It must be written somewhere, because the formula of FPS rarely strays from actual conflicts or science fiction.
Those are just the AAA titles, the ones that sell big and can have a yearly release because developers can turn them out quickly.
Far Cry isn't the only series that did something different -
Bioshock went in its own direction, as do the
Fallout games. Sure, you can find elements of science fiction in them, but you can also find other genre conventions. For example, I would argue that
Bioshock Infinite has more in common with the Gothic genre (and not just because of the final level).
I would even go so far as to say that the entire concept of "genre" is outdated. In the above example,
Bioshock Infinite is both Gothic and science fiction. Both are clearly-defined genres, but the game does not definitively fall into either one. And to complicate things further, its narrative does not deal with themes typically addressed by either genre. Instead of "genre", I prefer "style" - a combination of genre conventions, ganeplay structure and the composer's voice.
Bioshock Infinite is not science fiction, Gothic or historical fiction, but a combination of all three with a voice that can only be Ken Levine's.
The same goes for
Far Cry. The games are open-world first-person shooters that deal with contemporary concerns in fictional worlds with philosophical undercurrent. They act as a representation of an idea; we as an audience are forced to confront an idea that has been presented to us in a different context to what we are used to. In the case of
Far Cry 5, we will have to address the relationship between religious fundamentalism, radical populism and grassroots political separatism. While we usually discuss such concepts in the context of Islamic extremism,
Far Cry 5 repositions them to the American heartland. It's no conicidence that Montana was chosen for the setting; the developers point to it as existing on the frontier - where civilisation ends and the untamed wilderness begins. So I suspect that
Far Cry 5 will be a contemporary Western, critically examining the lives and decisions of people living on the threshold between civilisation and the uncharted, murky depths of modern society.