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I made it a hundred hours into Far Cry 5 before it locked me in a bunker and the world wouldn’t stop burning. The whole reason I’d been there was supposed to stop that. Nothing worse than investing that much time and something like actual feeling into a game only to have it close on you sideways, nowhere near where you wanted to land. So I swore the series off.

But then Ubisoft dropped a trailer for New Dawn and that feeling came back—that itch.

Here’s what Far Cry actually is: it’s not about the story. Story is a generous word. It’s about driving around with increasingly ridiculous weapons and trying to detonate as much as possible. Yeah, you can play it stealthy, careful, methodical. Most people probably do. But I’m out here firing rockets at deer. Flamethrowers at bears. Compressed air cannons at people because the game lets me and I’ve stopped pretending to care about narrative justification. You hit some NPCs and they rattle off maybe three sentences and then suddenly they’re your companions for the next sequence of explosions. It’s a weird kind of bonding. In five, you were breaking up a cult. This time around, you’re cleaning up the mess you made in five. Or that’s the idea. The trailer stays vague about it.

What it does show is that John Seed survived somehow, and his twin sisters Mickey and Lou are running around Hope County now with bodies in their wake. The world went apocalyptic, all pastels and desperation. Coming in February.

I know what happens next. I play it. Seventy hours dissolve into this game’s particular brand of absurd action and half-baked plot trying to hold it together. And I try—genuinely try—not to get attached to someone the game is going to shaft me with like happened last time. That almost became something. This time I said I wouldn’t repeat it.

I’m going to repeat it. But I haven’t started playing yet so I can still pretend I won’t.