Follow-up on Far Cry 4: what’s wrong with this picture?

Since the big reveal, people have been trying to defend Ubisoft’s design decisions for the cover of Far Cry 4. Here are a few of the arguments they’ve been putting forward, and a short explanation of why they don’t hold water.

Far Cry features villains on the cover. It’s no big deal - they’re just showing you who you’re going to fight!

Let’s take a step back and evaluate the symbolism here.

The character is on a throne. He’s wearing purple, traditional color of European royalty. He’s lording over a victim, confident in his supremacy. This man is in a position of power. If we knew nothing about previous installments of the Far Cry series, what would we assume about this guy? That the developers hate him? Or that they’re trying to portray him as an edgy badass?

You can’t judge the game by its cover. It hasn’t even been released yet.



Companies use the cover to sum up and sell their product. That’s the whole point. This design almost certainly went through multiple designs and revisions, and in the end, Ubisoft decided that an ambiguously white bad guy torturing an indigenous Tibetan man would be the perfect way to sum up the experience of Far Cry 4.

Villains are supposed to be evil. This doesn’t reflect on the developers.



This character is cartoonishly evil. The blatant cruelty, the smug demeanor, the costume design invoking “queer-coded” tropes - this character is designed to be hated. He exists to justify the player’s inevitable rampage through the Himalayas. By setting up a one-dimensional bigot as opposition, Ubisoft can make a show of being political and insightful… without saying anything about how racism works in the real world. It’s not limited to the occasional bad guy who needs to be toppled from his throne; prejudice is systemic, and it favors people with privilege.

Speaking of: there’s another layer of racism here, one steeped in neocolonial attitudes towards other cultures. What was happening in Tibet before this cartoon character showed up? Who cares! This one bigot is more important! Someone has to bring justice to this lawless land, and odds are, it’s going to be an unshaven, reasonably-attractive white guy that a focus group thinks the target demographic can identify with. Wherever have we seen that before?