“The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’”
Matthew 3:3
John Seed is the youngest brother in the Seed family from the Ubisoft game, Farcry 5. For many players, he is the first Herald that they choose to defeat in the game. It doesn’t take long to discover that John has a sadistic streak. While he is tasked with forcing people to confess their sins, he often seems to appear to delight in their pain. Instead of just being a generic sadist, however, John Seed is used by Ubisoft for two different reasons. The first, is to offer up a connection to the Biblical lore that is woven throughout the game. He is the modern-day John the Baptist. The second, is to offer up an opinion on the age old question of nature versus nurture. In this analysis, John Seed will be examined and compared to John the Baptist as well as dissected to bring an answer to that philosophical question.
John the Baptist
Biblically, John the Baptist is basically held as the forerunner of Jesus. He was the one tasked by God to prepare the Children of God for the coming of Jesus. To do this, he absolved people of their sins through the rite of Baptism. Many biblical historians also attribute John being responsible for also baptizing Jesus, himself. How does this link to John Seed?
For those who have played the game know, John Seed is tasked with the duty of baptizing the Chosen. More than that, however, he is also responsible for bringing their sins to light. I believe the overall goal here was to help people understand their sins and the roles that they played in their lives. One cannot hope to control what one does not understand. John is a man who likely bears every sin known to man.
The Book of Joseph, a preorder bonus for the Farcry 5 game, sheds some light on John’s history. He’s the youngest brother of the Seed family at being nine years younger than Joseph and twelve years younger than Jacob. There’s a small link to John the Baptist here. John the Baptist was born to Zechariah and Elizabeth. Both of his parents were too old to physically be able to produce children, and yet John was conceived. He was considered a miracle. John Seed was also born a staggering 12 years after Jacob. While such age gaps between siblings isn’t too crazy, it does suggest that Old Mad Seed, the Seed patriarch, was likely an older man when he conceived John with his wife. It’s a small nod to John the Baptist’s origins, but a nod all the same.
Back to John’s history. He was a happy child, innocent, even though Old Mad Seed liked to abuse him more than the other Seed brothers. The real tragedy, however, occurs after the Seed brothers are split up by Child Protective Services. John is adopted by the Duncan family. These guys suck. They believe that something is inherently wrong with John and force him to confess to sins that he hasn’t actually committed. The abuse he received by their hands led him to often make up sins in order to appease them. The Duncan family broke him.
While it isn’t blatantly said in the game, it’s heavily suggested that John ends up killing his adopted parents at some point in his life. During a period in which it’s clear that John is going to torture your character, he also describes how he’s always said, “yes” to everything in life. Yes to sex, yes to drugs, yes to basically anything and everything. He’s lustful, greedy, proud, envious, wrathful, slothful, and gluttonous. Who better to find the sins in others?
John the Baptist might have harkened the coming of Jesus and prepared the people’s souls for him, but he didn’t go out and carve sins into their flesh and almost drown them during their baptizing. This is where the character of John Seed and John the Baptist depart and where Ubisoft turns to philosophy instead.
Nature Versus Nurture
Perhaps one of the most interesting and ongoing philosophical debates is whether one’s nature or one’s surrounding environment (nurture) determines certain behaviors. In the case of John Seed, Ubisoft seems to be on the side of nurture. Joseph Seed talks about John when he was a young boy. That he was innocent, happy, and full of joy. Yet we also see in the game that John has a love for violence and pain. In one scene, in particular, Joseph has to actually intervene to keep John from drowning the player’s character. He tells him that he has to love them. I believe this is an attempt on Joseph’s part to help his brother feel empathy once more.
John was abused by his father, certainly, but he was still described as being an emotionally and mentally healthy boy. That changes after he’s adopted by the Duncans. They produce a monster. Clearly, in this case, John’s nature was originally loving. It took an outside, environmental source (the Duncans), to change his behavior.
Is it possible for John to revert his behavior? Perhaps with a whole lot of therapy. He doesn’t receive that chance, however. His delight for violence can make it extremely easy for a player to justify killing him in the game. However, because it was nurture that caused John to lose his empathy rather than his nature, it makes the argument of whether killing him was justified or not just that much murkier. Perhaps there would have been hope for him in the Garden following the Collapse.
Or perhaps John’s torment was so great that it hijacked his former nature and now violence is the only thing left that makes him feel anything. There are a lot of questions that Ubisoft asks regarding the character of John, and that just makes his characterization and psyche all the more interesting to dissect.
Tell us what you think! Did you feel justified in putting a stop to John’s antics in the bunker? Do you know of any parallels between John the Baptist and John Seed? Let us know in the comments, we’d love to hear your thoughts!
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