Far Cry Primal open-world first-person shooter in the prehistoric world

Daniel Soresco
4 min readAug 20, 2019

Ubisoft’s Far Cry Primal takes players back to the Stone Age, but the gameplay and narrative feel far from prehistoric in this primitive, open-world game. Takkar does get to meet some great characters — Batari, the female leader of the Izila, manages to be both homicidal and alluring, and many of the Wenja characters have hilarious eccentricities, such as Sayla’s penchant for collecting the ears of dead Udam — but unlike previous Far Cry games, there’s no arch-villain providing a focal point and, ultimately, the story fizzles out in a vaguely unsatisfying manner (although it sets itself up well for extension via downloadable content). Far Cry Primal is set in the Stone Age, where you can tame animals that will help you take down enemies.

Far Cry Primal by Ubisoft
Far Cry Primal by Ubisoft (2016)

Players take on the role of a Wenja tribesman named Takkar ( Elias Toufexis ), 10 who is stranded in Oros with no weapons after his hunting party is ambushed by a saber-tooth tiger. This is the best Stone Age game ever done, makes you feel like you are back in time surrounded by this incredible nature and animals. Sure, there’s a dedication to setting that’s impressive — Ubisoft drafted in linguists to create three distinct languages for the three tribes that would have been appropriate for the time — but Primal’s story is pretty boring.

Far Cry Primal by Ubisoft
Far Cry Primal by Ubisoft (2016)

On the surface Far Cry Primal looks pretty different to the previous Far Cry games; it’s set in 10,000bc and you’re a caveman, you mostly use melee weapons, you can tame animals to fight for you etc. With no real central storyline or universe tying it down, Ubisoft has taken a series best known for sending players trekking through the present-day wilderness hunting drug lords and mercenaries, and flung it 12,000 years back in time with Far Cry Primal.

Far Cry Primal by Ubisoft
Far Cry Primal by Ubisoft (2016)

Compared with the other ps4 games and xbox one games released by Ubisoft, Primal is set in a large open world filled with roaming animals of many types, hunting members of the Udam and Izila clans, completing rather simplistic missions, and building up your skills, inventory, and village. This year’s entry, Primal, takes players to the stone age where they’ll take on the role of Takkar, a prehistoric man and member of the Wenja tribe. The other 75% of play time is spent doing less fun tasks: collecting the materials needed to craft said weapons, embarking on bland escort missions to rebuild your tribe and hearing the words “Takkar” and “Wenja” more times than you can count.

Far Cry Primal by Ubisoft
Far Cry Primal by Ubisoft (2016)

Storming outposts, searching for collectibles in every nook and cranny, riding large animals into battle, and hunting and scavenging — it’s the third time Ubisoft has drawn from this well for the Far Cry series. This is one of the best console games (ps4 games or xbox one games). You play as a stone age hunter named Takkar, and your goal is to secure a safe haven for your people, the wandering Wenja tribe. About an hour into Far Cry Primal — which sees Ubisoft Montreal making a bold departure from previous entries in its blockbuster open world action series by pushing the setting back some twelve millennia, smack in the middle of the Stone Age — the reality of the world I was exploring began to set in.

Far Cry Primal by Ubisoft (2016)

“Primal” tries something new within the Far Cry games series, and nails nearly everything it sets out to do, resulting one of the best console games (if you wonder where you can buy cheap ps4 games, I suggest you to search online). Taking away guns and adding animals is a breath of fresh air not just within the series, but within video games in general. There have been many games that have included animal companions, but none of them have pulled them off as well as Primal.” Throughout the game Takkar will be able to tame bears, tigers, wolves and even badgers that will fight along his side. Though I may have obsessively collected almost all of the animal skins and tried to craft every single upgrade in the past few Far Cry games, I don’t know that I was quite ready for Far Cry: Primal , a game that rewinds time back to 10,000BCE, when even the weapons had to be crafted out of wood and various animal parts.

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