If there’s one thing everyone remembers about Far Cry it's the villains. Characters like Vaas, Pagan Min, and Joseph Seed have all easily earned their place in the bad guy hall of fame. Over time, the role of the villain in Far Cry has become increasingly important to the series’ identity, so much so that in the latest installment – Far Cry 6 – the antagonist is played by one of the most recognisable villain actors of all time: Giancarlo Esposito.
The journey to this high point has been the result of wild audition tapes, ambitious writing, dedicated performances, and an E3 demo that miraculously turned a cut character into Far Cry’s iconic bad guy that started it all.
This is the inside story of the evolution of Far Cry’s villains, and how they were all created.
Far Cry’s villains are always on the front of the box. Played by the cream of video game and Hollywood talent, they stand in the spotlight for each game’s promotion. They even inspire cosplay and fan fiction within the series’ community. But this was not always the case. The original Far Cry, developed by Crytek and published by Ubisoft in 2004, did not have a particularly memorable antagonist. That first game saw main character Jack Carver butt heads with genetic scientist Dr. Krieger, a villain really only notable for tarnishing the ambitious shooter with packs of his annoying Trigen mutants.
Far Cry’s journey towards more nuanced villains began when Ubisoft parted ways with Crytek and took over development duties of the series. In 2008 it released a sequel that would redefine what Far Cry was. Set in an open world based on Africa, it cast players as a mercenary working between the two sides of a bloody civil war. Providing weapons for both sides is Far Cry’s first prototype for its now-signature brand of villain; an arms dealer called The Jackal.
“The Jackal is just a utilitarian, pragmatist gun runner,” says Clint Hocking, Creative Director of Far Cry 2. “He just decides ‘Screw these guys who are trying to rip me off and cheat me or kill me’, and he embarks on this path to pit them against one another and show them what real wickedness is. It's almost like he's trying to teach them a lesson. That's his motivation. Once the hornet's nest has been kicked he thinks, ‘I'll show you what a real bad man is’."
As Far Cry 2’s story progresses, the Jackal begins to regret the scale of the atrocities that he’s fuelled. This shifting of his moral compass leads to an unexpected finale in which the player works with the Jackal to aid the country’s civilians. But beyond the game’s story, there’s a fascinating history behind the Jackal that few people outside of the walls of Ubisoft know.
“The Jackal is actually supposed to be Jack Carver from the original Far Cry,” Hocking reveals, confirming a long-held fan theory. Both Carver and the Jackal have a history in the US Navy, and – perhaps most tellingly – some texture files for the Jackal in Far Cry 2 are named after the original Far Cry protagonist. These details have convinced some fans that the two characters are related, but Hocking’s confirmation finally transforms the theory into fact.
“Jack Carver in the original Far Cry was this shifty, smuggler, gun runner kind of crook,” says Hocking. “The idea was [the Jackal] is just him, 10 years later or something, after he's seen whatever he saw on this island [during the events of Far Cry]. Maybe it was drug induced, maybe it's post-traumatic stress disorder, or maybe it's real. But the idea is, a decade later, he has leveled up his smuggling game, and he's gotten embroiled in this conflict. But he's also been through a lot more and he's seen a lot of messed up stuff.”
This fascinating origin story is, sadly, nowhere to be seen within the world of Far Cry 2. But despite his link to the original Far Cry only existing within the minds of the people who made him, The Jackal’s warped moral compass makes him a great villain in his own right. Compared to the bad guys who will succeed him, though, The Jackal’s role in Far Cry 2 is relatively straightforward.
“He's really kind of the MacGuffin, right?” Hocking says. “He's really there to give a high-level target and a goal that the player doesn't have any expectation of being able to get to until they've worked their way through the content. He's not really a gameplay function, he's just a motivation.
“We could have, in retrospect, gone a lot further in bringing some of that narrative into the world,” he admits. “Bring some of that characterization into the world, with in-world storytelling and things like that. It was just all very new. We were trying our best, but I think we maybe didn't have the other benchmarks we needed to get to where he would have felt more present, more ubiquitous in the world.”
While The Jackal may not have had the strongest impact on the game world, Far Cry 2 did establish a new identity for the series; a conventions-challenging shooter where players would come face-to-face with a daunting antagonist. But the true potential of that formula would not be found until a few years later.
“When Far Cry 3 was written, there was all this discussion about whether video games were good for you, and also about gamification in general society,” recalls Jeffrey Yohalem, Lead Writer on Far Cry 3. “This idea that you could get people to do things they didn't really want to do if you made something fun and you gave them a badge and a gold star.
“We tried to look at what made games tick, and then examine the player's involvement in them,” he adds. “And whether they were an enjoyable experience for the player, whether the player gets caught up in something that results in this uncomfortable development as a character. And so Vaas was a warning about what could happen to the player character.”
Vaas was the character that put Far Cry on the map for Ubisoft. A pirate seemingly on the knife edge between sanity and mental collapse, he represents what a player’s most indulgent, violent impulses could lead them to. His electric presence was only made possible thanks to the latest advances of the time in motion capture technology. This system replicated the nuances of a magnetic performance from actor Michael Mando.
Years before starring in Better Call Saul, Mando became involved with Far Cry in pursuit of a new form of creative freedom. In July 2010 he auditioned for a role then known as ‘Mr.X’. While he was provided with a script, he decided to improvise. It was a choice that set him on a path that would go far further than he first imagined.
“The thing that started the whole avalanche of the character was in the audition room,” Mando recalls. “I thought it'd be interesting if he started with his back to the camera. I was pretending that he was eating, and as he starts turning around he starts licking his fingers until he gets to his middle finger. He does this really crude gesture and just licks his middle finger.
“I thought to myself, ‘They weren't going to like it at all.’ It was one of those things as an actor where I said, ‘I'm taking such a big risk here, not giving them what they were expecting.’ But I said to myself, as an artist, ‘This is where I want to be. I want to go that far.’ And when the audition was done, there was a moment of quiet. And [Animation Director] Brent George looked over at the Casting Director, Andrea Kenyon, and he said, ‘Can he do it again? Could you go even further?’ And that's when my mind went, ‘Okay, this is going to be a lot of fun.’”
Ubisoft was impressed, and Mando was hired. But the excitement did not last long; the creative team wanted Far Cry 3’s villain to be a huge, imposing figure called Bull, and Mando simply wasn’t that.
“We had done great rehearsals, we had some great footage and everything,” Mando says. “And then Ubisoft called me and said that they were going to let the character go. Whatever I was doing wasn't working with the visual character that they had in mind.
“And then last, last, last minute they called me back,” he reveals. “They really liked what I was doing in the rehearsal. So that's when they made the decision, we'll just have the character look like him. And of course, the character went viral and became part of the game in a bigger way.”
Vaas was revealed to the world as part of the Far Cry 3 gameplay demo at E3 2011. It was an unforgettable debut, with the villain performing an elaborate, violent monologue about the definition of insanity. It’s a speech that instantly became a fan favourite.
“From the very beginning, Vaas was a lightning rod,” says Yohalem. “When that E3 trailer came out, people were obsessed with him. He had this incredible gravity.”