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For the record, I loved Colantonio's past work and his involvement in Arkane's greats. I may revisit Weird West in the future as it seems like they plan on implementing more content later (weird, but ok). Not huge on seasonal or themed content, as my MMO days are long over, but it's good to see that the game is getting better with more quality of life changes as the developers listen to their playerbase.
The biggest disservice this game holds is the lack of hand-crafted levels. I just can't bear the sheer amount of copy-pasta experiences as I'm attacked by wolves or monsters while journeying from one town to the next. It felt really inorganic and uninspired. Dishonored and Prey had each level meticulously and deliberately designed to allow for huge player agency, and to account for good expectations of consistent experiences on subsequent runs. Weird West has none of that.
In addition, stealth play is simply horrible. What a regression from Dishonored. I can't even count how many times I've tried to pacifist a level only to be instantly 180'd by a NPC facing the opposite direction. Animation fluidity is incredibly important in a immersive sim, and it's simply not in this game. What a shame.
Almost everything in the game felt like some sort of procedurally generated, copy-paste, doesn't matter what you do cause it's all the same, type of experience. I felt like it didn't really matter whether I was stealthy or went in guns blazing. If it was marketed as an action game with a twist, it might have gone down better. But like this? No.
I'll probably buy this once it hits about 20 bucks. The 25% off sale that's on today just isn't enough to get me to buy something that I think will be somewhat fun, but also somewhat annoying and repetitive.
The one complaint I do understand it the lack of map variety. This is only a problem in the procedural content. I don't have any idea why they didn't add story maps into the procedural content generator once you're done with them in the story. Really silly how they shipped with so few maps in a procedural content engine of all things.
But the inventory management and the junk system - love it. Don't even come close to understanding the complaints here. The entire point of an immersive sim is being able to interact with everything in your environment.
There is wasted potential here though. In parts this was a deliberate design decision, such as every character being able to use all the same weapons (I tried to invest skill points exclusively into the weapons each character started out with, e.g. the native and the bow, which had given me a more diverse experience probably). Colantonio had argued in interviews that the difference in playing style was supposed to come more from the player, as opposed to the characters. As such, they all also have the same amount of health, same amount of AP, and can also equip the same items,
Still, the pigman experience was compared to Bloodline's Nosferatu experience in some previews. For ONE area near the start of this quest, this is actually true. In that location, it flips your experience with towns prior around, as you are not welcome here. For the rest, it's mostly "NPC flavor text" without any actual consequence. Likewise, the day/night cycle maybe could have also been utilized in the werwolf character's story.
In general, characters could have been made more distinct, with their own perks mostly relating to confrontation too (maybe there will be a Garrett DLC, who knows. ;) ). Also, the procedural generation, which is an interesting spin, could have been more advanced, with it being able to actually generate new buildings, as opposed to generating maps drawing from a pool of buildings (which eventually repeat fairly quickly). There's also a few AI, cam and balancing issues (I see that they are going to increase the AP cost for silent entry ability, which is arguably one of the biggest as from release, you could just hide, wait for the 5 AP to auto.regenerate, and spam it all over, taking entire enemy camps one by one).
But overall? I had immediately started another playthrough after finishing. Not sure if I'd finish it immediately, also considering the content that's already been anounced (hoping for story DLC as well). But initially I just wanted to toy around and see things played out differently to my first. One rather "nonsensical" decision made me laugh, which was killing my own husband -- which the game even acknowledged in the post-campaign cutscene (as well as briefing screen). But it wasn't long before I was pretty deep into the 2nd character's story again.
With AAA studios increasingly dropping this kind of experience in favor of either open world amusement park rides or semi-interactive Hollywood movies, both holding your hands as if you couldn't find the exit of your own private room, if this is the future, I'm not going to complain overly much.
One thing I'd really like to tackle them at some point is one project that's being a bit less of a traditional gamey power fantasy. Arkane games oft too are about putting you into an environment, and then gradually gifting you all these magical / alien super powers. Even without those, in Dishonored, you're still a super badass assassin quite capable of killing everybody in sight. This, of course, is quite fun. (It's still a different experience to that found in say the original Thiefs, even when you're sneaking around.)
And I realize these guys like that sort of thing also personally. Apparently they never considered a more grounded Western setting because a Weird West setting would lean more to an experience such as the aforementioned one -- Very Special (And possibly Weird) Abilities™ included.
However, whilst quite a few mainstream reviewers seemed to be critical of that aspect of Prey: One of my favourite stages of that game had been precisely that criticized early parts of the game. Ressources and ammo were scarce, Super Special Powers yet nowhere in sight -- and you were actually forced to creatively use the environment to your advantage if you wanted to tackle stronger enemies.
Not sure how viable this is now in the more indie space they are in, but I hope it is. Even in the AAA space, a couple years ago Alien:Isolation had shown in a sometimes shockingly System-Shock-like experience how UNPOWERING the player can lead to a distinctly different immersive experience -- to me perhaps the most impossible AAA game of the 2010s. (The NoClip making of documentary made on it more recently confirmed my view on it).
There is already sizeably criticism of plenty stuff where Weird West strayed off the beaten Arkane paths as is -- see the pure inclusion of procedural generation in this very thread also, so who knows.
If you know anything about the development of imsims and warren spectors "My games take six years to make and if I tell you any less I'm lying" quote, you know that means shortcuts had to be taken all over the place.
"it's a total mess"
no not really and most of the complaints from the OP make no real sense.
Many of your situations do in fact hinge on how you approach them, choices do matter in many of your choices depending on the quest.
OP also complaining that "choices dont matter" hell even AAA games have this same problem, because when it gets down to it, they are telling a story, and it has to progress at least in some fashion to make it to the end.
Some people just have way to high of expectations
the game sure has some objective issues, but this isnt one them.
btw nice vocabulary, lol, you must really love to hear yourself talk.
You know that there is Hard West 2 open beta right now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1282410/Hard_West_2/