A little over three months since release, Far Cry 5 finally has a photo mode. I had issues with the game, but its sprawling, coniferous forests and beautiful Montana sunsets were not among them. A photo mode feels like a no brainer. Unfortunately, the rest of this update serves more as a reminder of everything still missing from the game.
Title Update 8, released earlier today on console and PC during a short maintenance outage, includes bug fixes and a number of improvements and new assets in Far Cry Arcade, the game’s online multiplayer mode. The photo mode is the big feature here; it allows you to pause at any point and start moving a camera around to frame the perfect shot. It doesn’t have as many options as, say, the Assassin’s Creed: Origins photo mode, but it gets the job done.
Far Cry 5’s photo mode satisfies one key need simply by allowing you to flip the camera around and look at your character. This is a first-person game, but you can fully customize your character, from physical appearance and haircuts to special sunglasses and designer jeans, and it’s great to finally capture an image of the person you’ve decked out and taken on adventures.
The mode also has the usual adjustment options, like focus and aperture, as well as changes you can make to the game world, like the time of day and whether animals and other people appear in the picture. There are a handful of filters as well, including one named “Jacob” that casts the world in a hellish mixture of burnt reds, browns and oranges. It looks pretty cool, but mostly, it made me want even more filters. Sorry, I’m that guy who scrolls through all of the Instagram filters multiple times before finally choosing one, and if I could do that in Far Cry 5, too, I would.
The bigger disappointment, as players on the game’s forum and subreddit have been quick to point out, is that the latest update doesn’t include anything meaty in terms of gameplay. Far Cry 5 still doesn’t have a New Game+ mode or multiple save slots. So, when you get to the end of the game and there’s nothing left to do, your only choice is to start over from scratch or walk away. The game could’ve used more difficulty options since launch, as well as a more diverse selection of weapons, even if that simply meant replacing or rebalancing existing ones. And, for the love of God, it’s long past time Boomer was allowed to get in the fucking truck with me.