only two from his son’s in Oregon, and only seven months past the violence in Charlottesville. These (and other) events would always have cast the game in a certain light, even if Ubisoft’s initial pitch for Far Cry 5 hadn’t explicitly invoked comparisons to Bundy-style militia movements (instead only focusing on the Branch Davidian and Eden’s Gate influences that have near-exclusively taken the forefront since.)

How does that come through here? How do you put that feeling in a game like this that can often be goofy and—especially with coop—loose, and there’s funny physics things happening. It’s unpredictable.

Waypoint: So, when you pitched this game at the Pre-E3 judges week thing, you hit this notion of “the pressure,” that was a thing you hammered on pretty heavily. The idea was that to live in a space like this and to move in places like this, there is this sort of constant, ever present feeling that things could fall apart at any moment… that you were always on guard.

So I think the key thing for us was: It starts with the Father, and the concept of pressure. He absolutely, unequivocally believes that the end times are coming. He absolutely recruits people whether they wanna be recruited or not. And he absolutely has control over this environment. So we put that pressure into the world, and then we give you the ability to choose the tools [to fight back.]

We’ll have points where you’ll meet characters that are absolutely tough to deal with. They have their beliefs. They’re zealots. But then you’ll also be able to go out and play with Cheeseburger [the bear.] You’re gonna be able to do that.

But we do have moments where those things come together. Y’know, you’ll meet a Herald [one of the cult leader’s chief lieutenants], you’ll have a shared experience of sitting in a chair and [will face] the question of whether or not you’re being programmed. You’re about to experience that actually, if you go back and play.

Ok. I think there’s no question that if you’re playing co-op, or if you’re playing with some of the more bombastic Guns for Hire, that you’re going to forget. You know, it’s easy to forget the cult, it’s easy to forget some of the earnest moments.

Dan Hay, Director of Far Cry 5: I totally understand the question. So like, how do you rationalize the tones, the multiple tones.

But we do have moments that appear where you’ll be taken, where you’ll be spoken to, you’re going to be sort of put under the thumb of the cult. And those moments remind you of the pressure. Just trying to make it so it’s organic.

They are. They’re normal, everyday people. They’re not militant, they’re not trained. You know, they’re just regular folks you meet. But then you also have the community of the people you choose as your guns for hire. Your group.

In the south you’ve got Pastor Jerome and Mary who are trying to bring back Fall’s End, and that’s a community unto themselves.

I would say yes, but not specifically how you may be asking the question. The key word is “community.” Is there a sense of community in the game? And I think there is, from the standpoint that we actually built three separate communities, right?

In _Far Cry 5_** , will we see the player building coalitions, bridging the gaps between different sorts of people to resist that specific sort of fear mongering? If so, is it more than just blowing up the cult shrines and rescuing people from immediate danger? Is there some idea of bringing together disparate groups under some sort of shared common banner?**

So, speaking of this organic nature of all of this… One of the ways that cults and very aggressive militias like this work, is that they prey on people’s fears and they divide people. We see a very specific vision of that here: We have the father immediately say “They’re coming for your guns, they’re coming for your faith, they’re coming to disrupt your natural way of life.”

One of the things that’s come out of early coverage of the game, there were some outlets which said “this topic matter is too serious or too real,” which struck me as odd at the time—because so are the Tamil Tigers or conflicts in the Pacific or in African nations. These things do happen.

Yeah, they’re really funny actually. There’s a sort of charm to them commenting on the events around you that I didn’t expect. It was a nice surprise.

You’re gonna have… like, we have some people who really love to go out and find generic guns for hire. Just regular folks, right?

So, from the standpoint of individual narrative moments in the community, we have that. But then we also have whatever community you decide to build.

We wanted to also make sure that those communities are different. You have two people who know each other down in the south. You have three people who know each other and have known each other for a long time in the north, and then you have a group of people who have just been thrown together—and they don’t necessarily get along at all, and they all believe in different things.

And then in the region I’m not allowed to talk about, there’s another community. And they are probably the most thrown together group.

Yeah, they’re very specific. They have their own thing, they have their own belief. Basically, they’re having their situation and saying “Do you wanna join us? Do you wanna be part of it?”

To the north you’ve got an existing community. With Eli, Tammy, and you haven’t met those folks yet.

I’m also curious if those conversations came up earlier in development, when you were still trying to figure out what the topic matter was. And how you went about digging into this in a way that was thoughtful and educated.

So that’s a big question, I’m going to try to break it down into its components.

Did [those comments] affect us and have we thought that? Of course. You would accuse me of being a liar if I hadn’t told you that truth, right, so, yes, for sure it affected us.

When you see a game like this and you set it in America and people get first blush look at it, everybody looks at it through their own lens. And the point is, that’s why we’re so happy to bring people the game and play it, to see it for what it is.

When we talk about the question of tone: We’re like, “Look, we know we’re bombastic. We know we’re earnest." And we know we have those two things together, and we think it still makes something great for players to be able to discover and play the way they want. To give you the tools to assemble your own narrative. For sure.

"...there doesn’t necessarily need to be a god, but there needs to be an enemy." -Mia Donovan, Cult Expert and Consultant

Are games at the point where they’re mature enough to be able to, at the very least, scratch at some of this stuff? To explore it? I think they are.

Does that mean that we absolutely, unequivocally, have to tackle it this way at this moment with this thing? No, it doesn’t. We can go in and we can have a story that has a cult. We can have a story that’s not just about America.

It’s about the state of the world right now, where everything feels like it’s a little bit closer to the edge than it should be. And that maybe we need to take a step back. Maybe there’s a moment where we need to think.