Update: The headline has been changed after speaking to Ubisoft, who acknowledges the game is inherently political but stresses that the game isn't a comment on Cuba specifically.

Original Story: Ubisoft is keen to express a true “guerilla fantasy” with Far Cry 6, having spoken to actual freedom fighters about the act of taking part in a revolution. Despite this, it wants to avoid making a political statement with the upcoming open-world shooter.

Speaking to TheGamer, narrative director Navid Khavari talked to us about the island of Yara and the circumstances behind its inevitable arrival of revolution. He wanted to pay homage to fighters from the past, while also crafting a narrative that wishes to avoid drawing on inspiration from similar events found in reality.

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“The original inspiration was Guerilla Warfare and what is that guerilla fantasy, which is obviously tied to revolution. When you talk about guerillas, you think of the guerillas in the 1950s and 1960s, we actually went down there to speak to actual guerilla fighters who fought back then, and we just really fell in love with their stories,” Khavari tells us.

“But we also fell in love with the culture and people we met. When we came out of that, it wasn’t that we felt we had to do Cuba, we realised it’s a complicated island and our game doesn’t want to make a political statement about what’s happening in Cuba specifically. Beyond that, we’re drawing inspiration from guerilla movements around the world and throughout history. For us, it felt like doing the island of Yara would help us tell that story while being very open with our politics and inspiration.”

Although it seemingly attempts to disassociate from political themes, Far Cry 6 still intends to tell an engaging story, and one that isn’t afraid to explore the deeper circumstances of a revolution. “A revolution is complex, and the people you’re going to engage with are also complex. I use this line of philosophy, which is that every character has their own heartbeat, you just have to find it,” Khavari says, who also wants the game to strike a balance between serious storytelling and engaging action. “We have this melting pot of motivational complexity where we tried to translate that into the gameplay and the story. So tonally, it sort of already existed. But for us, thematically, unifying that into the guerilla fantasy felt pretty natural.”

Be sure to check out our full Far Cry 6 preview, alongside a deeper chat with the narrative director on the creation of Anton Castillo, the guerilla fantasy, and more. Far Cry 6 is coming to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on October 7.

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