Weird West: Definitive Edition - top-down immersive sim action-RPG from Arkane founder Raf Colantonio

[mediocrepoet]

Shallow West.

Is this the same Skillup that called the Outer Worlds a brilliant revival of the RPG genre?

You say that like he was wrong.

 

[Jenkem]

also here in California

this explains everything

 

[hivemind]

You explained why there's a higher than average amount in the community, but not why a sane mind would hire one.

We are naturally higher IQ than you chud subhumans.

Simple as, sweetie.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

but Firestine is a tranner

Reminder that they make up .1% of the population but 50% of all video game writers and forum moderators.

 

[Fedora Master]

but Firestine is a tranner

Reminder that they make up .1% of the population but 50% of all video game writers and forum moderators.

I wanted to add "and sex offenders" but you already said moderators.

 

[Skdursh]

I'm not exactly sure how true it is that most of the popular history of the Wild West was written and established thought the lens of white men like you're saying. There were western dime novels about white guys, and black guys, Indians, and even some women. It's more like a specific era of western movies you're talking about. And it's not even like what you're saying was true of the forerunner to the western movies, the old Wild West shows, since some of the biggest draws of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show were Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, and Sitting Bull.

I'm guessing when you wrote that you were so smugly sure of yourself that you didn't bother to fact-check anything to do with your assertion before posting it. I don't blame you, it's quite a normal path to take for those of the Twitter generation, but alas if you had decided to do a modicum of research you'd see that your assumption is decidedly false.

First consider this list of old west gunfighters, this list of old west lawmen, this list of old west gangs and this list of old west cowboys and cowgirls. I believe if you take a moment to peruse the hundreds of names and the accompanying articles concerning their actions and lives you'll find that the vast majority of them are white men, with nary a single black female sheriff in sight. Who could have possibly foreseen this?!

Second please consider the westward expansion of the United States. The push West was lead by oil men (white men), railroad entrepreneurs (white men), the gold rush (mostly white miners), the copper miners (mostly white men) and families trying to take advantage of federal land grants as a result of the Homestead Act (originally only for white people, expanded to apply to blacks 4-5 years later, but still the vast majority of land claims were already made by then with only a relatively small number of blacks that actually took advantage of the bill's expansion). Please also consider who constituted the majority of politicians and businessmen at the time (white men), who owned the newspapers (white men), the publishing companies (white men), who funded the expeditions and towns built as settlers, miners, oil men and general expansion pushed west (white men) and who wrote the majority of the historical documents that we have about the time period (again, white men). This isn't to say that famous Natives, Hispanics and Women of the Old West did not exist and that no tales were written about these people (which also tended to be written by white men), but their numbers are few and vastly outnumbered by White men of the same time period, hence the sane realization that the majority of media concerning the Wild West tends to be told from the point of view of White men or at least from a white-centric viewpoint.

 

[kangaxx]

Reminder: this a game with zombies, wraiths, all kind of supernatural shit etc. I can't believe you bothered typing all of that out.

 

[Child of Malkav]

Listen to this part of the podcast: from 22:08 to 44:14 . They talk about gameplay and other things. Interesting to say the least. But that's just me.

 

[Lyre Mors]

I think the biggest turn-off for me about the game is just the random nature of it. This is more of a conceptual problem for me, as I tend to abhor procedural elements in games, and particularly in games where exploration and progression are major elements. Granted, upon looking further, they've handled it in this game in probably the most unique and acceptable way for me that I've ever seen. The way that I've come to understand it - without going into great detail - is that the procedural nature of the game almost serves as giving the world a more "simulated" feeling, without true simulation actually being possible because of the segmented nature of its structure.

So the major plus is that it makes every playthrough unique and creates excellent possibilities for replayability. However, I would still take a completely handcrafted experience with elements of simulation occurring within it any day.

Here's the twitter thread in which the Principle Engineer for the game goes into detail about how it actually works, for anyone interested.

 

[Gradenmayer]

how buggy is it. wait for patches?

I tried to stealth choke an enemy and had to saveload 5 times due to bugs, before the tech gods decided to have mercy on me and make the bug work in my favor.
1. I walk behind enemy, choke animation plays out, he gets up and blasts me mid animation.
2. Choke goes through, his corpse starts flying and lifts my hero up, until he rockets away, while I fall down and die.
3. He stood up and kept rotating around , so I had to reload instantly.
4. Bushes randomly decided to not hide me.
5. I jumped off the side and my hero kept rolling forward (which happens automatically when you fall certain distance) and provoked 3 enemies with their 3 roll streak acrobatics.
6. Choke failed again, but ai bugged out and I got another try.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

but Firestine is a tranner

Reminder that they make up .1% of the population but 50% of all video game writers and forum moderators.

I wanted to add "and sex offenders" but you already said moderators.

That's a vile accusation.
There's no proof that over half of sex offenders are moderators.

 

[Tyranicon]

Here's the twitter thread in which the Principle Engineer for the game goes into detail about how it actually works, for anyone interested.

Spoiler

https://twitter.com/plushapo/status/1478133570820476929

Did this guy really think people will read a chain of 30 different tweets on something that he could've just put on a blog somewhere?

Twitter is cancer.

 

[Roguey]

Did this guy really think people will read a chain of 30 different tweets on something that he could've just put on a blog somewhere?

Twitter is cancer.

Yes, because hardly anyone reads blogs. They're far more likely to read that tweet thread.

 

[Jrpgfan]

Did this guy really think people will read a chain of 30 different tweets on something that he could've just put on a blog somewhere?

Twitter is cancer.

Yes, because hardly anyone reads blogs. They're far more likely to read that tweet thread.

Maybe he could have linked his site/blog address on twitter?

 

[Tyranicon]

Did this guy really think people will read a chain of 30 different tweets on something that he could've just put on a blog somewhere?

Twitter is cancer.

Yes, because hardly anyone reads blogs. They're far more likely to read that tweet thread.

I'm done with 2022 social media. Time to embrace being an old fuck.

 

[Gradenmayer]

About the game:

- Shooting sucks dick if you use anything except rifle and revolver, don't even bother with the rest.

- Ai Is braindead and you can completely break it by changing your elevation , Bethesda style.

-Skill and Perk balance is non-existent. 200% silent damage from stealth attack on rifle+ 100% stealth dmg from perk, oneshot 70% of mobs with 3 star weapon.
You also have perks like +100% heal from healpacks and 40% move speed in crouch. Rest of the perks and skills are absolutely useless compared to these 4.

=Gameplay loop is waiting for rifle skill to CD and oneshotting everything from stealth. After which you just sit around till enemy agro drops (or find another enemy) and repeat the cycle. Fan the hammer remaining trash and that's it. You can go for alternative approaches, but they usually punish you for even trying.

-Any attempt to use shotgun or melee will get you destroyed, because ai close range pulls trigger faster than you and for some reason dodges at least 3-6 melee attacks, while running at your speed.

-I found only 2 quests in 6 hours, outside of the main storyline, that don't seem procedurally generated.

-Non-lethal playstyle has only 2 attacks. Also one of the bounties requires killing the target, so it's not possible to complete all quests without killing.

+ Setting is cool and story quests have decent variety of approaches. So it's worth playing just for the main quest. It seems to have 4-6 hours of story for each hero.

So far game is fun, despite it numerous, glaring flaws. More engaging than Outer Worlds, that's for sure.

 

[Ibn Sina]

I think the game might be good if it's left to cook for a few more months at least, with some patches and fixes.

 

[AetherVagrant]

I'm not exactly sure how true it is that most of the popular history of the Wild West was written and established thought the lens of white men like you're saying. There were western dime novels about white guys, and black guys, Indians, and even some women. It's more like a specific era of western movies you're talking about. And it's not even like what you're saying was true of the forerunner to the western movies, the old Wild West shows, since some of the biggest draws of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show were Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, and Sitting Bull.

I'm guessing when you wrote that you were so smugly sure of yourself that you didn't bother to fact-check anything to do with your assertion before posting it. I don't blame you, it's quite a normal path to take for those of the Twitter generation, but alas if you had decided to do a modicum of research you'd see that your assumption is decidedly false.

First consider this list of old west gunfighters, this list of old west lawmen, this list of old west gangs and this list of old west cowboys and cowgirls. I believe if you take a moment to peruse the hundreds of names and the accompanying articles concerning their actions and lives you'll find that the vast majority of them are white men, with nary a single black female sheriff in sight. Who could have possibly foreseen this?!

Second please consider the westward expansion of the United States. The push West was lead by oil men (white men), railroad entrepreneurs (white men), the gold rush (mostly white miners), the copper miners (mostly white men) and families trying to take advantage of federal land grants as a result of the Homestead Act (originally only for white people, expanded to apply to blacks 4-5 years later, but still the vast majority of land claims were already made by then with only a relatively small number of blacks that actually took advantage of the bill's expansion). Please also consider who constituted the majority of politicians and businessmen at the time (white men), who owned the newspapers (white men), the publishing companies (white men), who funded the expeditions and towns built as settlers, miners, oil men and general expansion pushed west (white men) and who wrote the majority of the historical documents that we have about the time period (again, white men). This isn't to say that famous Natives, Hispanics and Women of the Old West did not exist and that no tales were written about these people (which also tended to be written by white men), but their numbers are few and vastly outnumbered by White men of the same time period, hence the sane realization that the majority of media concerning the Wild West tends to be told from the point of view of White men or at least from a white-centric viewpoint.

This is actually categorically untrue. In the Sonora, El Dorado, and Placer mines, latino miners outnumbered white workers and were the majority of the labor. Welsh Miners were brought in later for their expertise in working difficult deposits, but Mexico had already had a long history of silver and copper mining. Historians for Nevada County nowadays estimate that asian and latinos outnumbered white's in the local population, especially in the early stages of the gold rush and railroad construction. Whites held more positions of power and wealth but did not actually make up the majority of the population, especially since the whole area was literally Mexican territory until acquired by the US. Do you think it was just empty up to that point, or that the brown people just magically disappeared as soon as the territory changed hands? As the prospect of gold and wealth drew more white migrants to the area, the latinos began to be displaced and eventually almost completely displaced. Many towns and counties created laws restricting latinos and asians from owning houses or property and they were literally pushed out.

In Nevada County at least (where I was raised, I have less specific knowledge about the other counties) there was a workforce of THOUSANDS of asians were were hired and/or conscripted to build the rails crossing the Sierras, and in at least one infamous incident, hundreds of them were simply massacred rather than have to pay their wages and release them. The county eventually (15-20years ago) issued an apology and created a generic memorial to the displaced and murdered chinese workers.
In 1862, just days after the Battle of Puebla in Mexico, Columbia was the site of the first Cinco de Mayo celebrations. According to a paper published by the UCLA Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture about the origin of the observance of Cinco de Mayo in the United States, the modern American focus on that day first started in Columbia in response to the resistance to French rule in Mexico.[8] "Far up in the gold country town of Columbia, California, Mexican miners were so overjoyed at the news that they spontaneously fired off rifle shots and fireworks, sang patriotic songs and made impromptu speeches."[9]

At the news of the gold discovery a steady immigration commenced which continued until 1876, at which time the Chinese in the United States numbered 151,000 of whom 116,000 were in the state of California. This increase in their numbers, rapid even in comparison with the general increase in population, was largely due to the fact that previous to the year 1869 China was nearer to the shores of California than was the eastern portion of the United States.

It was only later, once the Gold Rush started drying up and migrants began settling down more permanently and establishing long term businesses and communities, that these western towns became increasingly white, and made a collective effort to erase the former brown population (whether native, mexican, or asian)

In Texas, New Mexico and Arizona people of Spanish and Mexican heritage far outnumbered whites in 1800, but decreased dramatically as they were pushed out with both economic and violent measures.

Saying the West was predominantly White is uninformed and false.


http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist6/chinhate.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Now as far as Women go, yes there were very few of them in the frontier. The town of Columbia actually had a big celebration when its "First White Woman" came to town in 1851, up to that point the 10% or less of the population that was female were all latino, asian or black, and were mostly prostitutes and laborers. A female Sherriff would have been rare but there actually were several. There were female US Marshalls, a handful of female deputy sherriffs, both in california, arizona, and texas.
https://www.legendsofamerica.com/lady-marshals/
-------------------------------------------
But none of this really matters in a game that is FANTASY! Maybe the term Immersive Sim confused some of you into thinking it's supposed to be a historically accurate representation of the Wild West. One might as well deride Elden Ring for having unrealistic weapons and armor, or shadowrun for having elves and dwarves. I know it's very triggering for certain snowflakes and maybe the game should have come with a big Trigger Warning and Parental Advisory sticker.

 

[Roguey]

But none of this really matters in a game that is FANTASY! Maybe the term Immersive Sim confused some of you into thinking it's supposed to be a historically accurate representation of the Wild West. One might as well deride Elden Ring for having unrealistic weapons and armor, or shadowrun for having elves and dwarves. I know it's very triggering for certain snowflakes and maybe the game should have come with a big Trigger Warning and Parental Advisory sticker.

Alternate history is fine (which apparently Weird West is, similar to how Dishonored and Prey also take place in alternate timelines with their own peculiar details) but this argument has

energy.

 

[Tyranicon]

Alternate history is fine (which apparently Weird West is, similar to how Dishonored and Prey also take place in alternate timelines with their own peculiar details) but this argument has
energy.

On the same note, I agree that non-historical settings have a lot of leeway in how they structure ethnic and cultural groups, but only if it's backed up by lore/worldbuilding.

Having a random assortment of different groups while shrugging your shoulders on how they all got to the same place is the height of worldbuilding laziness. This is basic writing 101, we're not even going into the details of why architecture, clothing, equipment, language, social norms, etc are so similar to the predominantly white frontier society of the American wild west of 1600-1900.

We would not expect exhaustive worldbuilding like Tolkien or Sanderson here, but some effort should be made. Whether or not is the case here, I don't know because the game currently doesn't appeal to me.

However, it is clearly the case that the consumer market at large does not care about such things, and that is just massive decline.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

"It's fantasy, sweetie" quickly loses its use as an argument once your opponent realizes you're not in the 90s anymore and the writers are quite open about their intentions.

 

[Viata]

"I'm a game dev"
"What do you do?"
"I clean the building."

 

[Ismaul]

"I'm a game dev"
"What do you do?"
"I clean the building."

Scruffy, you've been promoted.

 

[Drop Duck]

Reminder: this a game with zombies, wraiths, all kind of supernatural shit etc. I can't believe you bothered typing all of that out.

So that's the real reason the racist Chinese banned skeletons and ghosts in their media. If their games don't feature ghost they won't have to excuse not having enough black people in their video games.

But none of this really matters in a game that is FANTASY!

Just because the game is fantasy that doesn't mean the game can't highlight the original trans genocide (native indians were two-spirit and were hundreds of years ahead in trans issues).

In Texas, New Mexico and Arizona people of Spanish and Mexican heritage far outnumbered whites in 1800

It looks like you did an oopsie there by pretending the Spanish weren't white and weren't even more colonial than the Anglos. They don't get to larp being one of us brown people just because they are tanned.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Shallow West.

fuck those ridge wallets advertised at the end of the review look cool but they cost like $100-165 dollars, WTF? They are a piece of plastic/metal with some bands or something...lol..I was going to get one, but fuck that..