Far Cry Primal’s 10,000 BCE Stone Age setting takes us back into human prehistory, casting us as a hunter called Takkar, who’s part of a fractured tribe known as the Wenja. You play as Takkar, a member of the near extinct Wenja tribe, who must build villages to provide protection from the aggressive animals, the cannibalistic Udam tribe and the doomsday Izila tribe.
Far Cry Primal is quite unlike any of the previous games in the series, as it throws you back to prehistoric times, when humans lived in primitive tribes and when woolly mammoths and sabre-tooth tigers still roamed the planet You’ll play as Takkar and try to save and reunite the Wenja tribe in land of Oros, while facing off against the savage and cannibalistic Udam and the fire worshipping Izila tribes. But as much as I love Oros as a setting and all the animal-based tomfoolery, I can’t shake the feeling of déjà vu.
If you’ve invested significant time in Far Cry 3 or 4 (also true for Far Cry 5), you’ll find your enjoyment of Primal dampened by its deep-rooted similarity to those games. The game takes place in Oros, a lush valley just below an Ice Age permafrost where three early human tribes are competing for dominance: the Wenja, the tribe of the playable character, Takkar; the Udam, a more Neanderthal-like, bloodthirsty tribe that still lives in caves; and the Izila, a technologically superior but morally questionable tribe.
Everything about this game feels brutal, with the focus this time being more on melee combat, which makes sense as it is reflective of the time period it is set in. My biggest qualms with the earlier games was that the character progression of the protagonists made no sense; developing from an innocent bystander into this uber-survivalist with a knack for showing enemies what the sharp end of knife feels like did not make sense to me. But that same theme flows perfectly into the settings of Primal.
Ubisoft (Far Cry 5, Far Cry New Dawn,…etc.) has, in fact, doubled down on the hunter/gatherer part of the experience, pushing players to stalk rare animals and find stones and wood to upgrade huts in the Wenja village. In Primal you play Takkar, a member of the Wenja tribe, who loses his hunting partners to a sabretooth tiger-attack, and stumbles upon a Wenja woman called Sayla, who introduces him to a nicely appointed cave which is in the perfect position at which to establish a village.
Resigned to proceed alone, Takkar meets Sayla (Cara Ricketts), a Wenja gatherer whose life he saves, and once they arrive at Oros, Sayla informs Takkar that the Wenja are scattered and homeless across the land after their village was destroyed by Ull (DeLaRosa Rivera), leader of the Neanderthal -like Udam tribe who live in the northern mountains, prize warfare and hunting, and frequently kidnap Wenja to cannibalize them.
Far Cry Primal is an amazing standalone game title, one of the best fps games out there, praised for concept and settings. It has enough historical research meat to avoid complaints from the history nerds playing it. It is an innovative open world gameplay, bringing together massive beasts, breathtaking environments, and unpredictable savage encounters. Even if slightly older, it has a great engine and top graphics… it really worth to buy cheap games like this one! Highly recommended!
