We recently had a chance to take Far Cry 5 through its open-world paces with no direction. Just the game's intro and then our own gameplay take on what this new open-world space has to offer, and we couldn't have walked away more excited based on a number of design changes Ubisoft has made to their long-running series...

No towers is first (well, there's one). But the open-ended player-focused tilt on gameplay and game-design here really is a liberating standout point of maturation from the studio. Here's a snippet from my hands-on:

While Vaas was a straight-up crazy kind of cat, Joseph Seed is on another plane. He’s the Boyd Crowder of this here lil’ ditty, to continue the Justified references, but there’s no real good in him. He’s an integral part of that intro to the game, too. It’s powerful and he emerges a powerful man. A true big-bad. And while it’s quick, the game has set-piece reminders for you all over the place as to the level of his influence. This is a free part of the country, after all. It’s sort of written into the Declaration of Independence in real-life and this Canadian-developed bit of storytelling never lets you forget that -- an art imitates life kind of thing.

And how you’re here and just how crazy this whole situation is… well, it has a vein of truth to it all, is all I’m saying.

Click here for our full hands-on Far Cry 5 preview.