While "Far Cry 6" clearly borrows visual features from the island of Cuba, particularly its cars and architecture, scenario director Navid Cavalli said in an interview last week that the game was not intended to be "a political statement about what is happening in Cuba in particular. That's a pretty wild thing to say about a game built around a revolution against a fascist dictator on a Caribbean island.

It was a somewhat understandable reaction: Ubisoft has never been particularly good at addressing questions about the political nature of its games. In 2018, for example, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot acknowledged that the company's games are political, but he has tried to remain neutral, and Vice President of Editorial Affairs Tommy Francois said a year later that Ubisoft makes "mature" video games, not political ones He said. This categorization is somewhat difficult, but even more so for Ubisoft, for example, the company behind "Ghost Recon Wildlands."

The response has been strong, prompting Khavari to go further on the issue in an update posted today.

"A story about modern revolutions has to be," Khavari wrote. In "Far Cry 6," set on the fictional Caribbean island of Yala, Khavari presents a rigorous and pertinent discussion of the state conditions that led to the rise of fascism, the cost of imperialism, forced labor, the need for free and fair elections, LGBTQ+ rights, and much more.

According to Khavari, the developers of Far Cry 6 drew inspiration not only from Cuba, but also from "countries around the world that have experienced political revolutions. They worked with people who could "speak personally" about the history and culture that inspired them and consulted with experts to ensure that the story was "told with sensitivity." [Conversations and research conducted on the perspectives of those who fought the revolution in the late 1950s, early 1960s, and beyond are absolutely reflected in our stories and characters," Cavalli wrote. But if anyone is looking for a simplistic, binary political statement specific to the current political climate in Cuba, they won't find it." I come from a family that has endured the consequences of the revolution. All my life I have discussed the revolution at the dinner table. I can only speak for myself, but the revolution is a complex subject and should not be reduced to a single quote."

"What players see is a narrative of perspectives that attempt to capture the political complexities of the contemporary revolution within the context of fiction. We have tried to tell a story with action, adventure and heart, but at the same time we are not afraid to ask hard questions.

Khavari asked players to "let the story speak for itself" before judging its political nature. Whatever one may think of Ubisoft's storytelling ambitions, I personally don't think any of the Far Cry games can be called particularly "complex," but Far Cry 2 did it well. While it would be foolish to assume that a game about overthrowing a dictator does not have some political bent, it would also be ill-advised to judge it as a flimsy analogue of Cuba based on art assets and basic geography alone.

What is more interesting, however, is that Ubisoft is attempting to address this issue more or less head-on; Khavari's statement is clearly not some declarative position, but at least acknowledges that these topics are inherently political and that politics are complex The "Far Cry 6" story also has a lot to do with the "Far Cry 6" story. It may be that the story of Far Cry 6 also gains a bit more depth and complexity than we are used to seeing.

Far Cry 6 is scheduled for release on October 7. Last week I got to see gameplay up close for the first time.