The apocalypse did Hope County some good. Soft pink blooms have taken the land back in Far Cry New Dawn, sprouting from thick vines like earthen jewels, bedazzling rusted cars, signposts, and tree trunks alike. They smother the faded urban decay of what used to be Far Cry 5's Midwest map, and that's why I'm playing it like the DLC that never was.
As one of but a scant handful of sequels, New Dawn is an outlier. Instead of offering a new world for players to explore and conquer, Ubisoft returned us to Hope County in its 2019 follow-up set years after the unstoppable doomsday event we'd spent all of Far Cry 5 in ignorance of. The last game ended with a painful truth you'll be toying with in New Dawn, which is one of February 2025's latest additions to Game Pass following its simultaneous 60fps upgrade. If you'd been sleeping on it all this time, here's your sign to right that wrong – especially since Far Cry 7 doesn't seem anywhere in sight.
Warning: Spoilers for Far Cry 5 ahead
Planting the Seeds
Check out our Far Cry 6 review for more.
The best thing about Far Cry New Dawn is the familiarity of it all. In a world untouched by the ravages of humanity for 17 years, New Dawn offers a startling premise: the Seed family we spent an entire game fighting was right all along, and life as we knew it has ended. So did that make Far Cry 5's protagonist, Rook, the real bad guy for trying to stop cult leader Joseph from saving humanity?
Well, New Dawn sees us step into the silent shoes of another everyman, the Security Captain, tasked with liberating Hope County from a new kind of tyranny. With the Seed family largely ousted and the Cult of New Eden (nicknamed the Peggies) contained in the North, the Twins and their Highwaymen have moved in to make life hell for the recently emerged survivors. The rest of the game feels like classic Far Cry: liberate bases, collect and upgrade your guns, and befriend yet another animal with a curiously cute name for such a brute. Horatio the hog, you are my best friend. It's still a guns-blazing good time of an FPS, as is completing smaller side missions to level up faster, but I think New Dawn benefits from trimming the fat and playing through the main missions almost exclusively.
The side material can feel superfluous at times, distracting us from the post-apocalyptic politics of the region that makes New Dawn such a strong narrative experience to play off the back of Far Cry 5. It also feeds into the key game design element that makes New Dawn feel more like a DLC: there are no territory leaders to dispatch across the map. Rather, Cap is on a mission to gather recruits – some new, some returning – to build up the fledgling community of Prosperity and rebel against the sisters' regime.
In between bursts of play, I take stock of its comfortably average aggregate score on Metacritic and am reminded of how niche this game fills. As we said in our Far Cry New Dawn review, "if you liked Far Cry 5, you’re sure to find Far Cry New Dawn thoroughly satisfying." Being so intrinsic to one another, it's certainly not going to have the same impact for anyone who skipped the fifth mainline entry in the series. But it's Joseph Seed himself that makes New Dawn such a joy to play for me – and when I'm confronted by the Peggies in the game's middling acts, I'm elated to learn that the tortured prophet is out there somewhere, waiting for me.
Sins of The Father
New Dawn really comes into its own when The Father is returned to us...
Joseph is one of the most prolific antagonists in the Far Cry series. I'm not going to spoil anything for those who are still on the fence about New Dawn, but what I will say is that it reveals the many layers of his madness, and that makes it a must-play for any lore fiend.
I consider Joseph Seed one of the most intriguing and best video game villains of all time, even before New Dawn proved him to be more of an antihero than all-out bad guy. Right from the off in Far Cry 5, I found it hard to hate the guy. His calming, soft spoken demeanor can come across as textbook cult leader manipulation, professing a disarming amount of love and understanding amid all the religious zealotry, but it's an entrancing charm brought to life through excellent writing and voice acting. Even the way his followers revere him as The Father makes sense; Joseph appears to genuinely care about each and every member of Eden's Gate, and his relationship to the cult seems even deeper in New Dawn.
At the same time, he is unpredictable and immediately untrustworthy for it. That emotional seduction is what makes his attempts to recruit Rook in Far Cry 5 so compelling, and Ubisoft must think so, too, because Joseph has now featured in three Far Cry games: Far Cry 5, New Dawn, and a Far Cry 6 DLC which digs into the backstories of the series' iconic host of bad guys.
For me, New Dawn really comes into its own when The Father is returned to us and we're reminded of why any of this matters at all. It's a small consolation prize for your Far Cry 7 patience as the publisher whittles through all the other upcoming Ubisoft games on its plate, but here's your sign to take advantage of both sister games being on Game Pass this month and get lost in the American wilderness. Say hi to The Father for me.
Here's how we rank the 10 best Far Cry games.
