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From the Inquisitor to the Baptist: The Evolution of John Seed

From the early stages of the development of a video game to the day it gets released, its gameplay, story, and characters usually go through many modifications. Far Cry 5 is no exception to this rule, and thanks to promotional images, trailers, interviews, official side material, and even deleted content still available in the game’s files, we can get a glimpse of what Hope County and its residents used to be like. John Seed, in particular, seems to have undergone quite a few alterations, both physical and moral.

In these posts, I will be listing and discussing all the changes I noticed in John and explaining why the man who used to be known as “The Inquisitor” isn’t identical to “The Baptist” we met in Far Cry 5.

All the sources and references indicated by the superscript numbers will be given in the last post.

Part 1: Physical appearance, clothes, and tattoos (concept art, promotional content, and side material)

What seems to be the earliest portrait of the Seed family is a piece of concept art that Lead Graphic Production Artist Nick Arnett shared on Instagram¹:

As you can see, many things look different from what we are used to, from the Eden’s Gate cross (behind Joseph’s head) and logo (on the pulpit, with an eagle) to the Seed siblings’ outfits. The man on the right seems to be John, and he’s sporting a two-tone blue shirt that resembles the one he will end up wearing in the game, but he doesn’t have a vest. Instead of a belt, he has suspenders, and his pants and shoes look darker and more formal than his usual jeans and boots. He already has a beard and, while his hair is slicked back, as it is in the game, it’s a little longer. He doesn’t have any visible tattoos, but if you look closely, you’ll notice that he does have something on his hand: blood, running from his knuckles.

In May 2017, nine months before Far Cry 5 came out, the game was officially announced and a few promotional pictures were released, notably these two²:

But before that, we can see what John looked like at an even earlier stage of the game’s development, during the making of those two aforementioned pictures, thanks to early sketches and visuals shared by AmCo Studio³ and Fire Without Smoke⁴:

John’s iconic vest and sunglasses have appeared, and while his shirt became white, it’s now partially unbuttoned and the sleeves are rolled up, which is how he wears it in the game. As for his hair, it’s shorter than it was in the first family portrait and looks more similar to his final design. We still don’t see any tattoos on his arms, but he has a watch.

In the final version of what I would call the “Last-Supper-like” images, John looks even more like himself, but there are still a few differences:

Although they are not strictly identical to the ones he has in the game, he’s wearing sunglasses with blue lenses on his head. His shirt became blue again, his vest is striped, and he now has his “EG” (Eden’s Gate) earring and belt buckle, grey jeans, and bunker key around his neck. He’s also wearing a coat, but while, at first glance, it looks like the one we all know, the pattern isn’t the same; instead of planes, there are “EG” symbols on it. The buttons, however, are already golden and decorated with scales.

In the pictures, especially the first one, the siblings are associated with symbols: a crown for Joseph (on his jacket and napkin), a sword for Jacob (on his music box), a pair of scales for John (on his coat’s buttons and in the bread/cake), and intoxicating Bliss flowers for Faith, a reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Conquest, War, Famine, and Death, respectively, who. In John’s case, the scales could also be a nod to the fact he’s a lawyer. Indeed, scales are commonly used to symbolize justice.

This time, he finally has tattoos, and while some of them are the ones he will have in Far Cry 5, others are different. He already has small symbols on his fingers: an eye, a tongue, a hand with a drop of blood on it, a heart, a foot, a keyhole, and waves. The meaning of these symbols used to be a mystery to me, but it turns out they were inspired by Bible verses, specifically Proverbs 6:16-19⁵:

There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.

The flames on his right wrist will be in the game as well, but here, they are smaller. This tattoo seems to have been taken directly from this illustration:

It’s from a French (Breton, to be precise) collection of “Taolennoù Ar Mission” (literally “mission paintings” in Breton) by François-Marie Balanant, who was a priest, and it depicts a human soul being afflicted by the seven deadly sins⁶. “Taolennoù” were created in Brittany in the sixteenth century by the Catholic clergy in an effort to make religion more accessible to the faithful, some of whom were illiterate, with the help of drawings.

This particular image can be found on the Wikipedia page dedicated to the seven deadly sins⁷, which seems to have been the primary source of information and inspiration for several of John’s tattoos.

Clearly, the angelic figure with the dove, on his right hand, also directly comes from the drawing (upper left corner). This tattoo will later be redesigned and decorate the inner face of his left forearm.

As explained on Wikipedia, there used to be eight mortal sins, and their Latin names were:

Gula (Gluttony)

Luxuria (Lust)

Avaritia (Greed)

Tristitia (Sorrow)

Ira (Wrath)

Acedia (Sloth)

Vanagloria (Vainglory)

Superbia (Pride)

Tristitia and Acedia would later be combined, as well as Vanagloria and Superbia.

In the two promotional pictures, John has seven of these sins (except Acedia) tattooed on his left hand, as he does in Far Cry 5.

John also has letters on his fingers, but while, in the game, they spell “E-D-E-N” and “G-A-T-E”, here, we see G, G, S, E, W, P, and L, most likely the first letter of each deadly sin in English.

On his chest, instead of a scar and the mutilated word “SLOTH”, he has a tattoo. We see two crossed rifles, the number seven in tally marks (probably yet another reference to the deadly sins), what seems to be the words “Bros & Sis” above the design, and what probably is “Til Death” under it. It looks like an infantry tattoo, very similar to the example included below (center) by tattoo artist Garrett Tankersley, known as tat2garrett on Instagram⁸:

Finally, in one of the images, John is holding a tattoo machine. In the other, he’s holding a revolver. In the game, however, this weapon is nowhere to be seen.

Even though he will never use it in Far Cry 5, John was represented by this gun again on one of the game’s old official websites⁹:

At the time, as you can see, his title was also “The Inquisitor” instead of “The Baptist”.

On the PlayAsia blog, on a page dedicated to Far Cry 5, short information sheets about a few of the game’s characters were posted¹⁰. They look official, but since I have only ever seen them on this website, which was not created by Ubisoft, their origin and therefore the accuracy of the information they give are uncertain.

While most of what the picture says is either true (blue eyes, brown hair) or plausible (his height), John mathematically can’t be only 32 years old because he was already working as a lawyer about ten years before the events of the game, which is set in 2018. According to my research, it takes 7 years after graduating high school to become a licensed lawyer in the United States. In 2008, John couldn’t be younger than 18+7=25 years old, so it’s impossible for him to have been born after 1983. He could have skipped grades, but since this is never mentioned anywhere, I assume he didn’t and that he’s in fact older than 32 in Far Cry 5.

It’s possible, however, that he really was supposed to be 32 years old when the picture was made but that his backstory (and consequently his age) was then modified.

In the novel Far Cry Absolution, a few details are given about John’s appearance. For example, on page 6:

He was ten years older than [Mary May] and near six foot with brown hair and a beard that covered the lower half of his face.

Mary May is 29 (almost 30) in the novel, which makes John approximately 39 or 40 years old in the book. This age is more plausible, I think.

Then, on page 31:

John Seed, the younger brother of The Father, slighter in build, but cut from the same cloth. Both bearded and tattooed, and both with those all-seeing eyes that seemed to search through the dark with a kind of nocturnal prowess.

This isn’t the only time in the novel that John’s gaze is described as intense. The word “predatory” is even used on page 145.

Interestingly, and despite the fact it’s absent from Far Cry 5, the gun seen in his hand in one of the promotional pictures is mentioned in Absolution as well. It’s described as “a large revolver” on page 31 and as a “big magnum revolver” on page 57. He also uses a rifle “with a wood stock and bolt-action lever” (page 48) at one point, but this weapon isn’t in the game either.

Overall, aside from this detail, his physical description in the book is rather consistent with what we see in the game. And in this official picture posted in January 2018 to promote the book¹¹, he apparently looks the same as he does in Far Cry 5.

In the live-action short film Inside Eden’s Gate¹², Joseph is the only member of the Seed family who is played by the actor who also plays him in Far Cry 5, Greg Bryk. In the game, while John is played by Seamus Dever, in the movie, it’s another actor named Rob Evors who was cast in the role. His voice and face obviously don’t sound and look exactly like John’s, so these differences are not significant.

His outfit, however, has gone through several changes. I don’t know if the design was deliberately altered or if the clothes Rob Evors has in the film simply are the closest real-life equivalent to the ones John is wearing in the promotional pictures that the movie’s costume designers could get their hands on. Like in the development sketches for the “Last-Supper-like” images, his shirt is light-colored (but still blue, apparently) and he’s wearing his sunglasses normally, not on his head. They don’t seem to have blue lenses, but again, maybe the team could only find “regular” sunglasses. He has his Eden’s Gage belt buckle and earring, but instead of being grey, his coat, vest, pants, and shoes are brown/beige. The coat is decorated with “EG” logos, exactly like the one John is wearing in the promotional pictures, but lighter in color.

As for his tattoos, they are identical to the “old” ones we’ve seen so far, but two more are visible: the pair of scales on the side of his thumb and the snake (from the Taolennoù Ar Mission again, but uncoiled), which represents Envy, around his left wrist. These two new tattoos will be part of John’s final design in the game.

There’s another one between the snake and his watch, but it’s simply one of Rob Evors’¹³.

In the film, John’s tattoos were actually hand-painted¹⁴. Here’s a better look a them, from Makeup Artist Casey Lynn Stuckey’s Instagram account:

His sleeves are never rolled up in Inside Eden’s Gate, but it’s most likely because that would have meant covering up the actor’s actual tattoos and possibly painting more, so I suppose they thought it was more convenient to just hide them.

The last notable change regarding John’s appearance in the short film is that, for the first and seemingly only time, he’s wearing a shoulder holster, but his gun is not the revolver we’ve seen for far. Instead, it looks like a semi-automatic pistol, maybe a 1911. Since, in Inside Eden’s Gate, Joseph also has this type of gun and not the revolver he carries in Far Cry 5 (albeit rarely, and he never uses it), it’s possible that, once again, the team couldn’t find the right weapons for the movie and used the available props.

In the live-action TV spot “Anything Can Happen, Everything Will”¹⁵, John is this time played by model and actor Jon Oswald, who jokingly described the character as “the asshole in the Gucci trench coat” when he shared the video on his Instagram account¹⁶.

John’s outfit looks identical to Rob Evors’ in Inside Eden’s Gate (except the shoes and the holster, it seems), so it’s likely that they just reused the same clothes. Like in the film, John’s sunglasses (which are not blue) aren’t on his head; he’s wearing them. His hair is a bit different, but it’s probably simply because Jon Oswald’s hairstyle looked close enough to John’s and they thought it didn’t need to be modified, so I don’t think this “change” is significant.

Thanks to the pictures that Mackenzie Lawrén Johnson (better known as Kenz Lawrén), who plays Faith Seed in the short film and the TV spot, posted on Instagram¹⁷, we can have a better look at him and his tattoos.

They haven’t changed much compared to the previous ones, but we can now see a goat (a symbol for Lust, also directly from the Taolennoù Ar Mission) next to the snake on his left arm. In the game, the goat will disappear from his hand, be redesigned, and end up on his right forearm. We see two other tattoos in the picture, but they simply are Jon Oswald’s¹⁸.

In the image below, drawn by Anthony Winn, who made storyboards for the TV spot¹⁹, the character on the far right (who is not Joseph), wearing a vest and sunglasses, and standing next to a woman who is probably Faith, appears to be an early version of John. This time, he’s holding a rifle, different from the one described in Absolution, and not a handgun. For once, his sister is armed as well.

In The Book of Joseph²⁰, John, as a child, is described as “the best looking, the least odd” of the Seed brothers, which is why the narrator, Joseph himself, believes he was adopted first after they were sent to an orphanage. When they meet again as adults, Joseph says his younger brother is “strikingly handsome, elegant”, wears “tailored suits” and very expensive shoes, has gleaming hair, shiny teeth, and manicured hands. He also writes that, as John Duncan (the name of his adoptive parents), “physically, he was society’s very model of success”. Psychologically, however, it was another story… but this will be discussed later. Although the John Seed we meet in the game isn’t exactly the same person as John Duncan was anymore, he’s still “elegant” and seems to take care of his appearance. Joseph doesn’t mention tattoos, but it’s likely that John got them later, after the Project was created.

An official guide for Far Cry 5, by Prima Games, was released alongside it. In the book, which was written in 2017, we get to see what John looked like when the game was still in development.

This design is very close to the final one, but for some reason, his sunglasses, bunker key, earring, and tattoos are all (temporarily) gone. However, the “SLOTH” scar has now appeared on his chest instead of the tattoo he previously had, even though it’s a bit closer to his collarbone than it will be in the game. His outfit and facial features look slightly different, but this is also true for many other characters in the guide.

On IGN’s YouTube channel, a video titled “Far Cry 5: Why John Seed Is Your Charmingly Deadly Enemy” was uploaded in February 2018²¹. In it, we get a glimpse of an early version of the “You have been Marked” TV broadcast²², and although the setting looks different, John’s appearance is very close to his final one.

By the way, if you look at the noticeboard behind the TV, you’ll see that the Testicle Festival was supposed to take place in 2017 instead of 2018. When this early in-game footage was recorded, Far Cry 5 was probably still scheduled to come out in September 2017 (which is what the first rumors said and could also explain why all the calendars in the game suggest we are in September).

In the thumbnail of the YouTube video, John looks exactly like himself:

He does too in the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” artwork²³, this promotional screenshot²⁴, and this poster²⁵:

And in a trailer posted by Ubisoft three weeks before the release of Far Cry 5, a “character spotlight”²⁶, John has his final design as well. The only difference is that, although the game was about to come out, they still called him “The Inquisitor” instead of “The Baptist”.

Then, on March 27, 2018, Far Cry 5 was released.

To be continued…

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