The box art for the next game in the Far Cry series, Far Cry New Dawn leaked on social media ahead of tonight’s announcement at The Game Awards. As per usual for the series, it’s provocative and transgressive. It depicts a white man strapped to a car riddled with bullet holes, and in the foreground, it shows two black women wielding guns.
In the past, I have sometimes thought the Far Cry box art was more interesting than the games themselves. Far Cry 3 and 4 both featured the game’s villains on the cover, each holding a gun and facing forward with a sly look or a smirk, as though taunting the player. Although we can’t say for sure what role the two women on the cover of Far Cry New Dawn will play, they do have a strung up white man in the background, while they sit in the foreground, looking over their shoulders menacingly, holding large weapons. Yeah, they bad.
The racial dynamics of this cover seem poised to make people on the internet lose their minds. Two black women—an undeniably underserved audience of video game players—are implied to be enacting violence on a white man.
In the politically intense climate around the world, it’s easy to make a lot of assumptions about their motivations, and given the similarity in framing to other Far Cry game covers, these two characters might well be the game’s villains.
Still, when I look at this cover, all I can think is, “this owns.”
I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a black woman on the cover of a video game, let alone two of them. There’s a dearth of black female characters in games. While that’s been improving over the years, there’s still not a lot of them. Assassin’s Creed’s Aveline de Grandpré has appeared on a smattering of covers of the series’ spin offs.
Sheva “I Need An Herb” Alomar is on the cover of Resident Evil 5. In Far Cry 5, you could be a black woman, and they had a black female gun-for-hire character, Grace Armstrong, who was honestly kind of annoying but was featured prominently.
By contrast, Overwatch, last year’s recipient of Best Ongoing Game and Best Esports Game at the Game Awards, as well as the winner of Best New Game in 2016, still does not have a black female character after over two years. (No, the robot doesn’t count, and no, Symmetra is not black.)
I don’t need every game to have a black female character, or to be about blackness. I don’t even want that. I’ve spent years playing as white men and have clearly survived the experience. I just want games that reflect the world that I live in, a world where black women exist. It’s less about representation in media and more about the fact that it just feels ridiculous that so few games acknowledge the existence of black women.
The characters on the cover of Far Cry New Dawn are unabashedly black. They have broad noses, dark skin, and wear their hair in braids. Even in dirty jeans and a sweatshirt, they look like they ain’t nothing to fuck with. They look like they should be posing in the background of a Beyoncé or Rihanna video. They look like people I know. It’s about goddamn time.
Comments
63 responses to “Far Cry New Dawn’s Leaked Box Art Owns”
Great, now my youtube is going to be full of more of this shit. I watch one video and it ruins my feed forever!
I’m not sure what is provocative and transgressive about pulling your punches and releasing the same tired old ubiworld game over and over. The art just looks like an old 2000AD cover.
Now picture it the other way around and you would have riots
I should be surprised by the hypocrisy of someone who is supposedly a champion of equality for all genders and races gloating over some art of black women dominating and threatening a white man, but I’m not.
Not that I think we’d get that type of art in this day and age, but I can just see the outraged article from Gita over a couple of white guys smirking and brandishing weapons before a terrified black woman in the background.
What annoys me most about this art, is that it is deliberately pandering to those like Gita who get a hard-on at the thought of reversal of historical racial power scenarios.
Given the history of Far Cry games and their cover art, should we expect the two black women to be part of some Black Panther-esque group that the main character ends up destroying? I’d actually pay good money for a game like that, just to see the howls of outrage from Gita and her ilk about the game trivialising and mocking the black struggle for freedom and social acceptance in the US.
All in all, a calculated and brilliant PR move.
No matter how many times it gets explained to you, false equivalence just seems beyond your grasp.
Say what now?
He’s saying “it’s alright when we do it.”
You mean the false equivalence of “my violence is fine because it’s mine”?
Yeah, nah mate, that’s a load of bullshit. People whinge and bitch about male power fantasies but conveniently forget their moral outrage for titles like Wolfenstein 2 if it panders to their own power fantasy. Which is fine, I couldn’t care less either way because if I did I just wouldn’t play, but you don’t get to claim some moral high ground if you do.
No matter how many times it gets explained to you, double standards just seem to be beyond your grasp.
Lordy, grow up …it’s not like you haven’t spent your life strapped into god knows how many blood drenched power fantasies where you don’t think twice about any of the political ramifications, and likely have re-enacted racially-inspired narratives without even realising it. You’ve already played your anti-SJW fap fantasy a few times over.
Unless of course you’re a fake gamer bro who doesn’t actually play real games.
There’s the key. I don’t particularly care about the politics of a game’s narrative. I’m more in it for the human stories. But that aside, there should at least be some consistency where an author who spergs about justice and equality on a regular basis turns around and publicly revels in a black power fantasy. You want it both ways? Prepare for some criticism.
Reverse racism It is completely OK in this climate, yasss queen etc etc… Pathetic, yet as you rightly put very smart marketing.
Smart marketing? Perhaps, only as far as being intentionally controversial for its odd choice in cover art. Dont get me wrong, Im all for representation, and think all games should have a character creator for your main, but considering the enormous public and financial backlash over BFVs promotional materials, this is a pretty dumb move in retrospect. Id almost guarantee it will sell as well or worse than BFV as a result. Otherwise the cover looks just like the last few Far Cry covers, tropical, colorful and fairly meh. Almost like a fan made cover.
Total sidenote: The color and composition of the outfits on the cover remind me of the “Burger King Kids Club” promos. lol
She says after bemoaning once again the lack of black females in Overwatch in an article about the leaked cover of a completely unrelated game.
Yeah, that’s called a qualifying statement. Can you see how her second point alters the first?
This looks like a post-apocalyptic treatment of FC5 in the same way Primal was a Paleolithic treatment of FC4.
Exactly what it is. I liked the idea of it but now I know its just 5s map again and a reskin… ergh
I don’t really see that as a problem with them re-using the maps, and put a different twist on it. The work they put in to Primal, out side of making the map, was easily the same as 4. Plus, if there using it to try out new ideas for mechanics and things, then why not?
Asset flip with fetch quests
did the author even look closely at the cover, because that “white” guy is most definately the Joseph “the Father” Seed who really should be tided up and used as target practise
Good grab!
I don’t think it is, maybe a descendant
I mean, Father had a few tattoo’s on his chest didn’t he?
not tattoos but self inflicted flesh wounds that were healing over. Its the same pants, the shame glasses the only real difference is that well he has beard now instead of a goatee and no shitty manbun. all of which can be explained by the fact that this will be a few months/years after the ending of FC5.
For it to be a descendant of the father would also have to mean that canonically the Deputy was Female as well
No he had tattoos too
https://img.fireden.net/v/image/1524/52/1524520699595.jpg
ahh i only remembered the 7 deadly sins he had cavered into his skin
With the pink lettering and post-apocalyptic feel it comes off as Far Cry Rage
With all the regrowth and such, wouldn’t this game be set 200+ years after 5?
not really, nature reclaims lost ground pretty fucking quickly also the bombs only landed on the silos and rest landed outside of hope county. Plus the main thing to worry about is the fallout but nature is very good at adapting to it
Don’t worry people this isn’t violence and murder, it’s female empowerment.
Nope, it’s still violence and murder. It’s just an interesting representation of violence because it’s framed in a way we don’t often see in AAA games and provides representation to characters who aren’t usually granted this power balance.
Someone missed the sarcasm. 😛
Nope, I assure you the sarcastic tone was not lost on me. I was addressing the argument that was being made through the sarcasm.
The characters on the cover of Far Cry New Dawn are unabashedly black. They have broad noses, dark skin, and wear their hair in braids.
I can’t believe this blatant stereotyping! They may as well gone full minstrel show!
/s
Cover art by Mark Knight
Am I the only one who didn’t read the presence of the two women as ‘villian’? Sure the last two main titles had the villians on the cover but Blood Dragon and Primal didn’t.
IMO it looks more like a co op focused game where you play the two ladies.
Of course it’s baseless speculation on my part.
FC 1 and 2 also didn’t have the villains on the front, my bet is that they are protagonists or supporting characters
Comments section a predictable trash fire of snowflake white dudes crying out about reverse racism. Enjoyed the article. Like the commenter above I suspect these two will be the protagonists.
No such thing as “reverse racism”, it’s just plain old racism.
You’re right. As a white guy I feel totally oppressed by this.
It isn’t racism. Interesting how many likes your simple comment got though.
Oh it is racism. You see racism is: prejudice, discrimination or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.
Notice how there is no distinction of “only whites can be racist” or “you can’t be racist against whites”.
You’re definition of racism comes from a stipulative definition penned by feminist author Pat Bidol in 1970 and popularised by Judith H. Katz, another feminist author. In which it states that for racism to occur, there must be two factors present, prejudice and power. In this case, the one you are clearly of the opinion of, is that one cannot be racist against whites. (Feminists have since applied that rationale to sexism also, so one cannot be sexist against men). They did this so they can hide behind it as a shield from being openly hypocritical when it comes to the many double standards, such as the one shown in this very article, such people hold.
Don’t you love when people throw around a stipulative defintion like it applies to the general populace, when in actuality it is designed to be used in one specific context.
Actually snowflakes are empowered by such white genocide fantasies. The “white dudes” (nice singling out of race there btw) tend to simply meme, make fun of, or simply not buy the game, as evidenced by BFVs collosal failure. But still, nice to see youre triggered enough to allow your racism to be openly displayed with pride.
Yep, I knew I shouldn’t have scrolled down. My own fault I guess.
aaand here comes the downvote anything even vaguely progressive brigade.
Isn’t journalism supposed to just report facts and not objective opinions? Feels like this is a blog post more than an informative article about a new game
I mean I legit couldn’t care less about the PoC cover art, more power to it I guess. Doesn’t change how the game will play or be to me. Just.. This is a blog post
Kotaku is a blog. They have writers or bloggers
Kotaku is not a newspaper. They are not journalists.
No. That is not what journalism has been supposed to do. That is not what any journalism outlet in the history of all time has done, ever. You want your journalists to be free from some kind of strong outside influence or to reveal that information if it is the case but all reporting has always been subjective to a certain extent. Good journalists should try to report on all sides of a story regardless of their personal opinion but there will always still be some angle and this is totally fine.
This is an opinion piece not a news story so there’s no need whatsoever to show alternate viewpoints – your audience aren’t total idiots and they know what an opinion piece is and what function it serves. Well, in theory anyway.
Its articles like this that make me think they’re shutting down the wrong part of tumblr
Low hanging fruit. Enjoy the ad revenue I guess.
Deleting my comment only supports the echo chamber Kotaku mods.
If they’re trying to create a progressive left-learning echo chamber they’re doing a particularly bad job of it. Comment sections on articles that even vaguely mention race or gender are regularly flooded with dissent, often outnumbering comments in support of such articles. So no, there is no grand conspiracy against you.
The butthurt in here is phenomenal.
Now we all know: the characters are the antagonists https://www.kotaku.com.au/2018/12/far-cry-new-dawn-amazon-twins-ubisoft-reveal/
So yeah, about the KotakAU comments section following the path of Gizmodo, when’s that going to happen?
Loving the white boy tears in the comments.
Couldn’t give a shit what colour the antagonists are, just want to enjoy the game and kick their arses.
The Far Cry series peaked with Blood Dragon, change my mind.
Far Cry 3 would like a word.
Nah, Blood Dragon was better.
Far Cry 3 really fell apart after Vaas died where Blood Dragon just got better and better right up till the end where you rode a dinosaur with lasers on it.
I reckon that’s fair enough. It’s nice to see some interesting characters. If they are significant in helping people feel represented then I’m all for it.. 🙂
Another Kotaku article with the manufactured controversy. Gotta get those clicks, right?
“In the past, I have sometimes thought the Far Cry box art was more interesting than the games themselves.”
Sounds like a great person to employ as a video game reviewer Kotaku. Well done!
Funny how a simple image can have such a large impact on people
Not really, a swastika for instance has a large impact on a wide variety of people. There’s even a recent article on kotaku about a rising sun t-shirt.