FAR: Changing Tides

The ending of FAR: Lone Sails left the door open for a sequel but didn’t exactly beg for one. Having now finished part two, I have to wonder if FAR was always conceived as a series or if the sequel was created in response to the first game’s popularity.

The biggest change here is that the desert of Lone Sails has been replaced by endless sea. Brown and grey have given way to blue and green, sand dunes to cresting waves, decrepit factories to sunken monoliths. Though the world is as desolate as ever, now there is a sense that hope lies just over the horizon.

FAR: Changing Tides does improve on certain aspects of its predecessor. Controlling your craft is slightly more involved this time around, for one. You travel in a bigger machine, one with more buttons to push and mechanisms to manage. The new craft is also more capable of exploring its surroundings than the first game’s land crawler was. To say more would be to spoil the surprises that await.

Yet for all the mechanical improvements, this sequel fails the match the emotional impact of its older sibling. In Lone Sails, the land crawler was like my best friend – my only friend, in fact. I had to keep it in tip-top shape and full of fuel or else I’d end up stranded in a wasteland with no food and no future. By shifting from desert to ocean, Changing Tides quiets that nagging sense of dread. No fuel? You can still drift along, riding the currents wherever they may take you. No food? There’s plenty of fish in the sea – literally. You can even watch whales swim past in the background. Though the moment-to-moment gameplay has largely remained the same, the change in scenery completely recontextualizes it, and not for the better.

Don’t get me wrong. Games shouldn’t all be post-apocalyptic journeys of brown and grey – a lesson the early years of the seventh console generation taught us well. But in the original FAR, the visuals, gameplay, and theme all felt tightly aligned; in the sequel, the resonance between these elements is weaker. If there’s going to be a FAR: The Third, it’ll need to get more creative. Would co-op play do the trick? I'm not sure, but I’d be shocked if the developers haven’t at least considered it.