As anyone who has been reading my reviews would know, I am a huge fan of role-playing games, particularly ones that involve a large open world to explore.

Being able to tune your character to your own playstyle, while venturing forth and doing your own thing, while exploring every little hidey-hole and discovering the games secrets really appeals to me, so after hearing about Weird West by WolfEye Studios, I was pretty keen to sit down and take part in the hands-off preview.

Founded in 2018, the 25 person team is almost entirely made up of former Arkane Studios team members, so you can practically guarantee the game will be full of unexpected character, and Weird West certainly looks like it won’t disappoint. Their mission is to go deeper into Immersive Simulators, and being a dark fantasy game based in the Wild West, this action RPG has well and truly caught my attention, and I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet!

Aside from the comic-inspired art style, the main thing that caught my attention was just how interactive the environments are. While the playable area did seem a little smaller than expected, the character can interact with absolutely everything that appears on screen in one way or another. Every oil lamp can be picked up and used as a light source or offensively, barrels can be pushed around or used to douse flames, bodies can be searched, picked up and hidden, or even buried. The list goes on. What is even more impressive is that every single building can be entered and ransacked, though you may have to find some imaginative way to initially gain access, so what initially feels like a small area suddenly takes on a much larger scale.

This isn’t to say that the game is small though, as the player will be able to leave these areas and proceed to other locations via the map, and while moving from place to place, various random encounters will activate, each different from the last depending on the time of day or if the player has already visited that location, and these locations continue to exist without the characters being present.

Your actions in a particular location will have a lasting effect on the world as you make your way through it – a town that you have slaughtered will eventually start to decay, or a completely different faction will move in and take over. AI are set to develop vendettas against you and place bounties against you should your reputation fall the wrong way. Everything you do will have its own organic consequences, and with the dynamic event generation, no playthrough will ever be the same.

As previously mentioned, Weird West features a very familiar comic-book appearance, similar to what you’ve seen in Borderlands, but the inspiration was taken from French comic books. The isometric 3rd person perspective does mean that the graphics aren’t necessarily as finely detailed, but the art style lends itself well to the dark fantasy aspects of the title, and given the art team is comprised of just 4 people, the preview we were given looks absolutely incredible.

The twin-stick shooter-esque nature of the game did turn me off a little when I first heard about it, but they really surprised me with just how much freedom of movement the character had. Climbing from one building to another, diving behind cover, and near-cinematic special abilities flowed together so well that I had pretty much forgotten this was the case.

I’d like to thank Raphael “Raf” Colatonio, the Creative Director; Julie Roby, the Executive Producer; and Gael Giraudeau, the Game Designer, for taking the time to accommodate us all with this hands-off preview. It was easy to see that they are passionate about Weird West and the work they do. They’re creating a game that merges what we’d expect from the Wild West with dark fantasy inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. I am really looking forward to getting my hands on this one, and I am truly excited for what the future holds with WolfEye Studios.

Written by: Mathew Lindner