Far Cry 6 Joseph: Collapse DLC Review

ign.com:

After two of these roguelite DLCs so far, the formula for Far Cry 6’s villain-centric expansions has become predictable: you enter a character’s mind, confronting their demons and learning more about their backstory while shooting everything in sight. Thus, Joseph: Collapse has a lot of the same strengths and shortcomings of Vaas’ Insanity and Pagan Min’s Control that came before it. Unlike those, though, this final entry in the trilogy has the critical flaw of starring the weakest villain of the bunch – by quite a wide margin – in Joseph Seed. The Zen-like militant cult leader from Far Cry 5 never made much of an impression on me aside from his unmistakable love of yellow aviators, and Collapse does little to make him more interesting.

For those who didn’t finish Far Cry 5’s campaign or skipped the follow up Far Cry: New Dawn, consider this a necessary spoiler warning, but I have to talk about Collapse’s ill-conceived attempt at redeeming the mass-murdering psychopath that serves as the main antagonist in those games. It’s important in Collapse, because most of the story is centered around that redemption arc and Joseph’s attempts at denying his egomaniacal nature. It’s a tough sell, frankly, and one that doesn’t feel particularly earned – you just hear him scream that he’s sorry quite a bit as you direct him to commit acts of unspeakable violence. Little time is spent on justifying why he was so dang evil in Far Cry 5 aside from it being in his nature and that he’s generally not a considerate human being.

Story problems aren’t the only issues I have with Joseph’s apology tour, either. For me, the biggest fault with the execution of the Far Cry roguelite pilgrimage is that it isn’t challenging enough to lend itself well