Far Cry 5 Has A Frustrating Co-op Implementation

There’s a lot to love about Ubisoft’s latest FPS, Far Cry 5, but as I found out over the weekend, there’s also a lot to be annoyed over. Well, in actuality, it’s really only one thing: the lack of progression for your co-op partner. This is a design flaw that Ubisoft readily admitted before launch, so to its credit, it’s not trying to hide anything. But how a design like this got through at all is kind of baffling to me.

When I played a preview of the game a couple of weeks ago, I was told that the “entire game can be played in co-op”. I was excited to hear it, because action-packed games like these with proper co-op are not common enough. The reality is, while this statement is explicitly true, the design dictates that no one will want to co-op from the get-go.

In Far Cry 5, only the host will ever progress their story. The guest will help them along, and retain things like XP and items earned, but as soon as they go back to their solo campaign, they’ll be back where they were before co-op ever started. I found this out the hard way last night when my co-op partner dealt with a game crash. I decided to check out my solo campaign quickly to check on something, only to find myself back to the start of the game, after some four hours of gameplay.

From Ubisoft’s official Far Cry 5 FAQ

This design means that if you are only ever playing with your same co-op partner, and no one ever plays on their own, then you’re technically OK in that you will see everything the game has to offer. But it also means the guest won’t ever unlock their own story-related progress or even related achievements.

Ubisoft’s logic here is that when you’re joining a friend’s co-op session, you’re essentially becoming a gun for hire, not a second protagonist. At some level, I admire this design, but keeping truer to the story doesn’t feel more important to me than a second player progressing their campaign.

My personal option is to essentially play the game twice, if I want to progress, and play the content with my co-op partner. I’m having a really hard time grasping how developers never saw an issue with this. In my preview linked above, I drew comparisons to Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands, also an Ubisoft title, which doesn’t have this issue at all. I played through that game’s campaign twice purely in co-op, and never had story sync issues, even by accident. In Far Cry 5, those sync issues are implied in co-op.

All of that aside, I am really digging the game so far. The mechanics feel solid, and the graphics are simply awesome at times (the same could be said about Wildlands). I still plan to continue playing, because this is a world I want to explore more, and I really, really want to see Joseph Seed face his demise. So, I’ll put up with these odd design niggles, but I don’t feel I (or anyone else) should have to. Few people would play co-op games if this design was standard fare.