Wild West Dynasty Q and A - English

[SwordsOfTheSouth_Toplitz]

Over the next week, we’ll answer all the questions you came up with. We’re sorry it took so long, but we finally got here! Let’s start:

1/7

1. Why „A New Beginning“?

That term can be taken literally and figuratively. We took inventory, listened to the community feedback on top of that and eventually decided to perform a „soft reset“ and start our path to redemption – to stick with Western tropes. We questioned absolutely everything, dismantled some stuff to put it together again in an improved form and demolished other elements. Like the story for example. While certain key elements are still present, the path the hero walks and the characters he meets are fully new. Also, we added loads of new features and enhanced others that we felt were not meeting both our and your expectations. Among those are enhanced resource management, new water management and farming dependencies, seasons and much more.
Bottom line is: This has nothing in common anymore with the game that went into Early Access in 2023.

2. Can you tell us more about everything that has changed or has been added?

It is a lot. But among the most noteworthy content or gameplay additions are the new story with cutscenes, an analysis feature in order to learn new blueprints, vastly improved farming with added impact of available water, cattle breeding, a hugely expanded NPC management, where you can even tell them to repair your buildings (so you don’t have to do everything yourself), all buildings serve a purpose now and are not just stage props and much more.

3. Will there also be something like a horse and cattle ranch where you can send them from pasture to pasture and sell them to other villages or towns?

You can have cattle ranches, but there is no pasture roaming, so to say.

4. With the ghost towns it would be cool if we could help them rebuild and if possible, take them over and make it our own/repair them?

We have at least one ghost town. You can rebuild it.
So long story short: Yay!

5. I did love the temperature update, so I hope this will stay in place?

Indeed, it will. And we enhanced it so the clothes you wear as well as houses will have an impact on how the temperatures affect you.

6. Any chance of DLSS support?

We were experimenting with it, but we are not happy with what we achieved up to now. So, we decided to leave it out instead of a half-baked implementation. However, with an added focus on performance optimization we wanted to make sure that even without DLSS, Wild West Dynasty runs fluidly on a wide range of systems.

[SwordsOfTheSouth_Toplitz]

2/7

7. Will there still be town building/management aspects?

Yes. Even more so than before. With this version we not only want to give you more control over the settlers and the settlement but give you the feeling that your choices matter. With your decisions you are involved in the growth of Taxation as well as bringing a deserted ghost town back to live and of course build settlements at your heart’s content.

8. Can we play a woman?

While you are not able to play as a woman, there are a lot of strong woman characters you’ll meet.

9. Will the mouse invert work? What about full controller support?

Yes. Both will be available and should work as intended.

10. Is it the same engine as previously? Are there changes in physics?

Yes. We are still using Unity. A full engine change would have resulted in a mostly indefinite delay.
With that in mind, we improved not only the visuals compared to the last updates, but also the performance. We dare to say that this is not the same game anymore. In a lot of aspects though, not only the visuals.

[SwordsOfTheSouth_Toplitz]

3/7

11. Do guns fire, smoke and sound like guns?

Action is no focus for Wild West Dynasty. Nonetheless we think that the gunplay and handling of firearms was immensely improved since the original Early Access release.

12. Will building still be an aspect of the game?

A very strong one, even more important than before. You can build more. More detailed. And more personalized.

13. How will the pacing of the game be improved?

To answer that properly we would have to know, what about the pacing you didn’t like.
However, when we looked at everything, we realized that we forced players too long to follow „our path “, before they were able to do whatever they want in the open world.
This has been addressed. And we think without sacrificing a good story – which has been scrapped and replaced with a new one, that should have a better pacing.

14. Will there be work done on stabilizing the graphics into a better form?

We worked a lot on improving performance and the visual fidelity in general. And we think, you can see and feel the difference. Is Wild West Dynasty now a rival to the Wild West epic from Rockstar Games? No. But we think that we created a beautiful sandbox for you to explore and enjoy beautiful vistas.

[SwordsOfTheSouth_Toplitz]

4/7

15. Is the development team putting a higher priority on bug-hunting and -squashing?

We did, yes. We hope we could eradicate as many of the virtual creepy crawlies as possible. Nonetheless there is a chance that some minor bugs slipped through our fingers.

16. As the historic authenticity of the game isn’t this elaborate, how will it be addressed? Factual authenticity or Western fiction?

Definitely Western fiction. In the old Wild West Dynasty we already took a lot of creative freedom. And within „A New Beginning“ this is one of the very few things that conceptually hasn’t changed.

17. Will there be a railroad at some point?

I know we shouldn’t answer a question with a question. But: Do you want it active or passive, meaning able to transport you and/or goods or just as a reference? Since we changed the time, in which A new Beginning is set and moved it a few decades back compared to the events in the original release, there is a chance that you are passively experiencing railroads.

[SwordsOfTheSouth_Toplitz]

5/7

18. Will it have good graphics like other Dynasty titles?

Even though we use a different engine compared to other Dynasty games, which makes comparisons difficult, we think that the visual fidelity matches most of them. There might be aspects where we might be even better while there are others, where we might be a little behind still. Nonetheless we are very proud of what we achieved over time with the visuals of Wild West Dynasty. We hope you agree.

19. Are animations and sounds being worked on?

Yes. We changed basically everything in terms of character animation. And we tried to improve the acoustics as well.

20. Can we have pets? Like a dog or a cat?

Unless you consider a horse a pet, we have to say „no“ unfortunately. You can have livestock, but unless you build very special relationships with them, we don’t think, it would classify as pets.

21. Will there be more variety of firearms (ie, sharps rifle, side x side double barrel with long barrel and sawed-off variants)?

Since our gunplay is (as mentioned before) not the core content of Wild West Dynasty A New Beginning, we put our gunsmith-feature with all the varieties of firearms on the backburner. That results in a rather limited selection of weapons in the beginning.

[SwordsOfTheSouth_Toplitz]

6/7

22. Different skill trees (including a gunslinger tree for those who wish to be bounty hunters)?

We have different skill trees, yes. With the adjustments that we made to the core gameplay of the game, the skill trees were heavily overhauled, adjusted and enhanced. With that in mind, we didn’t see the need for a gunslinger skill tree.

23. Wandering NPCs and random encounters/events?

We have NPCs who follow their various daily and nightly routines and as part of these might wander across some parts of the map. And yes, we are working on a system to enable random encounters.

24. Customization for character (male or female, different faces etc.)?

No. Not in the traditional sense. Of course you can change your appearance in terms of clothes. And sometimes it is necessary to protect you from extreme cold or heat. But you cannot change any physical features.

[SwordsOfTheSouth_Toplitz]

7/7

25. Trade routes with other settlements (and again if planned, with native tribes. Keep in their good graces so they won't raid your settlement)?

Trade routes are a vital part of the town management that Wild West Dynasty has to offer. To support and grow your villages you have to set up transport routes. The functionality of the trade system has been massively expanded. And yes, you can also trade with settlements not under your control.

26. Thievery, being an outlaw/bandit committing crimes?

No. As of now, you are restricted to be an upstanding citizen. In terms of the main story, you will also have the option to choose a peaceful way – which sometimes might be the better choice in the long run.

27. Is there going to be online co-op available?

As of now we are focusing on a narrative singleplayer experience in a sandbox world.

28. There will still be different biomes as originally planned, right?

There are different biomes. Yes. And seasons that vary from Biome to biome.

29. Will there be a revision of the construction menu? I always found it very cumbersome and not very intuitive.

We hear you. And as a result we tried to reproduce the „typical“ Dynasty menu structure when it comes to building (and crafting). We hope this suits you better.