Bandits, sirens, and werewolves, oh my!
Weird West, the first game by WolfEye Studios, may not initially mean anything to anyone by name, but when you toss out that it's led by Raphaël Colantonio, the founder of Arkane Studios, known for his work on Prey, and Dishonored, then suddenly Weird West becomes a must-play title that often shines in its strategic elements and supernatural thrills, but does suffer from a few growing pains in creating a whole new potential franchise.
Weird West tells the loosely interconnected story of five strangers united by a brand that mysteriously appears on their neck, a narrative that is spurred by a group of equally mysterious figures centered around a cloaked individual, who is apparently you, sat in a chair, surrounded by portraits of your five heroes, if you can even call them that. While their core narratives of revenge and justice are largely seperate, their destinies are intertwined in ways that bring them together, even if that sounds more impressive than it ends up being, at least initially.
Each of your protagonists, of which you'll play in sequence, carry with them some motive to explore its wild west and dynamically changing environments that twist based on your actions. Whether it is tracking down your missing husband, or trying to find out why you've been magically turned into a talking pigman, I found each story to be captivating due to some intriguing ideas, supernatural elements, interesting characters, and some solid writing. I will say that despite that praise, the ways in which some stories connect feel a tad copied and pasted in some character dialogue that feels like there could have been stronger narrative threads to connect each story. I’ll also stress that while each of the five characters have interesting tales to be told, I wasn’t fully invested in the final two, which have some good moments, but don’t quite get as fleshed out as I would have liked.
While there is a voiced narrator, who does a really good job I might add, I do wish this game had full voice acting to punch up a few moments and give more personality to its collective of interesting individuals, and also, who doesn't want to hear a pigman talk? Come on, you know you do. I will add that each of the protagonists are largely blank slates when you play as them but as you move on to the next character, they will only showcase their personalities as your companions, often with dialogue that details what they have been up to since their story arc completed. Seeing Jane fight with her husband as I stood there, waiting to recruit her during the final story, showed how this whole adventure has changed their dynamic. When you are playing as them, dialogue is less impressive as you are merely selecting chat commands like “ask about this” or in the case of the fourth protagonist, selecting “give a speech” and then there being nothing since “give a speech” was disappointingly the speech itself. Yeah, I wasn’t too crazy about the quick text presented here considering each character does, in some way, have a personality.
As you explore its fairly large map, which reveals itself as you travel from location to location, time will pass, and some missions, such as bounties, have deadlines that need to be met; although, they are rather generous in the time available to you. Its chunk of the west is littered with small bite-sized environments to some more elaborate and often massive underground maze-like labyrinths. How you take on most locations will have some later effects felt during the next character’s exploration, or if enough time has passed on your current hero. For example, I emptied a location of its monster problem; fiendish ghouls that made the already hard west a bigger chore than it needed to be for some folk. Upon returning later, the town was back, thriving, and alive, and I even had a few new locations then to deal in some commerce, buying ammo, guns, and selling the random shit I'd find in the pockets of the last bandit to cross my path, and boy did I cross a lot of bandits. Sometimes, as I would be traveling, I would get caught up in instances that would start a feud with a local family, who would then randomly track me down until they too were six feet under.
Weird West is also about choice and having those consequences mean something. As you move from quest to quest, you’ll have dialogue and moral choices to make, some that dictate your ending, as well as how each subsequent character will end up dealing with your leftovers. I failed to find a door switch in the first protagonist's final mission, and this led to that story’s central villain remaining alive by its end. When I swapped next to the pigman, my previous nemesis was hiding out in a base I had previously cleared out, something I'll mention later on as one of the game’s biggest glaring issues. Still, there he was, high level for what I was rocking at the time, but begging for a bullet to the brain and a ditch to roll him into. I was also saddened that Jane, the first protagonist, had nothing to say about me killing him, despite the pain he put her through. I had a similar thing happen with the second protagonist’s main villain, and honestly, the fate I bestowed upon her made me beyond excited for any sort of payback she had in store for me, or if the Pigman would even acknowledge her fate. I loved seeing my choices mean something in the end despite those issues, and that the choices I made would either come back to haunt me or add to the narrative of a future character. It's not wildly changing the game in ways where my playthrough would be drastically different should I spin up Weird West again, but it's still different enough in ways where most games fumble that promise.
The main story itself is interesting and certainly kept me engaged, dealing out wild west justice across all five characters. However, the side activities and random encounters that accompany the core story are never as memorable as the main path and often lead to significant repetition of what you were tasked to do and where you would go. And, since the game has limited biomes, you’ll see the same types of environments over and over again. Bounty missions, which have you bringing in or killing your target were fun and thrilling in some instances, not to mention padding my wallet, but finding my targets at the same homestead or coal mine for the 23rd or 40th time? Nah, fam. This repetition bled into almost every other quest, whether it was delivering medicine or traveling from the same point A to B which made large swathes of the game’s content feel less fresh each time I ventured out to the same locations. And when I did, I was fighting the same enemies in the same layouts, complete with the same empty chests that already saw my thieving fingers clearing them out the first time I was there. It is honesty the only significant blemish in a game that largely shines brightly, and while it can suck the wind out of its western sails, it is still a damn impressive package that I can only see WolfEye Studios improving in a sequel.
While I was fairly engrossed in its story and characters, it is the gameplay that is going to keep most people hooked on whether or not you want to see the entire game through. Weird West is an isometric occult-flavored CRPG that is handled in real-time, with combat that is often fast and more nimble than you likely have the reflexes or patience for, especially since enemies can hit really hard should you go the action route. There is a favorable quick save system that allows for some experimentation or is used to help you get out of a bad spot. Shooting can feel a bit twitchy and unwieldy due to aiming with the right stick, but thankfully there is a time-slowing mechanic that makes aiming significantly more approachable than trying to aim up a shot and getting pelted by all sides as you whiff bullet after bullet. Apart from going in guns-a-blazing, you can opt for a more stealth approach, but honestly, while viable, it’s often with shallow but familiar features like moving around their vision cone, moving bodies out of sight, or simply hiding in the grass. Even the game’s unlockable abilities seem to leave stealth out of the picture, except for one invisibility skill, so it’s no surprise how barren the game’s stealth features can often come across as. I will say that thank god your companions don't set off the detection of nearby threats because damn, they will just run through town to find you should you take the off-beaten path.
Part of the appeal of what Dishonored offered was the variety in how you could go about your missions. Weird West gives you plenty of tools to work with, but oddly enough, you’re going to see practically all of them before you even finish the first arc. Sure, you’ll have new tricks via the abilities each character has, but the core gameplay elements are available right from the start. You can throw oil barrels to set up flammable paths or ignited instances of seeing some bandits or monsters erupt on fire, to kicking a poison barrel into a group of unsuspecting foes. I threw a cocktail at a lamp that was just within range of an oil barrel, which was next to a wagon filled with TNT. Now, before I did this, I threw a bottle nearby, luring three enemies to where the noise was. I threw the cocktail and the explosion was so massive that not only did everyone die, but I did as well. Sure, it led to my death, but with a quick reload I gave it another go. I did find additional moments that let me be a bit more creative, but many of these types of moments feel intentional rather than experimental. On a side note, when it came to moments that were accidental but hilarious, I shot a TNT barrel that catapulted a bandit into a railcar deep within the mine. I activated the mine cart and it carried their body to the door along the track. While that isn’t anything special, what kept me laughing was the fact that it left a blood trail along the entire track. Check the image gallery below for a screenshot of the blood trail.
Weird West offers you a few weapons to deal out justice in the form of pistols, shotguns, rifles, bows, and throwables. You’ll find stronger weaponry as they are notched with a star rating system, but apart from hitting a tiny bit harder, there isn’t much difference from one pistol to the next. You can outfit your companions with better weapons, and buy a horse to store items as well, keeping your inventory from being full all of the time. You’ll find fairly decent weapons out in the wild, but most of the time you’ll retreat to local shops that have those higher-tier weapons that might squeak out slightly better damage. You can upgrade your weapons as well, and oddly enough, sometimes those are better than the higher-tier guns you’ll buy. As you collect more weapons, you can either sell them for cash or break them down and take a few bullets from each dismantled piece. You can ransack bodies for more bullets, and you’ll certainly need them. I still find it disappointing that revisited areas for new bounties don’t refill their chests or searchable objects, so you’ll have to solely rely on pilfering the dead to refill your stocks, often recouping your costs for the mission from the bounty itself.
Each character has four core abilities as well as three to four per weapon, offering up various ways to make your weapons a bit more punchy. Personal abilities range from the pigman’s barreling charge, becoming bulletproof, to the bounty hunter Jane being able to land a roundhouse kick or lay down shrapnel mines. Later abilities for your remaining characters range from summoning a bear to maul nearby enemies, teleporting to avoid stray bullets or used to evade incoming fire, to shapeshifting into a werewolf. As you collect Nimp Relics, which are pretty common to track down or even purchase at some locations, you can put these towards weapon or class abilities, letting you figure out just what you want from your character, or how they will use those abilities as companions later on, even if they often use those skills at times where there isn’t a need for them.
As you track down Golden Aces of Spades, you can slot them into perks that carry over from character to character. These grant you the ability to be more efficient with your lockpicks, have more health, jump higher, have better prices in the shops, and more. The Golden Aces of Spades are less common than the Nimp Relics, but you’ll often find enough throughout the game to set up a decent build of what you want from them. One of my favorites to unlock was Bullet Dodger, which increases the fire rate while in bullet time, which is a skill I used as often as I had the purple flasks to refill it, anyway.
The last major system present is the Reputation system, a balance of the good you are doing as opposed to becoming more of an enemy of the people. Sink to the level of a murdering bandit and you'll see bounty hunters coming for you, not to mention your favor in town being less than pleasant. Your companions will also take notice of this as well, changing how they view you and your path. Raise it up high enough and not only will you have help show up in the form of those you've saved, but shops will reward you with cheaper prices, and the townsfolk will be more akin to aiding you with quests to pad that wallet.
While I adore the character art, and some of the environments, there are some UI elements, camera angles, or some aspects of level design that I am not too keen on. I often found that enemies would be just outside my view with some portions of the UI covering them up, or a bad angle to see my surroundings when underground. Honestly, if I could tilt the angle just down the tiniest bit, I would have fewer issues here. I also wasn’t too crazy about moving the map with one analog stick and the cursor with the other, which made navigating the map to be more cumbersome than fun. These were not horrible design issues that soured my time to any great degree but are just annoying enough to make me sigh a few times or hope for something better.
While there is a potion to easily spot enemies better than you normally can without it, I do wish there was SOME sort of detective vision or visual aid due to how impossible it is to see some collectible items, bodies, or interactive levers, especially at night or in areas with low light. Often, these things disappear into the background and do not show up on the mini-map. While I can understand not having small items like health kits or bottles show up, levers and switches definitely should, which is one of the reasons I just couldn’t find the third switch in the last level of the first character, despite me checking every damn wall and corner I could find, for well over an hour of running back and forth. If the items had a soft-colored border around them to make them more visible, as some do when you use that potion, it would be a solid compromise so that I could tell what was a background element and something useful. While you can zoom in, there is a limit that feels like it could have been closer, but it likely is far enough away to disguise most low-end visual components, which is usually the case.
Weird West has tremendous potential here with a game that is drastically more fun than it is anything less. The world itself can often feel less explained than I would have liked as it doesn’t really look to introduce YOU to any of its weirder elements and comes at it in a way where the characters you play as are already aware of such things. Still, I enjoyed the combat enough to play around with some aspects of its experimentation, the new areas that I would explore, and the characters I would either play as or place into my posse. I certainly don’t care for the repeated use of locations that you’ll constantly revisit, but the flexible abilities and playground elements of using oil barrels or shocking wet enemies does have an appeal that did remain largely consistent through my 25-30 hours. Weird West could be weirder, but it does a solid job as a new IP with concepts that can be better fleshed out in a sequel that I am very much wanting and looking forward to.
Developer - WolfEye Studios. Publisher - Devolver Digital. Released - March 31st, 2022. Available On - Xbox One/SeriesX/S, PlayStation 4/5, Windows. Rated - (M) Blood, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol, Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.