Far Cry New Dawn

Far Cry New Dawn is a post-apocalyptic spin-off set seventeen years after the nuclear incidents in Far Cry 5, once again bringing players to Hope County, Montana. This region has been transformed into the lively, overgrown, and vividly coloured wasteland called Prosperity, where survivors have reestablished themselves among the ruins of the old world. The player takes on the role of the Captain, a customizable, silent character who leads the scattered survivors in their struggle against the Highwaymen, a harsh scavenger cult led by twin sisters Mickey and Lou, who have taken control of the area's resources and are terrorising the remaining settlements.

The main element of the game involves scavenging and building bases: players explore the lush, pink-and-purple landscape to gather ethanol, a key resource used to upgrade Prosperity's facilities, make high-quality weapons, and unlock new vehicles and companions. The game also features Expeditions, several self-contained, replayable missions that take players outside Hope County to a variety of short sandbox environments (such as a crashed space station, a swampy ship graveyard and a run-down theme park), in which they must carry out specific objectives and then escape by helicopter while battling off endless waves of enemies, thus providing a new kind of gameplay experience and unique rewards.

The combat in Far Cry New Dawn takes on a lighter, more arcade-like character while still maintaining the series' hallmark emergent sandbox chaos, featuring a color-coded tiered weapon system (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary) according to which the stats and effectiveness of weapons are based on their rarity rather than on the type of ammunition used, thus prompting players to continually upgrade and look for better equipment. The most notable weapon is the Saw Launcher. This wonderfully absurd DIY device fires spinning sawblades which can bounce off surfaces and decapitate several enemies with a single shot, fully embodying the game's exaggerated, Mad Max-style atmosphere. Players are also able to make makeshift explosives, Molotovs, and proximity mines, and the vehicles now include customizable 'cars with turrets' as well as a working helicopter for aerial supremacy.

The Expeditions system serves as a second progression route, with each expedition offering three difficulty levels that provide increasingly rare crafting materials and weapon blueprints, while requiring players to adapt to new environments and enemy types (such as heavily armoured flamethrower users and stealthy snipers). The Guns for Hire system makes a return with a smaller but more specialised lineup, consisting of the returning characters from Far Cry 5 (such as the sniper Grace Armstrong and the pilot Nick Rye) together with new animal companions like Timber the wolf and Horatio the boar, each of which has special abilities that can be improved by investing resources.