The immersive simulation genre is weird. Those who know it by name are often obsessive fans who will replay their favorite genre games to keep playing with the malleable worlds. Despite this, it remains a difficult term to define.
Weird West is an upcoming indie take on the immersive sim, but it comes from a team of former AAA veterans who worked on Dishonored and Prey, two of the best releases in the slippery genre to date. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that he looks pretty good himself.
After a few hours with an early build of the game, I threw in a six-shooter of things that caught my eye in the promising preview. Here's why I'm excited for WolfEye's debut, Weird West.
The pedigree
Weird West is coming from WolfEye, but this is the first game for the small distributed team. While this requires an introduction, the team's past work does not. Raphael Colantonio, former president and creative director of Arkane Studios, founded the team alongside Julien Roby, former producer at Arkane, and industry vet Binu Philip, COO.
Collectively, the team's penchant for sims and immersive games with deep systems shows up early and often with Weird West, and since it's a genre that lives and dies primarily on level design, I'm thrilled to see this team put their expertise to use on a more focused scale like this.
Environments
As the game opens with the death of your son and the kidnapping of your husband, you might think Weird West is about to be a quest for bloody revenge, but it doesn't have to be. Much like Dishonored and Prey before it, Weird West offers players hub-like levels full of enemies, but also rich with opportunities.
Do you create a distraction and then sneak out the back door? Do you take out enemies one by one, hiding their bodies in tall grass? Maybe you trigger a chain reaction that gathers all the enemies in one place to fire a lantern near an oil slick, allowing you to burn them all.
Level design is what these Arkane games do best (really better than anyone, in my opinion), and Weird West seeks to recreate some of that magic even from an angle. It looks different, but it's still so satisfying to take your time with a date and get it right.
the fight
Combat goes hand in hand with these elaborate environments, which, after a didactic introduction, really open up to reveal the extent of your abilities. Unlocking major new powers through Weird West's occult leanings adds a surreal touch to it all, but even good old-fashioned gunfights provide excitement.
That's because enemies, even in this unfinished build, act with killer instinct. It will be wise to sneak around Weird West for as long as possible. Every time I blew my cover in a dense area, I was quickly defeated by a swarm of enemies, some of whom wasted no time flanking me with shotguns.
The almost RTS-like user interface will keep you informed of your aim and your damage, but it's up to you to stay on your feet by planning ahead and acting quickly when the plan falls apart.
Adjustment
Although I put it here in the middle of this list, I would say that the setting is actually my favorite part of Weird West so far. I love it when two genres collide (it's a heist movie and a Christmas movie? Reindeer Games rules!) so the mix of mysticism and western in the thematic and aesthetic elements was just breathtaking .
The central enemy faction wears burlap on their heads like twisted serial killers, cannibals roam the land, and even fiercer monsters are conjured up for the full game. Weird West is doing a lot with surely far fewer resources than some team members are used to, and that's especially evident in the world building. It feels cleverly crafted as the dark centerpiece of a game that already does a lot of good.
Music
Even before I started Weird West properly, I suspected it was going to be interesting. This is partly because of the pedigree I mentioned. But another reason for this is the music. The trailer embedded above gives a good taste of it. He brilliantly captures the double sensitivity of Weird West: the Western on foot and its touches of occult mysticism.
I love it so much that as soon as I booted it up I asked the team that provided the code if we could expect a soundtrack release (no word yet on that, by the way ). The WolfEye website mentions the audio as a point of emphasis, and in the team's first game, it shows.
More clues to come
During my demo with Weird West, I was able to play the story of bounty hunter Jane Bell, but the full game will feature five playable characters, each with their own story to tell. This approach ensures variety, and also seems to suggest some crossbreeding.
I'd love it if, by the end of Weird West, we could look back and remember how each of these characters, seemingly living disparate lives at first, actually affected each other's stories directly and indirectly. With more monsters to discover, more anti-heroes to emerge, and more tragedies to come for the characters of Weird West, I can't wait to see how it all plays out.
Weird West is coming to PC, PlayStation, and Xbox platforms on January 11, 2022.
