Ubisoft finally launched the official trailer for Far Cry 5, and they’ve detailed how the religious kooks of Hope County have turned it into a town that flagellates sinners in a variety of unbecoming ways. The game is due for release on February 27th, 2018 next year.

The trailer starts with the Hope County board spray-painted with “Welcome to Sinner County” and we see a shirtless hillbilly with a bible in the middle of the road proselytizing.

We get clips of a woman begging for her life not to be baptized, and another man being dragged into a barn before the voice-over lets us know that something’s coming. The first few seconds is basically like Deliverance meets The Path. You can check it out below.

The trailer features lots of action, shooting, explosions and a cast of characters that players will encounter throughout their journey.

We find out that there is a Jim Jones type leading the doomsday Christian cult, and they’re recruiting people to the cause whether they like it or not. We see the forced baptism and some being held by gunpoint to join.

The vehicles and weapons are also strictly centered around what you would find in the Northwestern territories, which means plenty of shotguns and hunting rifles, with a solid mixture of American made assault rifles.

A second trailer highlights a rival Baptist-style sect led by Pastor Jerome Jeffries, who is some sort of vigilante pastor. You can check out his vignette below.

The next trailer centers around a character named Mary May. She’s a bartender who works in Hope County. Mary’s brother and mother were taken by the cultists.

The last trailer focuses on Nick Rye, a pilot who lives in Hope County. He’s the son of war veterans. He hates the Christian cultists and outfits his plane with some mean American firepower in order to blast the living crap out of them.

The final promo piece that Ubisoft released was an interview with some of the designers of Far Cry 5, where they explain how when they went to Montana to do research they said it felt like the old frontier, and how there was an anti-government vibe and how it felt like they were autonomous away from the rest of society. So in a way, that explains why they’re cut off from things like the National Guard or police forces.

Eden’s Gate is the name of the cult, and they believe the end times is upon us, so they start recruiting people to repent for their sins, whether it be by choice or by force. Obviously, not all of the residents there are happy about it and have decided to fight back, all while the Eden Gate cult grows in numbers, thus creating a bit of a religious civil war.

If it’s handled well then it could end up being a pretty cool first-person shooter. The setting at least looks unique, but a lot of it will boil down to the meta game and mechanical loops. Ubisoft has a habit of using some of the most stale loops imaginable and then expanding them up to 20 or 30 hours. So we’ll see if they can dig themselves out of that hole come February 27th, 2018.