[thumping music with strumming] [Captions by: Val Grim] From the co-founder of Arkane and other minds that worked on “Dishonored” and “Prey”, comes a new company and a new immersive sim game. I’ve always thought that term was weird, and the genre can be hard to define sometimes. Like, “Oh, you have multiple solutions to problems, and there are RPG elements… on occasion…” The world has all these systems, so this… might count? This is not one, and… Oh, God, does this count? You can’t even use the funny number anymore, since even “Call of Duty” got in on that. A lot of people think that it should at least be in first person. On a baseline, that puts you in the perspective of someone in the setting. So, “Alien: Isolation” counts, but not later “Hitman” games. The point is: people will argue back and forth over what stupid shit defines a genre until the end of time. Now we have “Weird West”, made by developers who created classic examples of the genre, being ADVERTISED as the genre, and it has the gameplay elements you would expect… except, it’s a top-down game. And it blends in elements from others, with options all over the place. To top it off, you don’t play as a single character throughout the game, but as five, and what decisions you make can affect the world of your next character, and you can even recruit your past self to the cause. It feels like picking any one thing to define it isn’t really doing it justice. And if you do pick a feature out to dig into, you can’t get very far. But it is ambitious, and has enough cool features and ideas to make it worth talking about. Plus, there are all the mods you can access through the main menu, like the first person one. This was made by one of the game’s developers, so I also think it’s worth a look. So, as for the story setup, we’re dealing with five main characters. You play one character’s story, and then move onto the next – there’s no switching back or bouncing around between them. Thankfully, that means we start simple. CHILD: “Play your cards right, and coming out here could be the best thing that ever happened to you.” CHILD: “If you can survive, that is…” CHILD: “Cause here’s the thing: this ain’t quite the Wild West as you know it. There are ancient powers at war with each other.” The setup to the world is vague, and basically amounts to being “the Weird West is weird”. Even the name alone seems like a strange choice. Weird West is just a term for a genre mashup. You take a western and combine it with something more fantastical, like supernatural horror or sci-fi. You know, something like “Jonah Hex” from Weird Western Tales. Or “Deadlands”. Or even… Oh, man… It would be like if “Fallout” was called “Pulp Sci-Fi”. Though, funny enough, that game’s also on the list of inspirations here. But I will say that, the more I played it, the more this title made sense to me. For now, you see a monster sending a bison into orbit, some kind of machete murderer pigman, a werewolf… This is all promising. And the story kicks off from here. What appears to be a cult is ritualistically branding one of its members. It’s not clear how this goes, as we’re brought to our first character waking up screaming from the brand appearing on them. Outside, her son is murdered and her husband kidnapped by a local gang called the Stillwaters. Fairly bad morning so far. Well, this is Jane Bell – formerly retired bounty hunter, now back on the job, to take revenge and rescue her husband. Or fuck around in the yard and use her son’s bones to club coyotes. Regardless, the Stillwaters also attack the local town of Grackle. They’ll also be happy to see the Stillwaters laid to waste. Heading out to settle a score is about as “western” as it gets, so that’s all I’ll say about the story for now. You are seeing her family for the first time in the exact same moment it’s being downsized, so I didn’t feel that invested, but, on the gameplay front, the moment you’re set free, there is so much to interact with. It does pass the classic “can you stack thing up to reach a higher location?” test, but then you could bring a bucket to a pump and fill it with water, knock it over and spill it, come back as someone else and Molotov the chickens… The meat will cook right off the bone – instant tendies! Just be careful with fire, since, in the right conditions, that can spread out of control. If the perspective alone gave doubts on what this game is, those go away real fast. “Weird West” has all kinds of systems going for it, and sometimes, they interact in magical ways. Now that you’re more up to speed on what this is all about, let’s talk about the graphics. Going for a stylized, kind of comic book look is a good idea for their perspective, and a nice throwback to Weird West as a concept. With this style, small items, like coins and potions, are able to pop out more, because you do have your container interfaces that you can pilfer through, like a lot of other games, but here, items are frequently interactable objects in the world. They only highlight if you get close – there’s no “highlight everything” option. Some RPGs have that, since there are only a few pickups and interactables on screen at a time. Here, it’s so dense it would be unreadable. It also makes a lot of other good uses of color contrast, since, for most of the game, you will be running around through the desert, but then you’ll come across deep blues or purples, or something else that strikes out at your eyes. It can get fantastical at points, but they keep the rest of the setting grounded-enough-looking that it doesn’t get too whacky. Which is a hard balance when they have “the old saloon” and “the temple to the Ancient Ones” that close, but I think they were great at pulling that off. It’s the Old West, sometimes the supernatural pops up, and you just gotta deal with it. I also dig the somber, 1800s’ character portraits they have for everyone. And then they’ll put the same kind of expression on a werewolf or a big pigman. I give the game a lot of credit for its jokes not being “look how silly our setting is!” (which is what writers do when they’re embarrassed or insecure about their world). A lot of the humor here is in the mundane little details. When you play as a pigman, the repeated joke isn’t “Oh my God, a walking pig?!” Instead it’s “Wow, you dumbfucks can talk?!” It embraces the setting for its jokes, and a lot of them are little visual things you can miss. Everyone calls the Stillwaters dumb, inbred hillbillies, but how stupid can they- Oh, Jesus Christ…! Anyways, the game is complimented by nice lighting and shadows, there’s some interesting art direction, and there are points where the game’s style does make it look pretty rough… Overall though, the game looks good and fitting. No big issues there. As for the sound design, there are some strong highlights. In combat, using guns especially sounds great. If you let a gunshot hang for a moment, you can hear it echoing for miles around you. [gunshot rings out, reverbs across the desert] Then you get a proper gunfight. [loud gunshots and distorted screams as guitar strums slowly and deliberately] Beyond how bright and clear the gunshots are, the combat can start sounding very surreal at points. Sometimes, a kill means hearing a distorted, echoed scream. [gunshots rip through the air, a distorted, anguished scream echoes away] It’s like hearing their soul ripped away. [punchy sounds of carnage] [inhuman, pained wail] This kind of feeling gets amplified by the soundtrack. You do get the music you would expect from westerns sometimes, like guitar flourishes or moody chords. [deep guitar strumming] Then you’ll get tracks that are droning and ambient, and the guitar kind of creeps in. [laid-back guitar chords] But, above everything else, I would call this an electronic soundtrack. The combat music can have this pulsing alarm feeling to it. You can beat this game without killing any people, so it’s like the soundtrack going: “Violence is a gruesome thing. Behold your sins.” [ominous, encroaching electronic pulses]
[Weird West OST - Here Come The Ridgebacks] [fast snares, rhythmic buzzing]
[Weird West OST - Here Come The Ridgebacks] [shrill amplification]
[Weird West OST - Here Come The Ridgebacks] You get harsh, noisy sounds, and then it turns around and goes: “You know what? Guns are hype sometimes.” “This time, the fight will sound straight out of “Samurai Jack”.” [deep, thumping drums, warbling electronic plinks] [thumping stealth music] But, no matter how high they crank up the percussion or twist things around, that little western element is always in there. So you end up with a really unique soundtrack, and, for bonus points… some are by the game director’s own band! This dude made “Arx Fatalis”. [acoustic guitar with ghostly female singing]
[Weird West OST - Olvidado] [Raphaël Colantonio intensifies]
[Weird West OST - Olvidado] The sound is carrying a lot of the surrealness. There aren’t a ton of ambient sound effects, but you might start hearing some electric buzzing, or the sounds of a monster’s stalking footsteps are just percussion. [each step is a synthesized thump] As for voice acting… [high-pitched, distorted chattering] [lower-pitched canned echoing] [sped-up and backwards-sounding distortion] It’s all garbled, vaguely language-sounding noise, kind of like “Paratopic”. [stifled cackle] But a little more pitched, like a FoOglie answering machine. The only person with a voice is a folksy narrator. NOT SAM ELLIOT: “That Trapper – he wasn’t right. Sick with that spirit of greed.” NOT SAM ELLIOT: “Best report back to your village – let ‘em know the trail’s hot.” In the end, it does succeed in making an uncanny atmosphere, but it is one that feels more distant, and not just due to the perspective. It’s not because of the visuals or sound design – because, just looking at it, this clip looks great – but there are some issues that compound to make this kind of void I’ll talk about later. For now, let’s talk about the gameplay, since there is a lot to cover here. [gunshot hitting the bell] From the start, you’ve got a few difficulties to choose from. They mainly affect combat, but also how you heal. On easier settings, sleeping will heal up your bullet wounds and restore your action points for abilities. When it gets harder, sleeping only restores AP, and you need to heal in a classic imm-sim way, by using bandages and other medicine. And by “other medicine” I mean a downright embarrassing mukbang. When food heals you, the world becomes your Golden Corral, except that eldritch meat from some kind of desert monster is probably more like actual food than Golden Corral. If you’ve never heard of that chain, it has a chocolate trough… at a buffet… that they expect the Golden Corral audience... to share. They might have gotten rid of this thing in a post-virus world, but the foul creations that the trailer park Oppenheimers came up with due to this fucking thing still haunt me… Golden Corral is an animal testing lab fronting as a restaurant. It’s the Callisto Protocol. Just stop going there! I got off track, but it is worth bumping up to Hard, so you don’t rest in every bed you see for an easy heal. Plus, characters can have all kinds of creative alternatives to check out. And you get enemies that are slightly more alert and slightly more dangerous. You can save whenever you want outside of combat, so it’s not a huge deal, unless you wanna try Nimpossible mode. You still have a difficulty selector with this, but only one auto save, and you can only respawn by finding special items. It will definitely up the tension, but it’s not ideal for a first time run. As for the core gameplay, again, there are quite a few options. You can play it as the proper definition of a top-down game, use a free-aim system, but the default, and what the game is built around, are twin-stick shooter controls. When I first picked it up, controlling the game felt awkward for the first hour or so, and looking at the UI on the screen, that seems more built around the controller, so I tried that out. It still wasn’t fully clicking, so then I went back to actual clicking, and, out of nowhere, there was a moment where it all just came together. The active aiming, shooting and dodging is solid. Every character also has a “Max Payne” or John Woo “Stranglehold” dive they can do, and it does deplete your action points, but it feels natural to control. Every character is capable of flying across the screen, wiping some dudes out and rolling into cover. What counts as cover is something you need to eyeball – there’s no “lock into the wall” system or something like that. It would go against the gameplay freedom they’re going for, but there are times where you feel like you’re safe, and you’re still open to gunfire. Then, sometimes, the opposite can happen. My pig bro stuns out a bandito, but his friend’s running up, so I move into cover. I seem taller than the boxes, and was convinced he might get me, but the system is fluid enough that, if you get up on an object, you will crouch down lower. It can feel awkward at points, but, overall, it’s pretty solid. But there is an element that’s awkward, and one that’s downright bad. As you explore the game, you’ll find Nimp Relics. The Nimps were ancient mysterious gremlin beings that you don’t learn much about. Nimpossible mode, appropriately, has some bonus stuff related to them, but not enough to make something compelling. Whatever they were, the relics have mystical properties. By acquiring as many as you can through any means necessary, you can unlock abilities for your characters. To name a few, the bounty hunter can get a shrapnel mine and a mega kick (which work great together). The Pigman has a melee charge and can leave a trail of toxic sludge behind him. Across Rivers is a hunter who can summon spirit bears and tornadoes. Desidério Ríos receives elemental powers from his gods and is a part-time werewolf. Finally, you have Constance Driftwood of the mysterious Oneirist organization. The Oneirists see the future, and try to guide the West into the best one. It’s like if the Bene Gesserit were formed in the same zip code as a Buc-ee’s. So, she can teleport a short distance, and has other forms of outright magic. Sounds good so far, but, for spending a little extra, you can unlock weapon abilities for every character. And, unlike some other games, this one balances it well. You’ll easily find enough relics to unlock all of your character abilities, and anything after that can go right into the weapons. The awkwardness comes from the sheer amount and how you use them. You have 5 types of mainline weapons that all have abilities, and that’s not counting molotovs, dynamite or other kinds of grenades. [MARV warhead] Your character and weapon abilities use the exact same buttons. When you aim a weapon, it switches over to your weapon abilities, but there’s a slight delay before it goes in. You can switch between two weapons quickly, but can open up a wheel to access the rest. Now think of how frantic twin-stick shooter combat can be. And now you have abilities, all tied to the same keys, with a slight delay, that are shifting around constantly. So, when you get in a twitch reflex firefight, it is extremely easy to hit the wrong button and do something you didn’t want to. You have to slow for a moment, and look at the action icons, to make sure you’re not messing up. It might not be as bad if you were only switching between two weapons, but experimenting and adapting are the name of the game. It got better with time, but I never became fully comfortable with it. It’s a lot of options, and weapon powers can have utility for something like stealth, but, when things heat up, the system mainly adds clunkiness to the flow. And it doesn’t help that the John Woo dive is always useful and always reliable. Under pressure, it overshadows cool options, just because I know what to expect. When it comes to melee, character powers that use it, like the Pigman charge, are a blast. If you’re sneaking, you can knock someone out with your hands, or something more blunt, or equip something deadlier. All of that works fine, but the act of equipping and using a melee weapon in a proper fight is absolutely miserable. Because of how the ability system works, you have to aim your melee weapon like it’s a firearm. Even when you win a fight that way, there’s nothing satisfying about it. It doesn’t help when your enemies can frequently avoid these attacks. And, sadly, this extends into playing Dezi’s werewolf form, which I had really been looking forward to. He has a leap power, which is fun, but using claws is the same old misery. Trying it out is some of the worst up close fighting I’ve had in a twin-stick game. Though, as compensation, Arkane’s “Dark Messiah” legacy carries on with a dedicated kick button. I guess, that sums up the combat and its janky parts, though you could try Tactical mode. This flat out toggles slow-mo on and off, which is better for the ability system, but removes a ton of the challenge, so… not perfect. [pig spray] [death rattle] When it comes to the setting itself, there is a good amount of stuff being simulated. The world is similar to “Fallout”, or some other RPGs where you get to the edge of a location and can travel across an overworld. You break through the fog, and, occasionally, new locations will be revealed. You’ll also have a chance of random encounters, like traveling merchants, bandits, animals, and all kinds of other activities. Traveling can be faster and some bad encounters can be avoided with the help of a horse. You can steal them for a temporary one-way trip, but these are “Weird West” horses. They sometimes call out to gods, and, I assume, have other opinions, because, when you get to a location with a stolen horse, they take off. They’re loyal companions here. In real life, they’re more like walking couches with a severe anxiety disorder. So, buying a horse lets you store more items and see the map properly – instead of poor and unable to travel, because someone needs to feed your couch. As you play different characters, new locations can open up, or existing ones can change hands. How the world evolves can be based on your choices. Going back to Jane the bounty hunter, you could rescue your husband without dealing with the Stillwater leader or killing any of them, which for later characters can mean the Stillwaters are still a present threat that show up in different locations. You do have the big decisions and dialogue that change the landscape, but the world is reactive in a way that most RPGs don’t have. Like, you have your fairly standard crime and reputation system. You can become wanted, and bounty hunters try to catch you, but there are different degrees in how areas might react to you. You could also singlehandedly ride into town and massacre the population, to the point it becomes a ghost town that’s completely abandoned when you next come by. Something else might move in between characters. An area can go from a criminal hideout to a monster lair to a slaver base to a thriving compound with a delivery quest for you, all in the same campaign. Which is cool to see, and this kind of stuff hits harder when it’s the result of your actions. But the quest you get is MMO-tier “go get this object”, and, while there can be some big changes and good character moments based on your actions, a lot of it does amount to set dressing. It also doesn’t help when the locations start becoming repetitive. And I don’t mean like clearly seeing the same assets rearranged (which does happen), but I mean being unlucky with bounty missions and being sent to Yeb’s Prize over and over again. The money was good, but I was so sick of the layout. I was thrilled to get a new location, which was… basically, just Yeb’s Prize again. This didn’t happen on a following playthrough, so it was bad luck, but you are gonna see repeated locations, no matter what. There’s also the fact that, unlike “Arcanum” or “Fallout” or whatever, you’re playing five characters. The best and most engaging part of exploring this way is the shifting perspective. What seemed odd as one character, can suddenly make sense, or something you missed is suddenly very visible. The downside is, you’re free to visit areas meant for other characters. Sometimes, you come to a unique, interesting location, and there is stuff for you to do there. And other times, you’re just getting a peek at it before someone else’s journey. Or outright robbing their starting location, which IS fun, but it can make the open exploration feel frustrating. They’ll throw in items like perk cards to find, which are a second set of upgrades that pass through all your characters. These are all more passive, but do change up how you play the game. But these and Nimp relics aren’t guaranteed, and they don’t feel that rewarding. But I was exploring, because there were missions and things to find that were extremely good. To give a minor example, two of them were worried something bad was happening in their town. There were a few people suspected of being behind it, but nothing concrete. You could investigate them, or you might know what the kids are describing, and look for different clues, and then figure out how you proceed from there. There are good side stories like that, and also the repetitive “go get my pants” quests. And even the more engaging side content doesn’t go too far into the characters. I mean, just looking at it, it seems like an RPG that would have all these side stories and weirdos, but the farther you go off the main path, the more it feels like panning for gold and getting teeth. It can remind me more of playing “Mount & Blade” over “Fallout”. It’s more of a sandbox, which is great news if you do like all the systems, but it also feels like it’s at war with itself sometimes. But, before I get into that, there are a lot of great moment-to-moment features. So many that I’m sure I didn’t notice some. The sheer volume of little reactivity things are impressive, but some are more highlighted. Like, if someone dies in a town, they’ll get their own grave plot, and you can squeeze that market. There might also be nice shinies in those holes. NPCs can form relationships, like marrying each other, and, if you kill one of their family members, they might go on a vendetta, and you can encounter them later in your story, or another character’s story, if you bring them along. There’s also an opposite effect, where, if you help someone out, they might become a “friend for life”. When you’re losing a fight, they’ll show up to help, but you can also still find them around in the world somewhere. And these relationships are tied to individual characters who can die like anyone else. Your past lives are also capable of dying, and you could beat the game killing just about everybody. Most mainline missions have several ways of accomplishing them, and, breaking that down even further, you can do it in all kinds of ways with the interactivity. You get in a gunfight, and someone shoots a lamp that spills oil everywhere and ignites, and then that heat turns the boxes of .44 into Jiffy Pop. There’s tons of room to experiment, and having multiple characters does give you extra room there. You could play everyone as purely good or evil, but mixing it up gives you more to appreciate. The bounty hunter could be good, and you can make the Pigman good too, on the long, hard road to redemption. OR have him emulate Brazil’s deadliest black hat, Jango Bravo. At times, it could seem like he’s struggling to make it to the next scene, and that’s very in line with the Pigman. JANGO: “E esse pastel? É de hoje?” WAITER: “Não senhor, é de carne.” [*BANG*] JANGO: “Ninguém debocha Jango Bravo…” [*bam*]
“Ahh!” ♂ You can shoot everyone in the face and not break the story, and that’s worth trying. BARMAN: “Mas tomou o conhaque!” [*BAM*] JANGO: “Ninguém debocha Jango Bravo…” Every time I’ve launched this game, I’ve found little, fun details every time. Without a doubt, “Weird West” has earned the funny number, but it’s where the other genre is pushing harder that it hurts itself. As a sandbox, you can set up camp wherever you want, hunt and skin animals and sell the meat on the market, or cook the meat, or make items out of it, or wait until nightfall and break into shops and rob them blind. Then you have the more RPG side of the game, like party members. They still have those dynamic elements, like interacting with objects around them, but, with their presence, you can actually feel the genres shifting over. Whether you’re recruiting brand new buddies or your past characters, all followers work exactly the same. It is a good idea just to interact with your past self once, to have money and other items transfer over. But, if you bring them along for the ride, they’ll fight alongside you and use their abilities in combat. These can make the fights wild. Like, Across Rivers gets good at putting people Beneath Ground when he uses that tornado. The main issue is that they wanted the followers to be helpful, but not intrusive at the same time. For convenience, when you’re sneaking, the AI is not supposed to be able to see your followers. This bugs out and happens anyway sometimes, but usually they’ll run all over the map, and no one notices them. Which looks awkward, when everything is supposed to be so simulated, but, when combat does break out, they’ll sometimes charge right into the head of it, and the fighting becomes headless chickens. It makes the game way easier, but also plays more mindlessly. If that’s the case, you think you might just wanna dismiss them, but then you miss out on extra inventory space, all the party banter, the unique encounters and interactions that you would expect from a classic RPG. But you don’t have that level of control. You can’t switch between characters or order their attacks. Just the act of equipping them, compared to equipping yourself, is so clunky and awkward… But the game will drop valuable items for you in about the amount of an RPG. The itemization and effects of them are actually very meaningful and balanced – there’s just so much actual stuff you get. “Weird West’s” biggest issue is that features are good in a vacuum or synergize with a few other things, but stuff like this lacks cohesion to the point that it’s ripping itself in half. Do you want an immersive sandbox that’s more barren on character moments, but you’re in the center? You’ll pull off all kinds of shenanigans. Or do you want that RPG experience which has more character moments and humanity, but it’s also clunky and barely surface level, since they should be doing their own thing as an immersive sim? And there are so many other tools and interactions that I won’t go into detail here on, because the core issue doesn’t change – these are just more details. I’m sorry if this feels more all over the place than usual, but… it’s very reflective of the game. It has so much going on that it’s genuinely hard to describe easily. I feel so lost… [*pow*] To complete the frustration, it is a buggy game. And, while there wasn’t anything game-breaking, some moments got close. It’s a lot more polished than it used to be, and some are just visual or fixed on a load, but it is noticeable. And there are details in games you take for granted that might not show up here. You don’t always have transition animations between states, which is fine. It can be an issue when you’re trying to sneak and enemies only have it on SOME idle animations. [*zwoosh*] You see it in the wild enough... [*zwoosh*]
You see it in the wild enough... but it feels very different when you get caught by it. And I wouldn’t say the jank is biased against you, because it works in your favor too. And hey, on the day I recorded this, I discovered, if you knock someone out in their bed, it won’t alert guards, because they figure they’re sleeping. I… have to stop. The first person mod is interesting in that aspect, because their attention to detail was so high that, even in this state, it… does work. It is even jankier here (after all, it’s not officially supported), but, as far as creating an interactable world goes, they completely succeeded. It’s just that these other elements were pulling away from its core, but that was the experiment. So much is wonderful, and so much is disjointed, and that leaves me with the story and world. [cursed phonograph tunes] Beyond the exploration issues, playing in the world full of variables, with five characters, where near anyone can die, means that it’s hard to get something that narratively interesting out of it. At least when it comes to the characters. Jane’s family is GONE right as we’re learning how to play. It’s the same with the other characters, where you’re dropped into a struggle in their lives, complete it, and then move on. My favorite journey was the Pigman, because he also has proper amnesia and doesn’t know WHY he’s a pigman. And I know that amnesia is the khaki pants of game stories, but his experience gives you more of the “stranger in a strange land” feeling that this game probably should have leaned into more. And, thematically, it ties into the main story a lot more directly. I thought “Weird West” was an appropriate title because of how blunt it is. It’s a “take it for what it is” approach that doesn’t have much obviously interesting happening for most of the game. While there are some creepy monsters and ideas, there’s not enough unique to really latch onto in the setting. For the most part, you’re told very little about it, and, since the characters are so vague too, you have very little to connect to. It’s a shame, because, when conversations are happening, they’re good, but you’ve mostly been dropped into the middle of things. The strongest are the people you encounter in every form, like Essex Mast – a man searching for immortality, and Heathen – a mysterious witch who seems to know you’re the same person. And it’s not that the others are bad – I really liked Pigman Joe and Sheriff Albright, but, right when they’re getting interesting, you’ve already moved on. It’s like playing a roleplaying game, and, right when you learn some secret or nuance about one of your companions, you can’t talk to them anymore. The game is about getting window glimpses into the struggles and cultures of people all across the West, and this part isn’t a mistake – it’s the whole point. I get what they’re going for, and it actually reminds me a lot of “Arx Fatalis”, but it’s something that I think sounds more interesting described than to actually play. I’ll be brief, but, if you don’t want spoilers, go to here: The main mystery is about why all these characters are connected by the brand, and what was happening in that cult room. Well, Essex Mast believes he can get immortality by stealing it from an immortal. There’s a mysterious figure named Aleph, who’s somehow been weakened, and Essex thinks that he can steal his powers. He also thinks the brand on you has something to do with body possession. That alone is enough to put a lot of it together – it’s more “how and why?” Beyond the gameplay, the plot itself is also an experiment. 4000 years ago, a group called The Twenty-One discovered a wishing tome with only two wishes left. Aleph wished for all of them to be immortal, but, as the ages passed, they realized that being immortal is horrible. They were far beyond their humanity at this point, and, when they wished it reversed, the book refused. So Aleph learned enough about magic to launch an experiment. He would possess five struggling people in the West, and, living through their lives, would possibly regain his humanity and his mortality. If it fails, The Twenty-One will use the last wish to destroy the universe, since they figured that will kill them off. There’s no final showdown or grand finale – it’s a quiz. The Twenty-One will ask you about your actions and why you made them, and how you answer determines the fate of the universe. If you have humanity behind your answers, the plan works – they all consume you and die. And you get a cutscene showing how all of your actions affected the world. Answer like a robot, and the universe dies. Even other characters remark on how anticlimactic everything is. The individual stories can have their moments, and Essex can get a payoff too, but, because my connection to the world and characters was distant due to this approach, I didn’t feel invested. “Weird West” feels like an experiment from genre veterans, and some results are promising, and others feel like splashing acid on my arm. I wish it had more meaningful side stories and opportunities to know the characters better, because there is a ton of fun stuff here, but it’s rotating around an orb of emptiness I can’t quite define. Overall, I liked it. I convinced the goglins to knock it 65% off in the pinned link, and you can get it for free on Game Pass and probably other stuff like that. Especially if you like imm-sims or sandbox games, it’s definitely worth a look. I was surprised at how good some parts of the game were and how much it clashed with itself. There’s so much ambition and so much to appreciate that I wish I could say it was amazing and just scream its praises, but… it’s just too all over the place. Wolfeye is worth supporting, and they’re working on a new game, which I’m extremely interested to see. So, check it out if you know what you’re getting into. Because there was no bison-hunting monster that sent them into orbit – only I went into orbit. JANGO: “Você é [unintelligible]” GANGSTER: “Fica ligado, eu não tenho medo de você!” [*POW*] JANGO: “Nem eu!” JANGO: “Ninguém debocha Jango Bravo…” Talus: “What is [your] favorite American cryptid?” As far as pure entertainment value goes, it’s hard to beat Bigfoot, but my favorite is definitely Mothman. Because you hear that and picture, like, a big human moth lumbering through the woods. Then you read up on him, and he’s some kind of extra-dimensional doomsayer… Jonathan Benfante: “What is [your] opinion on fighting games, and have [you] gotten into them?” Fighting games are cool. Every blue moon I’ll play “Tekken” casually. Last year, an indie game came out, called “YOMI Hustle” (and I think it’s “Your Only Move Is Hustle” now), which is, like, a TAS vs TAS fighting game. And it’s kind of like a turn-based game where you have all the data and, if you haven’t checked it out, and you like fighting games – you should, because it’s wild. Thomas Steger: “Thoughts on the new “Marathon” game?” Well, it is an extraction shooter, and, like everyone else, I would have liked to see an actual campaign from Bungie again, but the trilogy’s story was done, and done so beautifully, that you can only do a reboot or a spin-off. I am condensing, because I could go on for a while, but, overall, I’m happy people are talking about “Marathon”. And, if it is a horror show, the originals aren’t going anywhere. The real question is, why didn’t they make “Pathways Into Darkness” the extraction shooter? That would be perfect! Bungie, please do something with “Pathways Into Da-” Bear: (grylls)
