Far Cry 5 is just a few weeks away and we finally had the opportunity to get our hands on the PC version. It looks amazing, but more important to most players will be how many buttons and gears they can tinker with to optimize it for their system. While we're still waiting on code to see how Far Cry 5 runs, we can at least eyeball the graphics settings and display options until then. Keep in mind that this is a preview build, so what you see is subject to change. 

The expected display options are present with the welcome addition of the menu display option, which you can enable to shunt some UI elements off to another monitor entirely. I'm a big fan of the VRAM meter too, a recent trend that helps visualize what your PC might be capable of. 

The environment detail options are about what I expected, broken down by the usual categories for an open world game set in a wilder environment. Anti-aliasing options are limited to SMAA and TAA, though the latter isn't supported by multi-GPU setups.

I dig the addition of brightness and contrast adjustment meters alongside the usual gamma scale. A colorblind mode is available too, though we won't know how expansive or effective the setting is until Far Cry 5 is out in the wild. 

The blessed FOV scaler is there, and it goes pretty high too. I like a nice 90, which sits at the halfway point on the scale. Those that prefer fisheyed views should be happy here. Good news for framerate diehards: it's not locked unless you want it to be. For anyone aiming to get a steady 60 at 4K, it's a welcome feature, but if you like your framerates unimpinged, then there's nothing to worry about here. Resolution scaling is there too, a feature that adjusts the rendered resolution independent of the display resolution. If you want to run Far Cry 5 on a 4K display but can't quite juice it, you can scale down the resolution until things flow smoothly. And if you're rolling with a trusty 1920x1080 display but want to sharpen the jaggies, bumping up the resolution scaling should provide a sharper image (at a performance cost, of course).

None of this matters too much if Far Cry 5 doesn't run well, but I don't expect major issues. Previous Far Cry games haven't been a nightmare on PC in my experience, though that may not be the case for everyone. We'll be sure to run it through the benchmark ringer when it's released on March 27. 

 VIDEO: 30 minutes of Far Cry 5 singleplayer running on PC, also available on YouTube. 

VIDEO: 30 minutes of Far Cry 5 singleplayer running on PC, also available on YouTube.

We finally got our hands on the PC version of Far Cry 5 and it looks and feels as great as we hoped. Unlike our previous hands-on, this demo took us to the northern third of the map, a mountainous and wooded area where we make friends with a bear named Cheeseburger, kill a lot of cultists and their brainwashed wolf companions, and catch a few fat trout. Co-op was on display too, which you can watch below. My partner and I rescue some hostages, find the keys to a hidden bunker, and try not to crash our helicopters while  driving out the cultist threat. We are not the best pilots. 

VIDEO: 30 minutes of Far Cry 5 co-op running on PC, also available on YouTube. 

AMD and Ubisoft have partnered to gift Far Cry 5 to gamers who purchase a select prebuilt PC. Qualifying systems must have a Radeon RX Vega 64, Radeon RX Vega 56, or Radeon RX 580 graphics card inside and come from a specific list of vendors, of which there are several.

In the US, system builders participating in the program include AVA Direct, CyberPower PC, Cybertron PC, Digital Storm, Extreme PC, Falcon Northwest, iBuyPower, Maingear, Origin PC, Puget Systems, Velocity Micro, Xidax, and Xotic. There are several more in the EMEA region and other territories that are participating as well.

Free game incentives are not unusual, though in what's become an unfortunate sign of the current times, the promotion only applies to prebuilt PCs and not standalone graphics cards. While not stated, this seems to be an acknowledgement that the demand created by cryptocurrency mining has caused a shortage of standalone cards, which are incredibly difficult to find in stock and at a fair price. That's not the case with system builders, however, hence why AMD can run a promotion like this.

How it works is after you purchase a qualifying system, you'll receive a coupon code for Far Cry that you can redeem at AMD's rewards site for your Uplay library. The promotion is in effect now and runs through May 20, 2018, and you have until July 15 to claim your copy. Just bear in mind that you'll have to wait until the game releases on March 27 to actually play it.

If you're interested in this offer, be sure to read through the fine print (PDF).

The new live-action trailer for the upcoming Montana mayhem simulator Far Cry 5 is a doozie. It tells the story of Joseph Seed before he was known as the Father, and his early days with Pastor Jerome. 

Jerome Jeffries is a Gulf War veteran who served as a priest in Hope County for 15 years. He befriended Joseph Seed during that time, but the two came into conflict once Seed's Project and Eden's Gate cult seized power. Jeffries was beaten and left for dead—a flash of the aftermath can be seen in the trailer—but he survived, and ultimately takes up arms against the cult as part of the Resistance. 

The trailer doesn't say much that we didn't already know, but it sets a hell of a mood (and once again, there's that all-over-the-place tonal dissonance) and offers some insight into just how much sway Seed has over his followers: They're obviously disconcerted by the day's events, but still aren't exactly beating a path to the door. 

Far Cry 5 comes out on March 27. We got some hands-on time with it last month. 

One of the hooks in Far Cry 5 is that while you, the player, are obviously responsible for the success of the fight against the religious cult behind all the trouble in your little slice of Montana, you don't have to carry the fight alone. The "Resistance" trailer unveiled in December 2017 gave us a quick look at some of the people who can lend a hand, but now we've got proper introductions to each, including—as expected—Hurk "Dangerously Stupid" Drubman Jr., a man who loves to point and shoot. 

Each of the seven characters who appear in the trailer has a unique skill and reason for fighting the cult. Grace Armstrong, a sniper and former soldier, fights to keep hope alive, for instance, while Sharky Boshaw, the pyrotechnician (which is to say, he has a flamethrower) fights because he has no friends. Each character also seems best suited to a particular style of fighting: Jess Black is basically a ninja, while Hurk's oddly attractive mom Adelaide employs a pair of .50s mounted to a helicopter. Those are definitely illegal in Canada, by the way. 

Far Cry 5 comes out on March 27. We got some hands-on time with it earlier this month, and if you haven't seen them yet you can check out the system requirements here.