Far Cry: The Real Places Behind Every Game

Jack Carver runs a boat-charter business in the South Pacific until a journalist hires him to take her secretly to an uncharted island in Micronesia. Then his boat is blown apart by a rocket and the islands become a battlefield. The setting is a South Pacific archipelago of beaches, rain forest, canyons and swamps, and several of its mazes reuse the remains of Japanese World War II-era bunkers and fortifications. Crytek released the game for Windows in March 2004.

Location precision: The game's island group is invented; the pin marks Micronesia, where the story places it.

Far Cry 2 drops a mercenary into an unnamed African nation where civil war rages between two rebel factions while the mercenary hunts an arms dealer. The developers decided not to set it in a real country, but chose Kenya as the model for its mix of environments. In July 2007 Ubisoft sent a team to Kenya and parts of Tanzania, where they spent two weeks travelling and camping on the savanna instead of staying in hotels. They also recorded much of the game's ambient sound live on that trip.

Location precision: The game's country is unnamed; the pin marks Kenya, the region its developers chose to emulate.

Far Cry 3 takes place on the fictional Rook Islands, a tropical archipelago players can explore freely. The story begins in the real world: Jason Brody is on vacation with friends in Bangkok, Thailand, when a skydiving trip lands them on an island held by pirates. Ubisoft released the game in November 2012. This is the one entry where no source names a real-world region as the model, so the map shows no pin and the stop keeps its place in the sequence.

Location precision: The Rook Islands are fictional and the sources name no real model, so this stop is left unpinned.

Kyrat is a fictional country in the Himalayas. Its builders merged elements from real-world regions including India, Nepal and Tibet, then exaggerated them. To make the world credible, the studio sent a team to Nepal to experience and record the local culture. Certain aspects of the game were also inspired by the Nepalese Civil War. The game came out in 2014.

Location precision: Kyrat is fictional; the pin marks Nepal, one of the real regions the developers merged into it.

Primal travels back to 10,000 BC, the end of the Upper Paleolithic. It takes place in the fictional Oros valley in the Carpathian Mountains, in today's Slovakia. Some in-game peaks can easily be recognised as the Tre Cime di Lavaredo. Much of the map is modified from South Kyrat, the Himalayan country of the previous game. Players take the role of a stranded tribesman. Ubisoft released the game on 23 February 2016.

Location precision: Oros is fictional; the pin marks Slovakia, where the game's setting article places it.

Far Cry 5 is set in the fictional Hope County, Montana, where a preacher leads a doomsday cult. The team chose Montana because the state lies on the frontier of the United States, and the developers visited it for fourteen days, after a similar research trip to Nepal for Far Cry 4. The game was delayed a month to 27 March 2018. Its follow-up, Far Cry New Dawn (February 2019), returns to a smaller version of the Hope County map as survivors try to rebuild after the Collapse. After release, Montana's tourism board partnered with Ubisoft to use the game's imagery to promote southwestern Montana, the region that inspired Hope County.

Location precision: Hope County is fictional and inspired by southwestern Montana; the pin marks the state.

Far Cry 6 takes place in Yara, a fictional Caribbean island nation inspired by Cuba. Writer Khavari spent a month in Cuba speaking to residents, and the team took thousands of reference photos on Caribbean islands. Cuba's economic blockade gave the setting a timeless look, blending vintage cars with modern weapons. Khavari said the game does not make a political statement about what is happening in Cuba specifically. It was released on 7 October 2021.

Location precision: Yara is fictional; the pin marks Cuba, the main of several Caribbean inspirations.