“You don’t make a game anymore, you make a product” – that was a reason for Dishonored and Prey creator Raphael Colantonio to leave Arkane and thus Triple-A development and start all over again with his new studio Wolf Eye. For someone who sees creative expression and improvisation as the main fuel of their games, an understandable catch with large-scale video game production. Now he’s at hand with Weird West – and it actually feels like he’s had complete free rein in channeling his core influences from old-time RPGs into work that is his very own.
Weird West Test – content
If you don’t get used to older references like Ultima 7 and the first two Fallouts, you could probably call Weird West a “Dishonored from above”, just with a horror western theme. It’s an action role-playing game that fights its battles out on the controller in twin-stick fashion, and unrolls a Fallout 2-esque world map in front of you. Discover more and more settlements, mines, plantations, witch orders, camps of pig-headed creatures and pick from the stories you hear the ones you want to follow.
Weird West – five campaigns for a Hallelujah!
Which doesn’t mean that there isn’t a clear line as well. Weird West consists of five campaigns, each with its own main quest. You start as ex-bounty hunter Jane. After her son is murdered and her husband kidnapped by a pack of cannibals, she digs up her guns again and takes up the pursuit. This kind of main quest is rarely suitable for the completely free development of a not so small world. Who wants to dig in the sandbox for cool side quests when a loved one’s life is at stake? The cool thing is, after rescuing Jane’s husband, this world is still there, even if you then explore it through the eyes of the next of the five playable characters. Without the inventory, the cool weapons or the unlocked abilities of the last character, but with their passive perks.
Transformed into a grotesque pigman, the Nameless One has a valid reason to prioritize his personal interests – his nose somehow doesn’t sit right on his face – but time is not that pressing. For me, after about eight to ten hours of pleasantly familiar and beautifully free “shooting, sneaking or tricking?” action, it was the biggest bang. From the northeast of the map, where my pig life began, I was drawn to the far southwest at the other end of the map, despite a first main quest clue very close by. One trip, two game days walk – to Jane’s farm.
Lo and behold, my former character still lives there with her rescued husband, and recognizes the same brand on my neck that began her ordeal. This convinces her to join me as a party member despite my horrendous appearance, giving me access to her entire inventory. Her weapons, her bulging bundle of useful keys, as well as her talismans, vests, and – most notably – her unused upgrade resources were now mine again.
I have to say I really like this kind of progression and party build, because the active skills are better to rebuild anyway when going from a cunning Headhunter to an indestructible Beastman Berserker. In general, I was very happy to see Jane again, even though I no longer have any indirect control over her. Like all previously hired helpers, she simply follows what I do – and usually has the situation well under control. Seeing her clean up with the skills I taught her makes me almost a little proud. And doing together after solving the big meta-mystery that connects all the characters is a special secondary motivation that goes well beyond each character’s personal story. Fascinating.
Otherwise, the mixture and perspective is different than usual, but you actually know how things work here. Each quest, whether optional or central to the story, almost always gives you multiple ways to complete it. Ambush choke attacks or “guns-blazing” involving traps and environmental objects are just two options. Hidden paths or just getting the key to the door that’s blocking your way are two more and almost always all co-exist on an equal footing.
There are also sometimes beautiful moments that show that this world has a memory. NPCs even take notice of you. If you’re seen where you don’t belong and bodies are discovered there, the non-player characters count one and one together. This will damage your reputation, which in turn will draw the attention of the law and headhunters – or cause fellow campaigners to leave your party. Elsewhere, many a bandit who escaped from a shootout will later follow you as a nemesis. Conversely, a shoe is made out of it. For example, the cowboy caught as provisions in the cannibal cage, whom you let out because you just found the key, becomes a “friend for life” who suddenly shows up in a tough fight and turns the tide for you. These are really cool systems that create beautiful experiences from many small-scale game mechanisms in the familiar and proven immersive sim style.
Where the “weird west” reaches its limits
Of course, this also means that the simulation sometimes doesn’t do what it’s supposed to – which, I think, brings us to the part of the criticism where I start to complain. Just promised “memory” of the world is rubbed here and there, for example by the fact that the NPCs outside of quests are little more than mere cues. As a result, “my” companion Jane doesn’t seem to recognize characters from the first campaign who are actually friends.
The simulation also occasionally has weaknesses on a technical level. Characters get stuck on others, party members suddenly stand where no normal person should stand and can’t get away from there until you leave the area. And corpses that are actually well hidden out of sight of enemies are still discovered. Just as the game keeps giving you opportunities to find your own solutions to problems, things often go wrong that you didn’t anticipate. F5 and F9 for quick save and quick load quickly became my best friends.
In terms of design, interacting with the many, many surrounding objects is sometimes difficult. You can only manipulate objects that your character is looking at directly – there is no free mouse cursor – picking up just a few dollar coins on a table full of rubbish is quite fiddly. The main weakness of this otherwise quite respectable little game is the combat system, which in my case almost always ended up in a wild mess, no matter how much I planned and tried to set traps. Not only do friends and foes like to run headlessly across the battlefield, the controls are also a bit overloaded.
This applies primarily to the gamepad. All skills are called up with R1 and then specifically activated with thumb buttons. However, there are two layers of it at any one time: the character’s abilities and those of the equipped weapon. For example, the sequence calling up Jane’s six-second slow-mo, then activating her “Fan” revolver skill while I’m aiming with the right stick, and maybe maneuvering behind cover with the left – it never really got into my flesh. To the point where I mostly relied on my target water and thus forgo many creative options in combat. After all: After I switched to mouse and keyboard a few hours ago, I have to say that the direct selection of skills via hotkeys 1 to 4 works much better for me.
Weird West – Test: Conclusion
Still, Weird West is a gold nugget of a game freshly hewn from the rock. You may not recognize its beauty and preciousness at first glance, but the inner values are undeniable. The design, which is dirty and mangy in a good way, the atmospheric soundtrack and the quirky scenario design appealed to me just as much as the many, many possibilities for playful development. Admittedly, the fiddly and frantic combat is only just about fun with its Max Payne dodge reels – but it’s rarely relevant to my playstyle anyway. I’m interested in the stories Weird West tells and the characters I get to embody through my actions with comfortable legroom. In this respect: Congratulations, Mr. Colantonio! Weird West has little of the “product” groomed and brushed to maximum security that they feared to create. It’s a game through and through!
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