Video Game / Far Cry Primal

Rise above extinction.

Far Cry Primal is the fifth game in the Far Cry series, taking place at the end of the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago during the Mesolithic.

You play as Takkar (Voiced by Elias Toufexis), part of a hunting party of the Wenja tribe, heading to the formerly ice-covered valley of Oros in what will one day be called Europe. There the bulk of the Wenja have already settled and the starving hunting party hopes to rejoin their kin. An unfortunate encounter leaves Takkar the sole survivor of his hunting party and soon learns that Oros is not the peaceful settlement he was hoping for. The Wenja tribe's village has been destroyed, and the surviving Wenja, now leaderless, are scattered across Oros where they are being picked off by two rival tribes: the cannibalistic Udam and the Izila slavers. It's up to Takkar to rebuild the Wenja village and re-unite his people, do battle with the rival tribes and deal with the valley's numerous natural hazards to conquer the Valley of Oros for the Wenja and secure their survival.

Taking place so long ago, this is the first Far Cry game to not feature any firearms. Takkar needs to use a variety of bows, melee & thrown weapons, as well as the help of predators he can learn to tame. The game thus puts a larger emphasis on hunting, gathering resources, and crafting than its predecessor.

It released for the PS4 and Xbox One on February 23, 2016, and for the PC on March 1, 2016.

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Far Cry Primal provides examples of the following tropes:

• Alas, Poor Villain: For both Ull and Dah, really for all the Udam once you start piecing together what's happening to them. Takkar is respectful to both in their dying moments despite the fact that they were enemies in life.
  Takkar: "Walk free."
• All Cavemen Were Neanderthals: Averted. The hostile Udam do resemble neanderthals and follow the classic neanderthal trope of being savage cannibals but they are officially identified as "archaic Homo sapiens" (a designation that can include neanderthals depending on who you talk to but is ambiguous enough to avoid anachronism). The other two tribes clearly belong to the modern human subspecies.
• Almost Dead Guy: Takkar's mentor Dalso at the start of the game. After tackling Takkar over the cliff to escape the Bloodfang Tiger, he falls all the way down a slope laden with sharp boulders and jagged tree stumps. In contrast to Takkar, he ends up heavily injured, and lives just long enough to say goodbye to Takkar and encourage him to continue searching for Oros.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The Oros valley crocodiles are a vivid mixture of mustard yellow and orange.
• Anachronism Stew:
  • Eurasian cave lions went extinct 2000 to 3000 years prior to the game's events.
  • Likewise, cave bears went extinct 12000 years prior to the game's events.
  • While Europe did have a species of jaguar, it went extinct over 1.5 million years before the events of the game.
  • Megacerops, apart from being endemic to North America, went extinct during the Late Eocene over 33 million years ago.
  • Crocodiles became extinct in Europe about 5 million years before the events of the game (the claimed species disappeared 25 million years ago and never lived in Europe in the first place, but in Asia).
  • The languages spoken by the Wenja, Udam, and Izila are all based on Proto-Indo-European (or, to be more specific, a theoretical "Proto-Proto-Indo-European"), which in reality seems to have not reached the Carpathian Mountains from its homeland in the Pontic-Caspian steppe until around 7000 years later (at least according to the most widely accepted hypothesis).
  • While agriculture does seem to have been brought into Europe by West Asian migrants, this process doesn't begin until around 3000 years after the game's events; a people like the Izila would have been completely absent in Mesolithic Europe.
  • The top ranged weapon is a composite bow that wouldn't be invented for another 8000 years.
  • Despite being portrayed as a successful apex predator, the youngest known sabre-toothed cat remains in Europe date to 28,000 years ago and they were likely already rare by then, given their conspicuous absence in paleolithic art.
  • The ancestral dhole Xenocyon died out in the middle Pleistocene. True dholes would have been more accurate to the setting and the developers likely knew this but wanted to distinguish them from the previous game's dholes.
• An Arm and a Leg: Wogah is missing an arm due to the Udam eating it.
• Animal Motifs: The Wenja wear deer and wolf skins. The Udam wear the skulls of sabre-toothed cats and great apes.
• Arc Words:
  • "Walk free" pops up a lot as a phrase the Wenja use to honor the fallen. Takkar says it twice early in the game, once over the body of a slain beast he helped to hunt, and once over the body of a fellow tribesman. Later he says it to Ull and Dah after killing them, as they had earned his respect.
  • Vision of Ice, the chapter in which Takkar goes on a spiritual journey to "see through the eyes of the Udam", makes very powerful use of the words "Why do we keep dying?". The Udam are going extinct from "Skull-Fire", a disease which does not infect any other tribe. The modern day player may realize that it is, in-fact, Kuru, which the Udam have contracted and are still contracting through their consumption of human flesh. Tragically, it'll be thousands and thousands of years before anyone in the setting could make the connection and so as far as the Udam are able to tell, their gods have simply abandoned them and they are dying out from skull-fire for no reason.
• Artistic License – Biology: European badgers in the game behave like honey badgers.
• Artistic License – History: Besides all the anachronisms above, the creators referred to the common misconception that prehistoric humans didn't live past the age of 30 unironically.
• Artistic License Palaeontology:
  • A lot of the prehistoric fauna in this game would be more at home in North America or Asia than in Europe.
  • Sabertooths and woolly mammoths are twice as large as they were in real life.
  • The jaguars are about the size of modern American jaguars, even though European jaguars were much larger.
  • Contrary to what a promo claimed, human populations were booming around 10,000 BC.
  • The European sabertooth (Homotherium latidens) has the stocky build and aproximate size of a South American sabertooth (Smilodon populator) while retaining its accurate pursuit predator lifestyle.
  • Megacerops was not hairy like the ones we see in the game. It also lived in the Eocene, and died out around thirty million years before the first apes came down from the trees.
  • Woolly mammoths and rhinoceroses lived in cold grasslands, not in mixed forests like the ones in Oros. Prehistoric European forests did have their own elephants and rhinoceroses, but they were extinct before the game's timeframe.
  • A few woolly rhino skulls are shown with the horns still attached. As with all rhinos, their horns were made of keratin with no bone core and thus would not be visible on the skull.
• Ascended to Carnivorism: Cave bears are portrayed as predators in the game, a common mistake in media as they were primarily herbivores in real life. Also, in the game, they're the only things that can scare woolly rhinoceroses by being the most powerful carnivores.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership:
  • Ull rules over the Udam by virtue of being their greatest warrior. In battle he's easily able to overcome even the legendary beasts.
  • Also why Takkar is considered the de facto leader of the Wenja.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: The electronic theme song (with English lyrics) from the trailer and credits plays during the final boss fight against Batari.
• Back from the Dead: Slain pets can be resurrected using the giant red flowers found throughout the environment, except in Survival Mode.
• Bad Ol' Badger: European badgers are just as vicious as Kyrati honey badgers in this regard. Even if Takkar tames them, they'll still attack him if he tries to pet them.
• Bears Are Bad News: Brown bears and Cave bears are present as an enemy in the game, but can be tamed by Takkar.
• The Beastmaster: Takkar can tame animals including but not limited to wolves, mammoths, bears, jaguars, and saber-toothed cats. He even has "Beast Master" as his title!
• Bee-Bee Gun: The first bomb that becomes available is a bee bomb which is exactly what it sounds like and can take out multiple enemies at once.
• Big Bad Ensemble: The main two antagonists are Ull, the chief of a tribe of cannibals called the Udam who live in the frozen northern wastes, and Batari, the high priestess of a sun-worshipping cult called the Izila in the south who enslave everyone and use fire bombs.
• Bloodier and Gorier: While the previous games were no slouches, Primal is even more graphic, especially when it comes to the lovingly detailed mangled corpses of both animals and humans you'll find scattered around Oros. And even with the loss of gunplay, the tribal warfare is quite brutal, with impalement, bludgeoning, and burning a-plenty.
• Blood Knight: Karoosh, the combat specialist of Wenja Village. Not only do his skills and craftable items focus on unlocking new takedown opportunities and increasing your survivability in the Udam homeland, but his introductory mission has you both facing down a horde of Udam warriors.
  • Sayla's sole motivation in life appears to be wiping out the entire Udam tribe and severing their ears to drown out the screams of the dead.
• Body Paint:
  • The Izila wear blue body paint from head to toe.
  • The Udam prefer to paint themselves with blood, often in large streaks from their mouths down to their chests.
  • The Wenja, like Takkar, prefer to wear white paint, when they wear any paint at all.
• Boss Battle: Unlike the previous Far Cry games by Ubisoft, which relied on either Mooks, but no Bosses (Far Cry 2 and Blood Dragon) or Cutscene Boss (Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 4), Primal has full-on boss fights as part of the main plot, with both of the main antagonists as well as a few other enemy characters being confronted in such a manner (two Fort Commanders who are essentially Heavies with more health and a unique attack, and four Legendary Beasts).
• Brutish Bulls: Yaks will use their horns to charge Takkar if he gets too close to them.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Familiar names are given to a few prehistoric animals as is traditional.
  • Sabre-toothed cats are frequently called "tigers".
  • As usual, the giant deer Megaloceros giganteus is called an "elk" despite not being closely related to either of the modern species commonly called elk.
  • The occasional brontothere you encounter is called a "rare two-horned rhino".
  • The "dholes" that appear in game look more like African wild dogs than actual dholes who appeared in the previous Far Cry title. Those who know their prehistoric mammals will infer that they are actually Xenocyon, the common ancestor of both species, called "dholes" because they clearly aren't African and "Xenocyon" is hard to say. Curiously, the dhole skin seen in the reward stash looks like a modern dhole skin.
• Cannibal Tribe: The Udam, one of the enemy tribes of the game. It's a Deconstructed Trope because it's why they're dying of "skull fire". Prions from infected victims infected the Udam and now they're dying from an incurable disease.
• Carnivorous Healing Factor: Takkar eats meat from his inventory, whether it's straight up alone, or with a plant wrapping that can enhance the healing, or gives him a boost whilst also healing Takkar. The same logic applies to the predators he can travel with. Takkar can either feed them himself, or they'll start eating the dead bodies of enemies or hunted animals.
• Carry a Big Stick: Clubs are a powerful weapon that can be upgraded from knapped stone lashed to a stick to a jagged mace made of bone, rock, and wood, with one-handed and two-handed versions.
• Cats Are Mean: Saber-toothed cats, jaguars, and cave lions are a hostile species to Takkar, though they can be tamed at some point. Snow leopards from Far Cry 4 make a return appearance.
• Chase Stops at Water: Most animals will stop chasing you when you walk into a pond or a lake. The only exceptions are the bears and sometimes the mammoths.
• The Chosen One:
  • The opening cutscene shows Tensey narrating the Wenja's defeat at the hands of the Udam and Izila, then prophesying the arrival of a warrior capable of taming any beast, who will reunite the scattered Wenja and defeat their enemies. That chosen warrior is Takkar, the player character.
  • Batari is the chosen one of the Izila. She was born during a solar eclipse, and they took it as a sign that she was the daughter of their sun god.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Wogah is a little less than mentally stable, due to having lived for some time believing he was the last Wenja, and having his arm cut off by Udam.
  • Tensay is also a bit weird. Look at that little dance he's doing when Takkar arrives at his cave.
  • Urki has an interesting view on the world, being dubbed "the thinker". Attempting to fly, create armour and bear replent with some less than desirable results.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The three tribes have different color schemes: the Wenja wear brown, earthy colors, symbolizing their connection to nature; the Udam wear red body paint, symbolizing their love of battle and blood-thirsty nature; and the Izila wear blue body paint, symbolizing their reverence and worship of the sky.
• Conlang: Spoken dialogue is in Wenja, Udam, and Izila, three closely related languages based on Proto-Indo-European (PIE), or to be more exact, what its predecessor might have been (with Izila being the most similar to PIE). Deluxe editions of the game come with a Wenja phrasebook, and more information about these languages can be found in extensive detail on the personal site of one of their creators, historical linguist Andrew Miles Byrd.
• Covered with Scars:
  • Karoosh is covered in scars from his battles with the Udam, including one across his right eye where Mog blinded him.
  • Jayma is covered in scars from her various hunts and is condescending towards Takkar for his lack thereof.
  • The Beast Hunt bosses are like this. Especially the Great Scar Bear and the Bloodtusk Mammoth.
  • Ull is covered in burn scars from his battles with the Izila, with his face being partly melted.
  • Tensay is also covered in burn scars from his time as Batari's slave, though it's less obvious with his dark skin and extensive body paint.
• Creepy Good:
  • Sayla wears a necklace of ears and is rather enthusiastic about the prospect of killing all of the Wenja's enemies. The dimly lit interior of her hut is filled with cords hung with dozens of severed Udam ears, and the buzzing of the flies the trophies attract. Takkar doesn't seem to mind all that much.
  • Tensay, the Wenja's Shaman, has no sense of personal space and is more than happy to mix Takkar a hallucinogenic stew made of extra-chunky blood.
• Cruel Elephant: Elder mammoths are ill-tempered and unpredictable beasts who will attack the player for seemingly no reason. Don't think you'll be safe riding a younger mammoth either; the elder will have no problem killing one of their own to get at you. This is taken to the next level with the Bloodtusk Mammoth, a massive bull with four tusks that Takkar must confront on one of his Beast Master hunts. The Bloodtusk is first introduced going on a rampage through Oros, brutally killing any man or animal it comes across, and is the hardest animal Takkar ever has to kill. And he has to kill it- in contrast to the Snowblood Wolf, the Bloodfang Tiger, or the Great Scar Bear, he can't tame the Bloodtusk, so he'll have to make sure it doesn't kill anyone else.
• Culture Clash: The game revolves around a three-way war for control of the Oros valley between the nomadic Wenja tribe, the Udam tribe from the frozen tundra of Central Europe, and the Izila tribe from Mesopotamia.
• Cutscene Incompetence: Takkar occasionally suffers from this; he ends up being captured by both members of the Big Bad Ensemble due to it.
• Dark Action Girl: Batari is willing to attack Takkar herself if she wants to.
• Deadpan Snarker: Surprisingly, Takkar has some pretty dry comments, mainly directed towards Urki, or Snark-to-Snark Combat with Jayma.
• Death by Irony: On a tribal scale. The Udam are dying out from "skull fire", which none of the other tribes suffer from. They believe that consuming the flesh of the uninfected would heal them... But a modern day player can easily understand that the "skull fire" is kuru, a disease which the Udam are contracting because they are consuming human flesh. The more desperate they become, the more human flesh they eat in an attempt to cure the disease, and the more they are helping it spread instead.
  • Also applies to Batari, who sacrifices people by throwing them into fire, and is herself thrown into fire by Takkar after beating her.
• Death from Above: Takkar's owl can not only be called upon to scout out locations but can also be ordered to either divebomb enemies or drop bombs.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: Three of the Beast Hunts can be beaten in combat and tamed. The Bloodtusk Mammoth is the only one that gets killed off.
  • Also counts for Dah and Roshani who are recruited into your tribe after being beaten in battle. Specifically, they're made into prisoners forced to teach the Wenja how to craft their tribe's signature weapons.
• Deep South: Despite this game taking place in the Mesolithic era, in a part of Central Europe which will become Slovakia, Urki somehow talks in a Southern accent and displays stereotypical hillbilly mannerisms.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Wenja will go out of their way to kill any Udam or Izila they find, including defenseless women who scream for help as they try to escape. Sayla in particular would be a terrifying serial killer in any modern setting, given her habit of collecting the ears of her victims as trophies, but she's Takkar's earliest and closest ally.
• Developer's Foresight: After each Urki quest you'll find his broken body nearby moaning. You can hit it and get a reaction but if you decide to go one further and pick it up throwing him underwater you'll hear his moans garbled by the water.
• Distant Prequel: Primal takes place more than 10,000 years before the events of the other games.
• Early Game Hell: With relatively weak weapons and skills early on and Everything Trying to Kill You, this game is disproportionately difficult for the first few missions.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Far Cry games tend to end with a Bittersweet Ending or Downer Ending, but this is the only one to have an unambiguously good ending. By the end of the game, the Wenja have defeated their two greatest enemies, and with the exception of Dah being granted a mercy kill and Jayma leaving the village at the end of their mission quests, all of Takkar's allies remain alive including himself.
• Elephant Graveyard: A so-called mammoth graveyard can be found in the north of the map filled with giant skulls and rib cages. It's probably no coincidence that the Bloodtusk mammoth, a bull implicitly dying of rabies, can be found stomping around there.
• Elite Mooks: Elite variants of normal enemy types have more health and also wear bone or wood helmets that can deflect headshots from un-upgraded weapons. The Izila Elite Mooks are particularly tough (almost as tough as an Udam Giant Mook), which makes penetrating headshots from upgraded weapons particularly important against them.
• Eye Scream: Karoosh's right eye is closed up after losing it to a fight against Udam.
• Embarrassing Nickname:
  • Wogah calls Takkar "Piss Man", due to having urinated on him thinking he was an Udam.
  • Jayma calls Takkar "Mammoth Feet" after he accidentally scares away a bear she was hunting.
  • Urki calls Takkar "Smart Man", mainly because he regards Takkar's advice as helpful. Of course, given that Urki's pretty stupid, such compliments are Damned By a Fool's Praise.
• Evil Is Bigger: Ull is a massive Udam who stands head and shoulders over Takkar.
• Evil Mask: In the Vision of Fire, Takkar learns that the Izila fear the mask of Krati, who they believe will bring destruction to all of Oros.
• Excrement Statement: We first meet Wogah the crafter when Takkar lands in a pitfall at the entrance to his cave, and the old man decides to take a leak on what he thinks is an Udam. Embarrassing Nickname covers it perfectly.
  • Tensay apparently urinates on Roshani, after Takkar locks the Izila in a cage back at the village, and when Takkar presents him with Krati's mask, he relieves himself on that as well. And then he makes Takkar wear it.
• Feathered Fiend: Oros is patrolled by vicious white-tailed eagles which will swoop down and attack Takkar after only a few minutes' calling, and due to his firearms being limited to a bow and arrow, it's rather hard to shoot them down.
• Fiendish Fish: The bitefish, who are basically recycled demon fish from Kyrat.
• Foreshadowing: Tensay refers to Ull's older child, as a "Strong Spirit." Which is a title that he also called Takkar on their first meeting. This is an indication that Ull's older child is another Beast Master.
• Full-Boar Action: Wild boars are one of the animals of Oros that Takkar can't tame, and they gang up on him if he comes near them.
• Generation Xerox: Urki is very obviously the ancestor of Hurk in the modern period of the previous games, to the point of having an inexplicable heavy Southern accent.
• Get Out!: Ull orders Takkar to do this the first time the Udam chieftain arrives at the Wenja village.
• Grim Up North: Northern Oros is home to frigid temperatures, poisonous plants, and the Udam.
• Groin Attack:
  • Batari is first introduced brutally slicing off a captive Udam's testicles and bleeding him to death. She then grabs and twists the penis of a captive Wenja for good measure. Just goes to show, Batari's not a nice person.
  • Played for Laughs when Takkar gives Wogah his grappling claw. Wogah tries swinging it, only to whip himself between the legs by accident. Luckily, Wogah somehow doesn't end up piercing his family jewels with the iron hooks.
• Handicapped Badass: Karoosh is a warrior with one eye. Wogah is a craftsman with one arm. Dah is an Udam who's sick with "skull fire", and that doesn't slow him down any.
• Hard Head: Karoosh doesn't seem to find his headbutts hurt him as well as Takkar.
• Headbutt of Love: Karoosh seems to be quite fond of giving these to Takkar, albeit in a much more violent fashion than most examples of the trope.
• Heavily Armored Mook: The "Chieftain" enemies essentially fulfill the same role as the Heavies from the previous Far Cry games. They wear heavy helmets that make them completely immune to headshots (shooting them in the head doesn't even damage them), and take several body shots to bring down. They can also completely deplete your health in a single hit, and can even kill a cave bear or sabertooth tiger in melee combat.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Any animal you tame will go from trying to eat you to fighting alongside you in a heartbeat, even turning on other members of its own kind.
  • The Bloodfang tiger that slaughters the rest of your hunting party in the prologue, in a way. Later on in the game, it makes a reappearance as the focus of one of the "rare animal" hunting missions, and can subsequently be tamed.
  • Dah and Roshani, members of the Udam and the Izila tribes respectively, are captured by Takkar for their knowledge in their tribe's special weapons and later become full members of the Wenja tribe.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: When you first meet Dah and Roshani as enemy bosses, they wear helmets (a rhinoceros skull, in Dah's case, and for Roshani, a plaited reed headdress). Both of them end up going bare-headed for the rest of the game (Dah removes his helmet when he tries goading Takkar to kill him, and Roshani presumably had his headdress pulled off by Takkar before returning him to the village). That said, Takkar does place Dah's helmet on his chest after granting him a Mercy Kill.
• High Priest: Batari is technically a High Priestess, and not a friendly one. Tensay qualifies as her good counterpart.
• Honorable Elephant: The young mammoths patrolling Oros qualify, only attacking Takkar if he attacks them first- or if one of his beasts does it. They'll even let him go for rides on their backs once the "Mammoth Rider" skill is learned. The Legend of the Mammoth quests allow you to play as one!
• Horse of a Different Color: Mammoths, brown bears and sabertooth tigers are all among the various creatures that Takkar can ride across Oros.
• Hulk Speak: For whatever reason, translated Wenja via subtitles looks like stereotypical caveman speak. Justified, as the Wenja language has a much more simplistic grammar and syntax that is intended to get the point across without a massive vocabulary.
• Human Sacrifice: The Izila sacrifice captured Wenja to their sun goddess.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: To heal, Takkar and his tamed beast need to eat meat. The beast will sometimes take the initiative to heal itself by scavenging dead enemies.
• I Am a Humanitarian: Aside from the Udam being an entire tribe of cannibals, Takkar himself can engage in sporadic cannibalism, considering he can raid Udam camps for meat supplies and swallowing a pair of Udam eyeballs in one of Tensay's potions.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Dah asks Takkar to guide his dagger home to his heart so that Dah doesn't face a slow painful death of "skull fire", because he respects Takkar enough to judge him the only person worthy to take Dah's life.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Dah and Ull have these eye colors, befitting their initial status as antagonists, and they happen to live in a freezing tundra cave.
• Incorrect Animal Noise: A few examples:
  • The dholes make hyena vocalizations. Hyenas were very well-spread in Europe at the time this game is set, but none of them appear in-game.
  • Jaguars make puma sounds despite being from the roaring cat subfamily.
  • The tall elk (Megaloceras giganteus) makes bull and camel noises.
  • The eagles make the cliche Red-tailed hawk scream.
  • European badgers make honey badger sounds.
• Interface Spoiler: Examining the progress screen for village construction just tells you that you will be recruiting Dah and Roshani. It even directly identifies them as Udam and Izila, respectively.
• Kick the Dog: Our first clue that Batari is not a good person is when she brutally slices off an Udam captive's testicles, bleeding him out and relishing his screams.
• Kill It with Fire: You can use fire weapons to set fire to whatever enemies are in your way. It's also how Takkar kills Batari at the end of her boss fight.
• Kill the Parent, Raise the Child: Takkar is a heroic case. After rescuing the last survivors of the Wenja tribe, Takkar, using his seemingly mystical ability to tame Ice Age megafauna like the saber-tooth cats and cave bears, begins waging a one-man war on the rival Udam and Izila tribes in revenge for the slaughter of his people. He completely succeeds, but comes to sympathize with the Udam, as he discovers their acts of cannibalism weren't driven by malicious sadism, but because they believed it would save them from a plague ravaging them. In his final moments, the Udam warchief Ull pleads with Takkar to spare his young daughter and newborn and care for them, which Takkar agrees to do before killing Ull. The game ends with a final cutscene between Takkar and Ull's daughter taking a cave bear, implying that not only is Takkar raising Ull's children as if they were his own, but that the daughter has picked up the same ability that Takkar wields.
• Large and in Charge: Ull is a good head taller than a normal Udam, and also a lot burlier as well.
• Large Ham: Tensay is possibly the most theatrical of the characters. Batari rivals him in this regard.
• Lighter and Softer: Primal eschews the main series' moral ambiguity and pessimistic cynicism about conflict and violence, instead being a fairly straightforward story about surviving and triumphing over adversity.
• Lodged-Blade Recycling: When Takkar raids the Izila village in search of Krati's mask, an enraged Batari fires an arrow into his leg. As soon as she gets close enough, Takkar pulls the arrow out and sticks it into her neck, before grabbing the mask and diving into the water.
• Made of Iron: Urki. Dear God, Urki. In his first mission, he jumps off a 50 foot cliff. He starts his second mission barely reacting to a spear in his stomach, and ends it asking you to throw a spear at his stomach (which you have to do to complete the mission.) In his third mission, he gets mauled by a bear. And you can still hear him alive and groaning in pain after this.
• Malevolent Masked Men:
  • The Udam elite warriors wear animal skulls as masks and helmets.
  • The Izila elite warriors wear carved stone and wooden masks.
  • Takkar becomes one to the Izila when he dons the mask of Krati.
• Mammoths Mean Ice Age: This game takes place after the Ice Age has ended, but there are still plenty of woolly mammoths roaming the Oros valley.
• The Marvelous Deer: One mission Takkar can undertake involves hunting a red-antlered Megaloceros, which the Wenja refer to as the tall elk, and trying to kill and skin it before the Udam do.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Takkar's vision quests involve drinking blood, body parts, urine, ash and persumably hallucinogenic drugs. Yet he is able to accurately see the problems affecting the other tribes but also statues, beliefs and rituals no other character present would know about.
• Mêlée à Trois: The main factions are the nomadic Wenja, cannibalistic Udam, and the fanatical, agrarian Izila tribe. Additionally, hostile wildlife will often join in against all sides.
• Mercy Kill:
  • One of Tensay's quests has him neck-snapping a Wenja who was horribly burned by the Izila to spare him the pain.
  • Dah's story ends with him asking Takkar to kill him; he's dying a slow death due to the "skull fire" plague and believes Takkar to be the only warrior worthy of ending his life.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Takkar begins the game with a successful mammoth hunt, but a sabertooth tiger attacks and kills his hunting party, and his own mentor Dalso tackles Takkar down a cliff to save him from the tiger at the cost of his own life.
• Misplaced Wildlife:
  • As usual in media, the saber-toothed cats are represented by Smilodon, which was native only to the Americas.
  • Dire wolves were also native to the Americas and eastern Asia.
  • Crocodiles, langurs, snow leopards, and yaks as far as we know never inhabited Ice Age Europe. The latter three are particularly odd examples as there were other perfectly good species of monkey, leopard, and cattle found in the region (Barbary apes, cave leopards, and aurochs respectively).
  • Megacerops, treated in-game as a rare variant of the woolly rhinoceros was endemic to North America, and had already been extinct for millions of years when this game takes place.
  • The "bitefish" are actually tigerfish, which are only native to Africa.
  • The Udam decorate with and wear skulls of some kind of great ape, either a gorilla or Gigantopithecus, neither of which have ever lived in Europe.
• Mission-Pack Sequel: The gameplay, animations, and HUD/UI make it fairly obvious the game is heavily built on the engine and assets of Far Cry 3/Far Cry 4. However, the very different prehistoric setting and new gameplay features (such as taming animals) offer a reasonably new and different experience.
• Multinational Team: The Wenja tribe appears surprisingly diverse, with Sayla, Jayma, and especially Tensay displaying African features, while Karoosh, Urki, Wogah, and Takkar (judging by his portrait in the skills & village menus) appear more European. Taken a step further when Takkar recruits Roshani of the Izila and Dah, as well as Ull's children, of the Udam, into the tribe.
• National Geographic Nudity: Batari and most other Izila women are topless, though it's hard to notice as they wear thick body paint that covers their entire torso. While most Wenja women keep their breasts covered, a few of them do also go topless or wear tops that leave one breast exposed. The few Udam women encountered follow similar conventions.
• Near-Miss Groin Attack: Jayma taunts Takkar by shooting an arrow between his legs, narrowly missing his groin.
• Neck Lift: Takkar hoists Batari into the air with one hand before carrying her head-first into her fire pit.
• Neck Snap: Tensay does this to mercy-kill a Wenja who had been critically burned by the Izila's flames.
• Never Mess with Granny: Jayma is one of the oldest women to appear in the game, and due to the dangers of living in Oros, you'd better believe she's done some pretty impressive things to stay alive long enough to reach old age.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: Crocodilians inhabit the lakes and rivers, making crossings potentially hazardous.
• Nocturnal Mooks: The animals that come out at night are more dangerous and hunt in larger numbers.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood:
  • Takkar gets a sense that this is the case for the assumed Always Chaotic Evil Udam, after seeing a vision of how desperate and harsh their lives in the frigid north have been. Later in the game, it's revealed that the Udam are suffering from a plague of some kind and are facing extinction; it's even suggested that the reason they're eating the Wenja is that they believe that consuming the flesh of a people who aren't sick might cure them.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: To finish the "Peak of Oros" mission, you have to jump off a mountain into a lake!
• Nubile Savage: The Wenja and Izila women have remarkably perky breasts millenia before the invention of supporting undergarments. The most notable example is Batari who is old enough to have an adult son. The Udam women avert this, having realistically sagging breasts and hard facial features.
• Offing the Offspring: Batari's son Krati rebelled against his mother. She had him burnt alive, and keeps his corpse on display in the Izila village.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Karoosh versus Mog. Karoosh wins, but is injured severely enough that he would have died not long afterward had Takkar not shown up when he did.
  • Also, Urki versus an Udam who snuck into his tent prior to his second mission. When we see him again, the Udam has a pulped skull thanks to Urki using a Boulder Bludgeon, and Urki has a spear in his stomach that he doesn't even notice is there until Takkar points it out.
• Ominous Owl: The first beast Takkar tames is a massive eagle owl which he can use as an Animal Eye Spy. The "ominous" part stems from the way it can dive-bomb his enemies, or just directly attack them talons first.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Karoosh, thanks to Mog, who killed his son.
• Out with a Bang: Takkar can sometimes come across Udam couples who will be having sex. He can then shoot them while they're still at it.
• Planet of Hats: Each tribe has a particular aspect that they specialize in. Wenja: Nomadic hunters. Udam: Cannibals who utilize poisons. Izila: fire-worshiping slavers.
• Prehistoric Monster: Mostly averted with the various prehistoric beasts you encounter. They function just like any other animal. Played straight with the legendary beasts though, especially the Great Scar Bear and Bloodtusk Mammoth.
• Previously on…: Tensay gives a brief recap of Takkar's story so far when the "Continue" option is selected on the main menu.
• Primitive Clubs: Fitting the game's Stone Age setting, clubs are a common and powerful weapon type that can be upgraded from a knapped stone lashed to a stick to a jagged mace made of bone, rock, and wood, with one-handed and two-handed versions.
• Primordial Tongue: The Wenja, Izila, and Udam all speak variations of a single Conlang based on what linguists think the ancestor of Proto-Indo-European might have sounded like circa 10,000 BCE. PIE would eventually birth the Indo-Iranian, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, and Italic languages^note with the other surviving Indo-European branches being Armenian, Albanian, Celtic, and Hellenic spoken by around half the world's population today.
• The Prophecy: In the opening cutscene, Tensay the shaman prophesies the coming of the Beast Master, who will lead the Wenja to victory over their enemies.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: A heavily played with case. You begin the game as the last survivor of a group working to meet up with the rest of your lost tribe, only to find it scattered and essentially wiped out. At this point, the Wenja are tragic victims fighting for their very lives. Before you know it, however, and you've rebuilt a sizeable village while striking at the last remnants of your enemies, repeating exactly what they did to your people, despite all the main characters celebrating these actions. The one exception is the player character himself, who does seem to realize that something is wrong, and extends mercy in a few cases, even at his own expense, but the general hypocrisy is never addressed, although it's arguably intentional given the setting.
• Pyromaniac: The Izila are called the Masters of fire, and use fire bombs in combat.
• Real Men Get Shot: Despite all the times he gets injured in the game, Takkar can heal up really fast with the player's help. Jayma at one point accuses him of being inexperienced because his skin is soft like a baby's, to which he snarks back that all her scars prove is that she's slow.
• Redemption Demotion: When you have them as your allies, the Legendary Beasts are tougher than a normal variant of that animal, but not nearly as tough as they are when you actually fight them as a boss battle.
• The Remnant: Wogah initially believes he's the last remaining Wenja until Takkar came along.
• Rhino Rampage: Woolly rhinos are a dangerous species that will attack Takkar on sight.
• Savage Wolves: Dire wolf and dhole wild dog packs can be found roaming the world either hunting other animals or mauling any Udam or Wenja they come across. Once you tame one, it becomes a Noble Wolf.
• Scary Black Man: Subverted by Tensay the shaman. He's a dark-skinned Wenja voiced by Terrence C. Carson, famous for voicing Kratos, but he's not the most imposing Wenja, and ultimately, he's Creepy Good. Played straight and gender-inverted with Batari, a vindictive high priestess.
• Scenery Porn: Oros is a stunningly beautiful, vast, and immersive wilderness, with its towering old-growth forests and jagged mountains really making you feel like you've gone back in time.
• Science Marches On: In-Universe. The Udam, as well as the rest of the characters, have no way of knowing that the "skull fire" killing the Udam is a natural disease called kuru, one that is caused by cannibalism. As such, when the Udam try to solve it by way of cannibalism, they are, in fact, making it ever worse, for reasons that will not be made clear for thousands of in-universe years.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Hallucinogenic grenades can be used to turn enemies against each other. The effect is permanent, and the victims eventually die from the effect if they aren't killed fighting their comrades. Quite a bit of poetic irony, as Takkar obtains this weapon from the Udam, who are dying from brain-dissolving Kuru.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: In the very beginning of the game, Takkar and about a dozen other hunters have apparently gone days without food, and must kill a mammoth to eat or else they will starve. Many of the hunters are killed by the mammoth, and all those remaining but Takkar are killed by a tiger that shows up to steal their kill. It turns out that just at the bottom of the hill they were on, there's a small valley free of dangerous predators and filled with goats.
• Shaped Like Itself: The bitefish is described as "a fish that bites" on the map.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the achievements you get for doing 25 takedowns is called "Killer's Belief".
  • In a lake south of your village, go into the water and one can find the car from The Flintstones.
  • A cave you can peer into contains a clutch of large, neon-pink eggs sitting below the impaled skeleton of a Blood Dragon.
  • During one mission Urki tries to learn to fly by jumping off a cliff. The end result is Urki doing a Leap of Faith into a pile of hay.
  • The three tribes resemble the three main tribes from Quest for Fire: The Wenja are generic fur-wearing cave men like the Ulam. The Udam are tribe of savage cannibals like the Kzamm. The Izila are a relatively advanced society from a southern marshy region known for their mastery of fire who wear heavy body paint and wooden masks like the Ivaka.
  • The Izila also resemble the tribe from When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, being sun-worshippers who make heavy use of fire and practice Human Sacrifice.
  • The Udam worship a stone woman, just like the cannibal neanderthals from Eaters of the Dead.
  • A primitive tribe dying from a mysterious disease and the use of bees as weapons both recall Ao: The Last Hunter.
  • The Blood Dragon easter egg may just be a non-sequitor mythology gag but could also be a reference to the Slurpasaurs and other faux dinosaurs of oldschool caveman movies.
• Shown Their Work:
  • While today dholes are confined to South, Central, and Southeast Asia, during the Ice Age there was a species of dhole that inhabited Europe. Moreover, they share a common ancestor with the African wild dog which the game's dholes resemble.
  • The attack animations for predators are based heavily on those of their real-life counterparts. For example, the saber-toothed cats use their front paws to subdue their prey before sinking their fangs into their vital parts as opposed to just attacking with their fangs (which would have broken them in half).
  • The sabre-toothed cat is the fastest predator in the game, true to the real European sabre-toothed cat (Homotherium latidens) which is often compared to a cheetah in literature. Ironically, its in-game appearance has the stocky build of the American Smilodon which was a relatively slow ambush predator.
• Sinister Minister: Batari the Sun Daughter is high priestess of the Izila tribe, and the most vindictive of the game's antagonists.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: The Izila are trying to enslave the other tribes.
• Staring Down Cthulhu: Essentially how you tame a beast: throw down some bait, hide, wait for your target to come and eat, then sneak up on it, get its attention, and stand your ground as it threatens you. Assuming you've leveled up in Tensay's skill tree enough and are allowed to tame the creature, it'll then calm down and join you, being added to your pet menu to be summoned in the future.
• The Stinger: Post credits, we get a scene of Ull's older child, who Takkar has taken to be raised by the Wenja, demonstrating that they, too, possess the beast mastery ability by taming a cave bear and smiling at the camera (and presumably Takkar).
• Stock Sound Effects: The jaguars' roars are actually stock cougar shrieks.
• Stone Punk: The Izila tribe is the most technologically advanced tribe in the game. They've built forts, fire bombs, and they have a farming system. No wonder they managed to scatter the Wenja before Takkar showed up.
  • Urki tries to create similar devices, but he's not that good at it, being The Ditz. Flight suits, ballistic armour, bear deterrent... he's tried to create them all, and he botches it up repeatedly, due to limited resources and being Too Dumb to Live.
• Stopped Numbering Sequels: Subverted Trope. This game's release followed Far Cry 4, but was then followed by Far Cry 5.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • The Udam are dying out for a variety of reasons, two among them being inbreeding and cannibalism, the first of which cause possible stillbirths and genetic mutations, and the latter a variety of diseases that are killing them. Their hostile environment is merely one reason.
  • When Karoosh gives Takkar a Headbutt of Love, Takkar appropriately staggers backward.
  • Wogah is a skilled crafter, but having only one hand means that he's not as gifted at using his crafted tools as Takkar. When he tries swinging his grappling claw with one hand, he ends up whipping himself in the family jewels.
  • Takkar can put up with Tensay's blood potions, but he's not a cannibal like the Udam, so he has limits. After being given the Vision of Ice by a potion with Udam eyeballs in it, he vomits onto the floor of Tensay's tent as soon as he wakes up.
• Take Care of the Kids: Ull asks Takkar to do this for him before he dies by Takkar's hand, so that his kids don't die of "skull fire".
• Tribal Face Paint:
  • The Wenja tend to wear white face and body paint.
  • The Udam wear red face and body paint.
  • The Izila wear blue face and body paint.
• Urine Trouble:
  • Among other things you can tell your beasts to do, you can command canines... to piddle on dead enemies.
  • When Takkar accidentally gets caught in a trap set by Wogah, the man himself comes by to piss on him and even refers to him as "Piss Man".
  • When starting Roshani's first mission, he complains about Tensay pissing on him while Roshani is trapped in the cage.
  • Tensay pisses on Krati's stone mask, before making Takkar wear it.
• Vasquez Always Dies: Played straight with the Wenja woman who's in Takkar's hunting party at the start of the game. She's the first person to die when the Bloodfang Tiger shows up. Subverted by Sayla and Jayma, both of whom live to the end of the game, though Jayma leaves the village to spend her remaining days hunting with the animals.
• Video Game Caring Potential: It's quite easy to grow attached to your beasts, with the game even letting you pet them, which accomplishes nothing other than warming your heart. Luckily, if any of them are "killed", you can revive them with red herbs.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Among the Udam and Izila, you can occasionally encounter unarmed women who can be slaughtered as mercilessly as the warriors as they run from you and your beast in terror.
• Villainesses Want Heroes: When they first meet, Batari is impressed by Takkar's strength and cunning and offers to make him her personal slave. She doesn't take it well when he refuses.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: After receiving the Vision of Ice, Takkar vomits onto the floor of Tensay's tent. Tensay thinks it was because the blood potion he gave Takkar had too many Udam eyeballs in it, or too few.
• War Elephants: Once you've unlocked the skill in Karoosh's skill tree, Takkar can ride any mammoth that isn't being attacked. You are limited to the young mammoths, as the fully grown ones are far too big, but a smaller mammoth is still a force to be reckoned with.
• Wide-Open Sandbox: Primal takes place in a lush river valley fed by a melting glacier known as Oros, and you can explore every portion of it freely.
• Wild Wilderness: Oros is a diverse valley system with lush old-growth forests to the middle, frigid mountain tundra to the north, and marshes to the south.
• White Wolves Are Special: A white wolf is the second beast that Takkar tames after his eagle owl.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Udam. They are dying out from what they call "skull fire", a degenerative condition that they think a curse of their gods, and hope to cure by eating the un-infected flesh of the non-Udam, who do not have the same condition.
• Worst Aid: A particularly tragic example that is in no way the practitioners' fault. The Udam are dying out from what they call "skull fire", a degenerative condition that they think a curse of their gods, and hope to cure by eating the un-infected flesh of the non-Udam, who do not have the same condition. The player, thousands of years later, can make the connection that their condition is actually kuru, which is actually caused by cannibalism. Due to the fact that the connection will not be made for millennia, the tribe is causing its own destruction.