Warning: Major spoilers for Far Cry Primal!
The blasé ending in Far Cry Primal may be an attempt to steer away from the formulaic plotline of the Hero’s Journey and focus on open world mechanics to create a unique Far Cry game. I do not believe Ubisoft succeeded in that goal because the failure to comply with the Hero’s Journey formula leaves an ending that is stilted and boring at best. The Hero’s Journey is a common plotline dating back as far as epics like Beowulf. It includes three basic acts – the departure, the initiation, and the return. The hero goes through each of these acts and in the end is changed or transformed, either physically or mentally. Takkar, the main character of the game, goes through each of the three acts, but the way his journey is executed, especially in the return, is lacking.
Takkar’s departure could have been executed a great deal more creatively, though it is not as much a failure as the return is. The departure is when the hero receives information about his quest, discovers a reason to go that is usually altruistic, and departs from his home. All of these can be mapped to specific events in Far Cry Primal. For example he receives information at the beginning with both Tensay’s narrative and Sayla’s details about the surviving Wenja. Departing from home is the moment Takkar steps away from Sayla’s cave to search for more Wenja people. A reason to go on this quest, however, is vaguely attributed to vengeance at best. If Ubisoft truly wanted to stay away from the Hero’s Journey, they should have taken a firmer stance and not gone halfway with manufactured human relationships. Instead, Takkar could have been seen interacting with a friend, sharing jokes and future plans. Then, as most of these tropes go, the friend would perish in the following Udam raid. Even if the dialogue was terrible, such an event would lead to vengeance more comprehensibly than a player being told how much they should care.
The second act, initiation, is even more nebulous in Far Cry Primal . The initiation is, essentially, the entire adventuring portion of a story, testing both dedication and a character’s moral compass. Dedication in Takkar, if it is exists, comes from the player’s desire to complete the game and not from any event in the plot . Thus, any test of this dedication is rendered moot. There is no incentive to stay in the village after a certain point in the game, and there is no amount of brutality that will test the player’s morals. In fact, this is a Far Cry game, people came here to beat, maim, and tear the human body in as many violent ways as possible. Any test of dedication would come in the form of distraction, where the player might become entirely side-tracked riding an awesome grizzly around the world of Oros. If the second act is supposed to deviate from the Hero’s Journey, it should do so – not do nothing at all.
Morst important is the third act. The return is the moment the hero achieves reconciliation, wisdom, and the freedom to live. Most of these do not exist within the plot of Far Cry Primal , even as a vague idea. The only one that does, is ‘freedom to live’. Here, the main character is liberated from fear of death and chooses to live in the moment. This is definitely a significant moment in the end of Far Cry Primal – as with all Far Cry games – where the player has finally succeeded in surviving and overcoming the obstacles of the game. To adhere to this one element in the third act and nothing else is simply lazy storytelling. Again, if a deviation is supposed to occur, it should do so. If not, we should see a more satisfying conclusion to Takkar’s Hero’s Journey.
Even if Far Cry Primal is an attempt to deviate from the Hero’s Journey in order to focus on unique open world mechanics, the lack of creativity in the game’s plot is appalling. The beautiful setting and detailed non-playable characters send the clear message that Far Cry Primal is different from the rest of the Far Cry series. Yet the plot, if you can call it one, is not at all a reflection of such uniqueness. At best, Far Cry Primal is a fumble towards the Hero’s Journey formula; at worst, Primal is a complete failure at deviating from it.