How Far Cry: New Dawn Has Gaming's Most Realistic Apocalypse
So (SPOILERS) the canonical ending of Far Cry 5 sees the world consumed by nuclear fire. And next year, Far Cry: New Dawn is giving players the chance to put it back together again, piece by bloody piece.
Unlike other post-apocalyptic games, though, the world of New Dawn isn't an endless sea of drab grays and browns. It's colorful. It's vibrant. It's the rainbow unicorn frappe of apocalypses, and we're here for it. And according to Jean-Sebastien Decant, the game's creative director, this is a scientifically accurate depiction of what the post-apocalypse would likely look like:
"We studied what's happened on our planet in the past 200 years in terms of natural disasters, wars, and nuclear catastrophe. We looked at the impact on environments, weather patterns, wildlife, and population. We created our own model and ran it for 15 to 20 years .
We even presented the model to two meteorologists who specialize in building 'what if' models. They've been working with the US government and military to create these scenarios and see how the US could respond. They really helped us get into the details."
The result was Hope County 2.0. Following Far Cry 5, the world undergoes a period of nuclear winter that lasts six years, the end result being the transformation of major population centers into gigantic deserts. This winter then cedes, bringing forth sun, rain, and a super-bloom, an expanse of plant life that covers everything in living color.
As Decant notes, this actually happened in Southern California several years ago, after a glut of rainfall ended a three-year drought. The subsequent explosion in wildflowers was so spectacular that they could be seen from space. And check out the bodacious color scheme. We'd joke about those images being screenshots from New Dawn, but the fact that no one has a gun or is getting mauled by a boar is a huge giveaway.
