My favorite moments in Far Cry 5 are quiet. Just me and my dog Boomer, wandering through the morning fog as it sprawls across fields of dry grass and scrub brush, a nearby brook and some crowing birds the only complement to my own footfalls. It’s in these moments I can really sit and appreciate the majesty of Ubisoft’s world, this faux-Montana with its soaring mountains, its golden farmlands and sleepy waterways, its hyper-aggressive wildlife.It’s almost enough to make you forget about everything that’s gone wrong, here.

Far Cry 5 is caught up in all sorts of discussions I’ve no doubt it didn’t want to be caught up in. “What responsibility, if any, do games have to reflect societal concerns?” “Why are big-budget games so afraid of saying anything about anything, and how can we fix it?” And so on.