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WolfEye’s new first-person RPG is “an evolution” of Prey and Dishonored featuring mechs, magnets and a continuous worldThe Weird West devs on becoming the “alt-Arkane”
The Weird West devs on becoming the “alt-Arkane”
Image credit:WolfEye Studios
Image credit:WolfEye Studios
“The structure is very freeform, and you can explore whatever you want,” Colantonio tells me over videocall. “But the mobility and the type of gameplay is very reminiscent of games that we’ve worked on in the past, like Prey or Dishonored. So you have this blend between an RPG, like an open experience, where you can go wherever you want, and level up, and there’s branching etcetera, but at the same time, the physicality and the types of gadgets and powers that you’ve seen in games from Arkane before. So if you look at the continuum from Dishonored to Prey, and then we imagine, how would it be if it was even more open than that, even more RPG than Prey.”
Image credit:WolfEye
“It’s a world where you can recognise the scenery, but then the types of technology are futuristic, even though in a style of fabrication that would have made sense in the 1900s,” Colantonio says. “That’s why you have this really unique look - it’s not really steampunk, but some people will say it’s steampunk. And part of the story is that at some point you will realise why this alternate timeline was created.”
“We have this thing that is a magnetic rope, so it sticks to any metal in a very systemic way,” Colantonio says. “If there is any metal in the scene, like a bin or anything, it sticks to it and spawns a rope you can use to climb, for example.” You’ll also get abilities that appear more supernatural in nature, such as one that lets you “set a point that allows you to escape from the middle of combat later”.
“So we are doing this again, but I think putting this in an RPG structure gives even more possibilities. It’s a little more free, in a way, and that’s new for us and I think our players will enjoy it. Because our games have always been adjacent to RPGs, but this time we’re going real RPG - so dialogue trees, level-ups and stats and other things that you can grow.” Colantonio seems especially enthused about the addition of proper branching dialogue, noting that this is relatively unexplored territory for Wolfeye. “If you have [a high enough speech skill] or if you’ve done something specific, you can tell something to someone to access new options and possibilities.”
The character stats, meanwhile, will be familiar to genre aficionadoes, though Colantonio again cautions me that everything is still WIP. “We’ve just finished a vertical slice, and the detail of the stats will change as we make progress in the game, because if you think about it, the stats are guiding all the underlying systems. They can change name, they can encompass more mechanics than one, so all of this is still very flexible. So it’s too early right now to describe all of the stats. But yeah, it would be that kind of thing - maybe it’s not “Strength” but “Fortitude”. We’re still trying different things and adapting, so that might change all the way until alpha.”
Image credit:WolfEye
Is the game still recognisable as an immersive sim in the Arkane mold, given all these additions to the formula? “Definitely, people who are into our past games will enjoy that layer,” Colantonio assures me. “So yes, it is on the page of an immersive sim, even though from a genre perspective, people will perceive it as an RPG.”
As to which RPGs have proven influential, there are some obvious big hitters. “I would definitely mentionFallout,” Colantonio says. “I can tell you a list of RPGs that we’ve been very impressed with in general, but it doesn’t mean that they are a direct comparison or inspiration for us. Skyrim has been a very good one,Baldur’s Gate 3, of course, a really fantastic game, and the Fallout series, from when it was 2D and since it came to 3D with Fallout 3, New Vegas andFallout 4. That kind of structure is really what we like.”
All of this comes with the caveat that WolfEye aren’t trying to make anything nearly as sprawling as an Elder Scrolls game. “The scope, the size - historically we’ve always created games that are more dense, higher density, and less about size,” Colantonio says. “So that is something we always favour - more possibilities and more detail, more craft, over endless repetitive dungeons. We’re not going for that - it’s going to be more of a crafted world. It will land somewhere between Fallout, Prey and Dishonored, if you wanted to try to pinpoint it.”
The game’s world won’t have any discrete exploration, combat or town areas; it’ll be a steadily unrolling sandbox that supports a multitude of methods, nice and nasty. UnlikeWeird West, it won’t have any loading transitions between areas. Definitely don’t call it an open world, though. “It’s not like Weird West, it’s more of an evolution of Prey, if we were to look at the game structure,” Colantonio notes. “Prey, technically it would be considered continuous, some people would say ‘no, it’s an open world’. The reason we don’t want to say open world is that it comes with expectations that it’s going to be gigantic - you know, it takes six months to ride a horse from A to B - which is not at all what we do. But technically, it’s an open world in the sense that it’s so continuous, you can go anywhere, there’s no loading, etcetera.”
Wolfeye has become the “alt-Arkane,” suggests Colantonio in closing. “I think it’s the spirit of Arkane, for sure, but Wolfeye is its own company. We do have so many people from Arkane at this point that it does feel like being at Arkane prior to being acquired. So yes, it’s an unleashed Arkane. It’s a free Arkane.”
Look out for a limited private alpha test for WolfEye’s new game next year.
