Cue the mystical music, it’s time for our Far Cry Primal “Takkar” trailer breakdown.
In what seems to be a swamp we instantly meet one creepy mystical shaman who feeds us what looks to be liquefied brains - eyeballs included - out of a lovely skull mug. We can immediately tell this game is going to be gruesome.
Yummy.
What could the drinking of the gooey stuff do for us? My immediate reaction is that the drugged up missions will be back, however, instead of two potheads injecting the player with whatever funky drug they’ve mixed up, we’ll give that job to our friendly neighborhood shaman.
After the shaman lets out a laugh just as terrifying as his whole persona, a ton of images fly by. You probably missed some of these. Firstly a moose or caribou-esque animal in a forest. Nothing special here. Next a menacing cave drawing.
Prophecy?
Is it some sort of prophecy by chance? The central figure is wearing a horned headdress - much like the image of the caribou/moose before it. This guy is probably the player leading his tribe (the people around him). The tribe is surrounded by darkness - some ominous foreshadowing - and there are very large creatures approaching from the left. Demons, maybe?
Next we see what I can only describe as spirit animals scattered about a forest.
Could the player be tripping from too much brain juice?
The possibility that this scene happens right after the good ol’ shaman hits us up is high (no pun intended). We’ve got golden spectre-y owls and wolves moving through the forest… definitely not something that will happen often in the campaign.
The next frame plays host to a large rock, with, for lack of a better term, caveman imagery painted over it. Then we see what will probably be the biggest turning point of the entire game. Get ready for SPOILERS.
We see a flash of a solar eclipse with a large eagle flying below it and then we get a larger image - my personal favorite part of the trailer.
Could this be a MAJOR part of the story? YES!
This is a seriously cool image. Something massive is going to happen in the game when the player sees this. This will either be the turning point of the game or the final scene. We’ve got a Stonehenge-esque rock circle with cavemen script and a massive solar eclipse. There also seems to be some sort of solar flare shooting off to the right of the screen. Epic, and to think: we’re only 20 seconds into the trailer.
A LAND OF EPIC BEAUTY
The trailer slows down and shows the calm before the storm. NPCs are living their lives, minding their own business, gathering, hunting mammoth. The graphics and lighting effects are surreal. If Ubisoft manages to pull this off in-game people are going to go berserk.
A TIME OF BRUTAL SAVAGERY
Speaking of berserk, we get our first look at the beautiful Ull, seemingly the main enemy of the story.
Charming isn’t he?
Ull does the usual bad guy thing and threatens to feed the player to his tribe, who are obviously cannibals - lovely. One extra thing to point out about this still: there’s a small child next to Ull. His son perhaps?
After this scene we get a glimpse of what Ull is capable of. He’s seen with his tribe throwing people off cliffs, smashing people in the face with clubs, and feeding his enemies to a sabertooth cat. The player extends a hand to try to save a fellow NPC, but fails to do so.
Ritualistic sacrifice? Is the shaman involved?
Enter: the boys in blue. No, not the cops! Some strange tribespeople dressed and painted in blue arrive and stab some poor souls on a bridge. Ull didn’t seem to be wearing blue. Is this our tribe? ANOTHER tribe? Is the shaman involved?
We watch as a man that could possibly be the hero falls to his knees, dead cavepeople all around him. A woman cries out in the night.
ONE MAN WILL LEAD HIS TRIBE
A few shots fly by with a central character leading what seem to be NPCs through the forest. One scene sticks out…
Could our hero be Professor Xavier? How does he control the cat?
A superhero team up of spear-guy and his furry friend. This must be a high-level ability. From what we’ve seen the sabertooth kittens do before, they could annihilate most of an enemy tribe in minutes.
IN THE BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL
The player moves his hands to his mouth and makes a bird call. An owl bursts through the space-time continuum (or so it seems) and comes to our aid. Another ability for sure - this one lower on the scale. Summoning birds and summoning sabertooth cats are two very different things.
Our hero raises a spear, an enemy (that looks a lot like Ull) runs toward him. We catch a glimpse of a female NPC presumably on our tribe - a love interest perhaps? The ESRB content descriptors did include “Nudity” and “Sexual Content” after-all.
We see a man using a log as a drum kit as the pace of the music quickens. Our lone hero wanders through a couple canyons, the shaman shows his face again, then suddenly the blue people are back.
This woman is a particularly interesting character.
Now, not to offend anyone (I’m all for equality) but in the stone ages, women were not particularly in a position of power. This woman seems to be the leader of the blue tribe but that probably isn’t the case. She’s likely some kind of witch or shaman.
Whenever she appears in the trailer there’s fire and strange masks, lots of hand movements… she’s always in a ritualistic setting. She may be channeling her inner Citra (the goddess from Far Cry 3), or she could be, as above mentioned, a shaman.
We get a few more images of the boys in blue all sporting fancy masks and another look at Ull. His face is hideously scarred.
We are told, “You must kill Ull, and restore our homeland.” Did Ull take our homeland from us? The woman that tells us this appears to be the same woman that we assumed would be a love interest earlier, though she may be manipulating the protagonist at this point.
Werewolves? I thought this was Far Cry not The Elder Scrolls…
Okay, maybe it’s just a dire wolf. Wait, this isn’t Game of Thrones either! Anyways, a massive wolf teams up with the guy on the far left to take down the two guys on the right. This could be another ability, much like the sabertooth cat team-up earlier.
Another semi-logical conclusion is that left guy started attacking right guys and - without left guy’s knowledge - the wolf just decided it was lunch time.
We see a bear attack the player and the creepy blue woman holds a knife to our throat.
A snowy setting is a nice change of pace.
The snow brings new enemies and dawns a whole new light on the game. The snow leopard attacks what looks like Ull, but I’m more concerned with the season itself.
Will Far Cry Primal have constantly shifting seasons or is the snow just a byproduct of being too far north? Only time will tell.
Next we get some hand-to-hand combat with three of the most menacing enemies in the game - Ull, a wooly mammoth, and another dire wolf.
RISE ABOVE EXTINCTION
A lot of action in the last few seconds of this trailer. The player fighting people, the player fighting animals, NPCs fighting animals, animals fighting animals. One scene sticks out in particular.
Red guys fighting blue guys. Who’s good? Who’s bad? Who cares?
Yes, this confirms suspicions from earlier, the red guys are bad, the blue guys are bad, and the red and blue guys don’t like each other, meaning the game includes AT LEAST three tribes including the player’s.
What’s great about having more than one rival tribe is provoking them into hunting each other. This could possibly cause distractions that a tactical player can use as an advantage.
We get one more ominous image before the player spears some guy Assassin’s Creed style and the trailer ends.
This is one creepy mutha.
I’m going to go out on a limb and make a huge guess at the game’s plot with no evidence. I think this creepy, hooded guy is the player. At some point down the line something crazy is going to happen to our man and he’ll have to resort to the shaman and his wacky ways, landing him in this photo. Just speculation, but I’m sticking to it.
Just like that, the trailer comes to an end and we get a reminder of the release date, February 23rd, 2016.
What do you think about all of these subtle images in the trailer? Speculate in the comments section below!
