#WEIRD WEST ENGINE FULL#

Interestingly, the brand persists, and there is even some suggestion that the memories of the previous branded character persist from body to body. However, once Jane's story of revenge against the Stillwaters concludes, the game immediately places the player into the body of another character - this time a pigman named Cl'erns Qui'g.

For the first few hours past this introductory cutscene, the brand is largely ignored and its significance remains a bit of mystery. To set the stage of how the story is presented, Jane's story begins with her dreaming about herself being cattle-branded by a cult-like group of masked figures, but she wakes up to find out that this brand has actually appeared on her neck in the waking world.

#WEIRD WEST ENGINE FULL#

While Jane's story initially plays this pretty straight - dealing with a normal person simply trying to survive in a setting full of, well, weird circumstances - the progression of the narrative immediately started to hook me beyond this base description.

However, as Jane's story progresses, it quickly becomes apparent that this version of the wild west is no stranger to all sorts of supernatural shenanigans from flesh-eating monsters to vengeful ghosts and bipedal pigmen. A gang of outlaws named the Stillwaters end up kidnapping Jane's husband, initiating a pretty typical scenario for a revenge plot. Weird West opens up with a bandit raid at the homestead of a former bounty hunter named Jane Bell. The art style was appropriately grimy and smeared, the lowly drawl of the voiced narration fit the spooky nature of the game perfectly while managing to avoid coming across as hokey, and the unorthodox nature of featuring multiple protagonists in the same setting allowed for a decidedly unique flavor of storytelling. This makes it all the more frustrating that Weird West was, unfortunately, one of the most tedious experiences I've played in several years. A supernatural fantasy reimagining of the American west was not really novel enough of a concept to immediately intrigue me at first, but during the leadup to the title's release I found myself more and more eager to see if Weird West could potentially be a hidden gem of the first part of 2022.ĭespite my initial preconceptions, I quickly found myself genuinely enthusiastic about pretty much everything comprising the setting, story, and tone of Weird West. When Arkane Studios veterans first formed Wolfeye Studios back in 2019 shortly before announcing immersive sim / action-RPG hybrid Weird West as their debut title, I found myself intrigued at the prospect of experiencing something as inventive as Dishonored or Prey, even if I was a little lukewarm on the premise itself. The immersive sim is something like the dressed-up cousin of the RPG - equally difficult to clearly define in words, but usually pretty easy to identify on the spot.

Weird west engine