We kind of knew this was coming. Games have become even more spectacular when it comes to graphics. They've given us incredible cut-scenes where programming brilliance has really shone through. But it's arguable that no cut-scene has ever made us feel like we were watching a full-blown movie trailer.
The Far Cry 5 story trailer is something else. I once played Far Cry 3 for about three minutes. I got quite bored, and I imagine Far Cry 5 will be as boring, if not worse. But the trailer has surpassed any game trailer I have ever seen.
Don't forget that the series has always made a point of displaying truly brutal acts of violence. In the trailer we see a number of people meet their maker in some very depressing ways. If you're easily offended, don't watch it.
However, if you know the series, it won't worry you too much.
Watching the trailer a second time, it only reinforced my view that this is the most cinematic trailer ever created for a game. And what's interesting is that the graphics are only part of the story. Slick and impressive as they are, the visuals (at least in the coded sense) aren't exactly groundbreaking. The trailer isn't cinematic because of the graphics.
Instead, the trailer is what you would expect a Hollywood movie to throw at us for an 'event' movie. There's a chilling voiceover at the start, accompanied by beautiful imagery (a congregation, a girl happily running through a meadow) that really makes the antagonist, Joseph Seed, a conflicted bad guy.
The violence becomes more intense as the trailer continues. It all rises to a crescendo just like any action movie trailer from Hollywood. It has a soundtrack that a horror trailer would give us.
It's just amazing.
Of course, it still looks like a game. But it does it's job through making you care for the characters already, before the game is released. Movie trailers do that all the time.
Game trailers don't.
It's the first game trailer I've watched twice. At one point I swear Tom Cruise is walking towards the camera, Tom Cruise as the sex doctor wizard thing from Magnolia.
And the fact that I used the word 'camera' in that last sentence should tell you all you need to know about how cinematic this trailer is.