Far Cry 5

Ubisoft Montreal's 2018 entry moves the series to Hope County, Montana, where a doomsday cult has taken over and cut the valley off. Structurally it is the series' most flexible: the map opens entirely from the start with no towers to climb, and three lieutenants' regions can be tackled in any order, each filling a resistance meter through whatever activities you choose. Guns for Hire let you recruit specialists including a bear and a cougar, and the co-op campaign supports the whole thing. The sandbox is the best it had been - aircraft, systemic fire, wingsuits, and an arcade mode with a full map editor. The story is the sticking point. It sets up a serious subject and then interrupts your progress with forced abduction sequences regardless of what you were doing, and its ending is a shrug that annoyed almost everyone. New Dawn, its post-apocalyptic sequel, reuses the map. Played as a systemic playground rather than a narrative, it is one of the strongest in the series.