Far Cry 6 takes place in a fictional nation called Yara. It’s an obvious analog for Cuba, and the inhabitants are of Spanish descent. As such, there’s a lot of references to Latin and Spanish tradition. While some of this is done tastefully, the most astonishing addition, one which I’m shocked made it into the game, is a cockfighting minigame.
The cockfighting minigame in Far Cry 6 takes the form of a fighting game. Players pick their rooster and take on opponents just like in Street Fighter, Tekken, or Mortal Kombat. There are even special moves.
Why the cockfighting minigame in Far Cry 6 is a problem
Now, I’m not a pearl-clutcher. I enjoy a good joke, especially one with this much effort put into it. Cockfighting is legal in Cuba, so it’d make sense for it to take place on Yara as well. The big issue here is with tone. I’ve criticized Far Cry’s wild tonal problems in the past, and I’m sad to see the problem continues to persist throughout Far Cry 6’s design.
Far Cry 6 is a game where you’ll see a cutscene with one of the protagonist’s friends pistol-whipped to death in a dank prison and then have a zany old revolutionary talk to you about how fun being a guerilla is in the next. It’s hard to tell when to take things seriously when the game constantly flips between irreverent and deadly serious.
Almost every game that Ubisoft produces feels disjointed, and half thought out. The cockfighting minigame is a perfect example. Suppose we’re to take the game seriously; in that case, Dani and the rebels enjoy forcing animals to fight each other to the death for their amusement, or at least that’d be the case if Ubisoft didn’t sugarcoat the whole thing. In the game, no one acknowledges that real cockfights last until a rooster is severely injured or dead. They all pretend it’s at most like cockwrestling, and the chickens just get tired and give up or something. It’s bizarre to be given a side mission to find a missing spur for a rooster because it’s “their favorite” and also know that in the real world that people tie those metal spurs to their roosters to make them more effective at killing during the fight.
There’s a complete lack of introspection in the development of these games. Someone saw that cockfights were part of Cuban culture and thought it’d be funny to make a minigame. However, there’s no in-game realization by the Yarans that what they’re doing is wrong. In fact, one of the collectibles in the game is more chickens for your fighting roster. That’s right — Dani can have a whole stable of fighting birds.
As Yara is fictional, it’s unfortunate that Ubisoft didn’t adapt another, more positive aspect of Cuban culture for the game. Alternatively, they could have developed cockfighting into something a little less barbaric that would have better gelled with Far Cry 6’s tone — think cockracing or cockdancing.
Most people who play Far Cry 6 won’t have ever spent any extended amount of time with a live chicken. So the cockfighting minigame will be just another goofy part of the game. After all, chickens are livestock, so most people don’t empathize with them. On the flip side, imagine if it was a dogfighting minigame? No one wants to be a virtual Michael Vick. Despite this, somewhere, someone thought it was just fine to celebrate a tradition of animal cruelty just because it’s chickens killing each other instead of people’s pets.
