The Old West has always been weird, hasn’t it? A bloody daydream of plunder and desolation, heroism and nihilism, reincarnated in a thousand motley forms across generations of books, films, folk songs and campfire stories. Videogames have certainly taken it in some peculiar directions. Think of Media.Vision’s Wild Arms series for PS1, where six-shooters are ancient relics wielded by chosen adventurers, or the pre-patch version of Red Dead Redemption, with its cursed physics and flying centaurs, or the dreamy vestiges of frontier life you encounter while trudging the plains of Where The Water Tastes Like Wine.
WolfEye’s Weird West mixes this vast, rancid legacy with outright fantasy elements sourced partly from the likes of Lovecraft and partly from the studio founders’ previous Dishonored games. This very much isn’t your classic rootin’ tootin’ cowboy yarn. Head out into the wilds and you’ll find raucous villages of pigmen and ghost towns that absent-mindedly manifest from the foundations up. Dip into the caves and you’ll encounter ravenous mutants and blue-stone temples where cultists debate visions of the apocalypse.
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