Far Cry 4: A grenade rolls down everest

[Architecture]

Is this for real? I mean not only does it look terribly put together... but I mean Jesus Christ... 

Real confused as to what would make you question its authenticity. It's clearly an original, hi-res composite and not some basement hack photoshop job.

 

 

It's funny, I saw that image on giant bomb, thought Saints Row and got the whole "White messiah" vibe again.

 

Immediately went to facebook to message some Ubifriends and saw that they posted it. So yeah, it's real and apparently going to extremes with colour.

 

Companies learn the wrong lessons when there are serious criticisms about a product, but then also go on to sell a butt load of copies.

I'm confused by this; are you implying the character on the cover is white? He looks pretty damn Asian to me. Is there anything to suggest the player character is white?

[Nachimir]

The suit looks asian, the character looks white. I'm assuming he's probably the bad guy mentioned in the description. I thought the image was a joke when I first saw it.

 

via Jake:

 

[Zeusthecat]

Real confused as to what would make you question its authenticity. It's clearly an original, hi-res composite and not some basement hack photoshop job.

 

The fact that that image looks so fucking stupid is reason enough to question its authenticity. Similar to Nachimir, my first gut reaction was that it was a joke.

[sclpls]

I thought it was a joke at first too, but then again this is Ubisoft and when I first saw that Watch Dogs DLC chart I thought that was a joke so....

[Frenetic Pony]

Really who cares what color his skin is or if he's "white" or whatever? That really shouldn't matter, "wait the obvious bad guy can't also be a racist too!" wat?

 

What's odd is the guy is in an obvious "Warlord" kind of position. Yet he looks like some hip bro douche from a night club rather than a Warlord. If he was just a more traditional warlord, then sure some could call "racist" or whatever if he looked "white" as well, but there would still be the possibility of it making sense in the context of the story (could be "The Man who Would be King or something). But with the dress sensibility, there's just the automatic reaction of "that's just too weird" "wtf!" "that's got to be racist right?" which may be mistargeted.

[Codicier]

I have to admit the first thing I thought when I saw that guy was "Hong Kong gangster", I wouldn't be surprised if he leaps off the throne in slow mo, and doves fly out the the sleeves of his imaculately tailor suit.

That's said can see why people who didn't get the same first impression as me would raise holy hell about it, and even if you accept that is a bleach blonde asian sitting there there's it's still not a subtle un-problematic image in other ways.

[Merus]

I have a Hindu friend that's pretty unhappy about it because there's a pretty serious "white man riding roughshod over actual people's beliefs" undercurrent that the game is in no way equipped to handle appropriately.

 

Basically when this game comes out there's going to be a racism furore, judging by all the other times games have had dodgy racial imagery in their pre-release materials.

[Architecture]

I would agree that Ubisoft seems ill-suited to deftly tackling the material at hand, but I'm almost certain the antagonist featured in this singular piece of concept art has Asiatic genes.

 

Honestly though, no matter how tone deaf this game might be, I doubt I will be as offended by it as I was by Bioshock Infinite, GTA V or Beyond: Two Souls.

[Gormongous]

I'm confused by this; are you implying the character on the cover is white? He looks pretty damn Asian to me. Is there anything to suggest the player character is white?

 

I assumed by the jawline, the cheekbones, the blonde eyebrows, and the blue/gray eyes that he was white. Also, by the way he has his hand on the obviously more Asian guy's head (with his finger dangling a pin to the grenade the kneeling dude's holding, jeez!). Anyway, more than anything, I firmly believe that Ubisoft is racially sensitive enough not to have an Asian villain, but not racially sensitive enough not to have a white villain with Asian henchmen or an Asian hero. The Far Cry series is about white people going around being hyper-violent tourists, after all (I hate being this cynical about AAA games).

 

Even if it weren't for the racial stuff, whether present or just implied, I'm still disappointed that this box preserves the visual and iconographic themes of Far Cry 3. I guess it's going to be the defining game of the series from now on, even though Far Cry 3 had about as much wrong with it as Far Cry 2, but less right, especially once the former's writer started shopping around his genius. Oh well, video games! Buddha statue draped with fifty-caliber bullets!

[Architecture]

Again, that's lazily racist instead of overtly racist, and I think that there is a difference. Grand Theft Auto V seemed about as intentionally racist as any piece of pop culture in the last decade. Sensitivity borne of ignorance isn't excusable, but it's less of a red flag for me than the hateful content of Houser Bros. games.

[Zeusthecat]

Again, that's lazily racist instead of overtly racist, and I think that there is a difference. Grand Theft Auto V seemed about as intentionally racist as any piece of pop culture in the last decade. Sensitivity borne of ignorance isn't excusable, but it's less of a red flag for me than the hateful content of Houser Bros. games.

 

Maybe I'm missing something but the Grand Theft Auto 5 I played didn't quite come across as racist as you so adamantly claim. I mean, sure there are some of those elements present but I don't agree with your claim that "Grand Theft Auto V seemed about as intentionally racist as any piece of pop culture in the last decade." You may not have liked the game but I think your claim is quite an exaggeration.

[Twig]

The Far Cry series is about white people going around being hyper-violent tourists, after all (I hate being this cynical about AAA games).

Man if that was like actually true (and I guess it was supposed to be sorta based on interviews about FC3??????????) that'd be fantastic. Too bad.

[Gormongous]

Man if that was like actually true (and I guess it was supposed to be sorta based on interviews about FC3??????????) that'd be fantastic. Too bad.

 

The problem with a game sending up or even just having fun with the industry's shitty racial politics is that you can't make an annual franchise out of it. The wrong sort of people would catch on eventually.

 

If we're going for non-cynical expectations, I will enjoy seeing another developer's take on Nepal/Tibet/Bhutan/??? after the Uncharted series. I don't expect it to be substantively different, but the little things can be quite pleasant and interesting.

[brkl]

Again, that's lazily racist instead of overtly racist, and I think that there is a difference. Grand Theft Auto V seemed about as intentionally racist as any piece of pop culture in the last decade. Sensitivity borne of ignorance isn't excusable, but it's less of a red flag for me than the hateful content of Houser Bros. games.

Huh, why would you think that's lazy instead of purposeful? That picture screams what Yohalem claimed Far Cry 3 was about. I would bet a lot of money that they will make this one supposedly explore some theme again, which is apparently racism. Considering what happened after Far Cry 3's release they'll probably try to be a bit more obvious about it.

[Thrik]

Pretty sure you're all arguing about a moot point. Not to be dismissive, but that guy in the suit looks East Asian to me. Yes he has blonde hair, so do many actual East Asians — it's called dye. In fact, I saw a Chinese dude walking through Nottingham the other day with almost exactly the same cut.

If you put your hand over his hair, the face looks unequivocally East Asian to my eyes. I have no expectation whatsoever that the villain is white.

[Gormongous]

Pretty sure you're all arguing about a moot point. Not to be dismissive, but that guy in the suit looks East Asian to me. Yes he has blonde hair, so do many actual East Asians — it's called dye. In fact, I saw a Chinese dude walking through Nottingham the other day with almost exactly the same cut.

If you put your hand over his hair, the face looks unequivocally East Asian to my eyes. I have no expectation whatsoever that the villain is white.

 

And in this other shot culled from the preorder image?

 

 

Yes, he has almond-shaped eyes in the first picture, so do many actual white people – it's called smiling. In all seriousness, I know it's pointless to speculate, but even beyond the images, Ubisoft's press leak talks about a "self-appointed tyrant king" of the "untamed land" of Kryat. It feels a little weird to describe a native ruler as a self-appointed tyrant, though granted not beyond the typical tone-deafness of AAA games press. Besides, the Far Cry series has always been about foreign mercenaries terrorizing the natives of a pristine wilderness. Why would they change it up now, with some East Asian gangster ruling a mountain in the Himalayas?

 

I also wouldn't want us to get away from what a weird and yet totally predictable image this is for the new Far Cry. I'm sure they'll tell all again and again come E3.

[brkl]

If he were Asian, we wouldn't be discussing it. Real people have ethnically ambiguous features, not game people. Certainly not game bad guys in my experience

[Dosed]

You pretty much guessed my intentions with my first post. I thought it was a joke because 1) it looks bad and 2) it seems like it's meant to be provocative. There's yet to be a game that has been able to appropriately address race issues, and I doubt Far Cry 4 will be the game to do so. Bioshock did a similar thing with it's racial stuff and that turned out to be nothing more than surface level discussion which amounted to nothing. I'm not saying games won't ever be able to do these, I very much believe they will one day. But it seems dangerous to me to release a relatively touchy image without the game to back up the image's statement for months and months. 

 

edit: cool guy sunglasses. 

[Golden Calf]

I dunno, all this seems incredibly overeager to me, going literally from box art (!). To me he looks Asian. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't, but I don't know how useful box art phrenology is going to be when we haven't seen any in-game models and don't have a story breakdown. It goes without saying that I don't think a massive Ubisoft project is likely to produce a particularly nuanced story, but it feels weird judging them with essentially no information.

 

Ya, it's a kind of weird image, but if he's Asian, doesn't that mean that he's a character that defies a stereotypical representation, and is potentially interesting, whether or not the execution is any good? I have literally no idea, unless there's some sources of info that I haven't seen.

 

Edit: also, who even is this guy? Is he the villain? If in fact he is some white guy, maybe you're a local trying to repel his attempted power grab. There's so many ways it could play out.

[Codicier]

Pretty sure you're all arguing about a moot point. Not to be dismissive, but that guy in the suit looks East Asian to me. Yes he has blonde hair, so do many actual East Asians — it's called dye. In fact, I saw a Chinese dude walking through Nottingham the other day with almost exactly the same cut.

If you put your hand over his hair, the face looks unequivocally East Asian to my eyes. I have no expectation whatsoever that the villain is white.

Yeah the more times I see it the more convinced I am that he's East Asian. Also would it be any better or worse if he was mixed race?

Here's a full picture of the variant cover without the poor guy with the hand grenade.

http://media.officialplaystationmagazine.co.uk/files/2014/05/FC4_Packshot_Limited_Edition_PS4_2D_UK.jpg

[brkl]

Edit: also, who even is this guy? Is he the villain? If in fact he is some white guy, maybe you're a local trying to repel his attempted power grab. There's so many ways it could play out.

That's what came to my mind. That would be the smart way to go about it if the plot involves a white guy tyrant. We'll probably know soon enough.

[feelthedarkness]

i sort of assumed he was going for that Asano in Ichi vibe: 

 

http://tormentedfilms.com/wp-content/uploads/ichi-the-killer-movie.jpg

[Ucantalas]

...does anyone else think he looks like Anderson Cooper?

...maybe its just the hair.

[Nappi]

Ugh.. that cover is so off-putting to me, for many reasons, but mostly because I really disliked the "cool", "twisted", "compelling" (?) villain thing they were going for in Far Cry 3. My guess is that Far Cry 4 is going to be more of the same. I.e. you play as a western hiker whose mountain climbing trip turns sour when you cross paths with the gang of the dude in a colorful suit. To free your friends (and, eventually, your mind) you have to help the locals end the tyranny of the man with a ridiculous British accent.

[N1njaSquirrel]

Everyone's already said this, but it looks like Ubi's got another yearly franchise in their hands. Yay. I'm guessing this is going to be exactly the same as Far Cry 3. Even the box art looks the same. Oh man I don't care. AAA Games depress me.