Far Cry games seemingly exist in the same universe, based on characters like Hurk appearing in multiple games, and their referencing past events from older titles. While Ubisoft has gone on to connect the games officially using recurring characters, fans had their own unofficial theory about a certain bad guy from Far Cry 2 and how he might actually be a character from the original Far Cry. Now, Ubisoft has confirmed that yes, The Jackal is Jack Carver.
In Far Cry 2, released in 2008, you play as a random merc sent into an unnamed African country to kill a notorious arms dealer known simply as The Jackal. Things don’t go quite to plan, as you end up catching Malaria and the Jackal goes into hiding, forcing you to work with the various warring factions while you hunt for the Jackal and deal with your illness. All in all, it’s a good game. (It’s not my favourite Far Cry entry, I’m more of an FC3 guy, but I get the appeal.)
But while the game never tells you just who the Jackal was, fans have basically had a solid theory since 2008. They believe Jack Carver, the main character from the original Far Cry game and its expansions is actually… the Jackal in Far Cry 2! *DRAMATIC MUSIC*
It’s wild some might have scoffed at this theory, but it turns out this time the fans got it right. In an interview with IGN Far Cry 2’s creative director, Clint Hocking confirmed that the fan theory was spot on.
“Jack Carver in the original Far Cry was this shifty, smuggler, gun runner kind of crook,” Hocking told IGN. “The idea was [the Jackal] is just him, 10 years later or something, after he’s seen whatever he saw on this island [during the events of Far Cry]. Maybe it was drug-induced, maybe it’s post-traumatic stress disorder, or maybe it’s real. But the idea is, a decade later, he has leveled up his smuggling game, and he’s gotten embroiled in this conflict.”
Before this blunt confirmation, fans had a few different pieces of evidence that they believed proved their theory. Both the villainous Jackal and Carver have similar backgrounds, with both smuggling guns and serving in the military. A more obvious piece of evidence is found in Far Cry 2’s files. The Jackal’s textures are actually named “jackcarver” which, yeah, that kind of gives it away. But then again, it might have been a placeholder name or an Easter egg for dataminers. Now, with Hocking’s confirmation, fans can put this mystery to rest and work on something else.
For example, people are still trying to figure out how a nuke went off in the world of Far Cry and started a whole war, as seen in New Dawn, but yet Far Cry 6 seems to just ignore that. The easy answer is what the devs have said: The games are connected but those connections are loose and not to be taken too seriously.
However, that explanation isn’t enough for some diehard Far Cry fanatics and I expect they’ll keep working on theories to connect everything until an actual nuclear war or a Ubisoft dev confirms it all to be true. They might also want to put a small amount of time into explaining where all the Trigen went.
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