Far Cry 6, the next mainline instalment of the FPS franchise, is arriving on February 18, 2021, and is looking to continue the series' tradition of complex, memorable villains by casting Giancarlo Esposito as dictator of Yara.
The visual parallels to Cuba seem obvious, but the game's narrative director Navid Khavari has confirmed that the game is deeply inspired by the guerilla conflict from the region.
Far Cry 6 Inspired By Cuban Guerillas
In a Q&A on the Ubisoft website, Khavari explained that "We wanted to tell a story about revolution, and when you tell a story about revolution, you’re talking about guerrilla warfare."
"When you’re talking about guerrilla warfare, you go to Cuba," he added.
Discussing the team's process, Khavari explained that he "I spent about a month down there [Cuba] with the team, circumnavigating the island. We got to meet so many amazing people and experience the music and the culture, and we also met actual former guerrillas."
"That really was the jumping-off point, because for our island of Yara, not only did we want to tell a story of a modern guerrilla revolution, but also we want to tell a story about an island that is almost frozen in time, like a living postcard from the ‘60s that players can experience and walk through."
On the other hand, Giancarlo Esposito's Anton Castillo is a character full of brutal intentions.
"The turning point for us, when we felt we were on to something, was when we thought of this idea of Antón as a dictator," Khavari explains.
"He’s in charge of the country; he believes he's doing the right thing by enslaving his population. But you take someone like that, and then you couple that with having a teenage son—Diego is 13 years old—and I think, for us, that's something that Far Cry has never really had. It allows for a complex dynamic."
For more articles like this, take a look at our Far Cry page.