Far Cry 6 gameplay reveal: Ride a horse, pet a dog, set lots of things on fire

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  Giancarlo Esposito stars as the villain Anton Castillo, president of the very Cuba-like fictional nation Yara, in Ubisoft's Far Cry 6. [credit: Ubisoft ]

After its delay from an original March 2021 release date, Ubisoft's Far Cry 6 finally has a bonafide gameplay reveal ahead of its newly confirmed launch on PCs and consoles on October 7.

If you're wondering, yes, the Far Cry series continues to ask players to face off against "shades of gray" villains in wide-open, semi-lawless territories. After a brief detour to the United States in 2018's Far Cry 5, this latest sequel returns to its jungles-and-islands roots, albeit in a fictional, Caribbean nation of Yara. (Which, let's be real, this is pretty much Cuba.) Instead of relying on cut scenes to showcase the striking voice and appearance of new series villain Anton Castillo, portrayed by famed actor Giancarlo Epsosito (Breaking Bad), this trailer goes to great lengths to look like a bonafide video game.

At first glance, the revealed footage looks like a current-gen console game as played on PC at max settings. If ray-traced light-bounce models are being used in this game to create an expensive global illumination system, this trailer didn't make that apparent. Light sources look pre-baked and reflections appear to rely on computationally mild screen-space techniques. Still, wide-open vistas full of lush wildlife and massive explosions seem like they've been cranked to "ultra" levels, and thus I wonder how this cross-gen game will scale down to run on the PS4 and Xbox One generation.

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