Far Cry TV showrunner won't adapt any of the games, Far Cry 4 creative director isn't happy about it

Noah Hawley, executive producer of the live action Far Cry series revealed (then quickly unrevealed, but too late) last year, won't adapt any of the games. He's doing his own thing instead.

"It was an exciting idea that we could build an anthology game adaptation where each season is a different story about civilized people thrown into situations where they have to become increasingly uncivilized," Hawley told Deadline.

"I'm not specifically adapting any of the games that they've put out—I'm saying much as I did with the Coens [Hawley was the chief creator of the Fargo series] or X-Men [he created FX's Legion] or Alien, 'Let me have a dialog with this franchise, because this is what I think a Far Cry story is'." With last year's Alien: Earth, Hawley more or less ignored the series canon to tell his own story.

Hawley also called for "a larger conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of adapting videogames," citing structural differences between games and television.

"When you play a videogame, you only really move forward through the gameplay section, and then you have these cutscenes that you can skip, so when you go to adapt those games you have to be aware that makes the human drama kind of irrelevant to the storyline," Hawley said. "That is death for a show."

I don't buy that take. The idea of Far Cry's story being propelled by Hurk and me careening through rural Montana in a beat-up hatchback with a rocket launcher hanging out the back window is fun, but doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Then again, Hawley probably knows more about making TV than I do. And as someone who doesn't skip cutscenes—even in a Far Cry game—I might be an outlier.

Hawley's approach hasn't been universally welcomed. Plenty of folks in the Far Cry subreddit don't care for it, and Far Cry 4 creative director Alex Hutchinson seemed to take issue with it as well.

I see where Hawley's coming from. Far Cry is a formula: a guy, some pals, and a situation that can only be resolved through persistent application of extreme violence. The details don't matter, because none of them provide an especially compelling narrative to begin with. Lots of fans cite Vaas from Far Cry 3 as a peak villain, but the batshit ending of Far Cry 5 is the real gold.

When you view Far Cry as a parable about stripping away the veneer of civilization, told over and over again, you can tell pretty much whatever tale you'd like and it'll work.