The game is set in an island nation called Yara. Yara is very clearly meant to be a stand-in for Cuba. The reserve history of Yara goes something like this. Yara underwent a war of liberation. I don’t remember if they explicitly say that it was to overthrow Yanqui colonialism but it seems to be implied. This is similar to what happened in Cuba. But from here, the world veers into the realm of alternate timelines.
This war of liberation results in someone called Anton Castillo becoming the sole dictator of Yara. Yara is under American blockade (like Cuba). Yara has developed a drug that stops cancer cells from metastasising. Cuba has also made some progress against cancer coincidentally. Thia drug is Yara’s chief export. The problem is that it is produced by using a poisonous fertiliser on tobacco plantations. (Cuba is also heavily reliant on its tobacco export.) So Anton Castillo’s regime forces the poor to work on the fields despite the deleterious effects of this poisonous fertilizer. They also perform brutal human experimentation on the underpriviliged. Yara sells this drug to everyone except the US because the US has embargoed them.
So you play as a guerilla who is a member of a liberation movement trying to overthrow Castillo. You are supposed to form a coalition with other guerilla groups to achieve this end. There isn’t much ideology to these movements. Sometimes they talk about the important of free elections but that’s it.
My question is… why? Why do all this? Why not just let me liberate Yara from Yanquis and their stooges which would be far less confusing?
tbh, I think you can really only attest that to FC3. In 1 you don’t fight locals nor save any local populations or something like that. The first game is just a generic tropical island where you fight some mercenaries led by a cartoony villain that produces mutant soldiers. FC2 has like 10 protagonists, of which several are non-white you can choose from and from what I remember you are not there to save the country, you’re just there to kill some arms dealer and earn some money (iirc the game ends with you committing suicide). In FC5 you fought against an American religious militia. Far Cry 4 protag is ethnically a Kyrati (country game takes place in) but yeah, he is kinda americanized. In FC6 you play a local though, but that game of course is still western propaganda imo.
The Far Cry games are surely not really progressive, but I don’t think they are as blatantly chauvinistic as some people attest them to be.
The problem isn’t that they are as bad as say, Call of Duty with the western chauvinism, but that they still present problematic ideas. They are much more subtle about it, which means their predominately white, western audience doesn’t pick up on these ideas and doesn’t question them, things like the idea of the “white savior” or even just non white countries always having problems with warlords and drug kingpins, “just cause” (oh wait, wrong franchise. Uhh…it’s a far cry from a comprehensive understanding of social issues in these nations.)