![]() And while the game obviously features story-specific NPCs, comrades and enemies, how you choose to deal with them is entirely up to you. This is dictated by Weird West’s myriad AI and how they dynamically shape the fluidity of the space, especially if you’re the one messing with them, and it. How deep and dynamic this idea goes, however, remains to be seen.Īdditionally, in a game-world that exists beyond the player and narrative proper, you need volume and movement. It’s incredibly ambitious, but given the bulk of the collective WolfEye pedigree, it’s certainly something not unachievable. This opens up the idea of replayability given you can try to manipulate the world in various ways to affect the flow-on gameplay and multiple-arc setup. Each character’s arc is part of a greater narrative, and after each respective playthrough, the state of the world as you left it is the same state the next character not only enters into, but then has to deal with. The makeup of Weird West is built around a playthrough mechanic featuring five characters and five separate vignettes. ![]() "Given the bulk of the collective WolfEye pedigree, it’s certainly something not unachievable.” And one said “functioning, logical” world needs to react to. An unexpected, unpredictable system, but a system nonetheless. Everything in it serves a functioning, logical purpose and the game and its subsequent gameplay stems from your interruption of it. This concept is less about building around the player-character or the game’s eventual narrative, and more about construction of a living, breathing space that would exist with or without you. The ‘almost a genre’ can best be summed up across experiences comparable to The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim or Arx Fatalis (as referenced by WolfEye), but at its core, as Raf explains, it’s a space where “the world is actually bigger than the game … a world that exists without the player”. Weird West is an action-RPG or, as Raf and co. I should back it up a bit here and introduce you to your new “most wanted” title. “Also it’s not a “what if?” thing, or an alternate reality thing, you know? It’s not “in the year 1700 this thing happened”. ![]() “So we tried not to make it a mash-up of everything we like, but as we integrate elements we of course flavour them in a way that feels cohesive with our world, but the inspirations are pretty vast. Watching that show it would be a great fit for Weird West. And some of the inspirations… you know, there’s a Lovecraftian vibe in there, there’s some horror vibes and one of them is even surprising - one of the monsters in the game is a pig man and that just came from American Horror Story. We knew right away that it wouldn’t just be the Wild West we wanted something more and “Weird West” sounded like a cool fusion of fantasy and Wild West. “So we started with what we liked from the Wild West and some of the tropes, but we branched pretty quickly. The same way in Dishonored we started with London, but we wanted more than that … I think it’s in our passion to really create worlds as opposed to just ‘reproducing’ worlds. “The “Wild West” just as the ‘Wild West’ was not enough to me. “I’m into Westerns as well, but I also like special worlds, you know?” says Raphael "Raf" Colantonio when asked about Weird West’s genesis. Still, when you have a pig man as a character you’ve unashamedly borrowed from a popular modern TV series, maybe “Weird” is the better fit. There’s also a heavy lean on fate and intertwined destinies in what we’ve been exposed to with Weird West, which is the heart of wyrd. Why Wyrd? Because while “weird west” is itself an established -punk subgenre, with something like Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare being a proximity example, WolfEye’s take on it all envelopes a bit more than just horror meets Wild West, with dark fantasy elements, folk horror, wickerpunk and more permeating the world build here. "More than just horror meets Wild West, with dark fantasy elements, folk horror, wickerpunk and more permeating the world build.” The trio don’t hold back on the breadth of content their new studio’s debut title is filled with, either, which is most easily summed up as a game set in *some sort of* Wild West, but not as you really know it. Joining them, and at the helm of this locomotive remittance of information, is industry legend and former Arkane Studios co-boss, Raphael Colantonio. At least that’s my take on proceedings after being delivered a deep-dive for the ages by WolfEye Studios’ Julien Roby and Gael Giraudeau, who serve as executive producer and game designer on the game respectively. ![]() Weird West should have been called “Wyrd West”. ![]()
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