I was really excited to play Weird West and finally got a chance about a week ago. I thought there would be a lot of decisions to make with branching paths and emergent gameplay but it ended up mostly just going from point A to point B and killing bad guys. Did I just miss something? I'm open to the possibility that I was playing it wrong. I also just finished Jane's story. Is there more going on with the other characters? I'm not sure I should bother continuing if it's just a shooting gallery.
Stacking boxes to jump to a higher window, setting traps with barrels
This sounds like the parody of imsim checklist people on this sub sometimes joke about (see wanghiskhan300's post), except you're being serious and upvoted for it.
There is more to it, with some missions set within semi-social hubs, where I got some of that classic ImmSim gameplay experience. It's fun figuring out how to solve certain situations without breaking trust—a fun balancing act of system use and thinking ahead.
But these moments were rare, and the AI is janky at best (which I tolerate) to make it feel immersive and not mechanical.
Edit: I did enjoy the game more using the First person mod. (Eventhough it makes the game even more janky)
Ahh. Good to know there's a mod. I only played for a couple minutes because I hated the view.
It's mostly functional but you'll notice some more weird stuff, e.g. attacks inexplicably just not registering even when your shot is 100% accurate. It also makes the game even less suited to stealth since your perspective obviously becomes more limited but enemy placement and density doesn't change to reflect that.
Stacking crates = ImSim, everyone knows that
That’s why it’s not an immersive sim. Watch me get downvoted…
The real reason is that it isn’t first person though.
Watch me get downvoted…
You’re good bro.
Not really. It's just an isometric shooter with Im Sim elements - not an actual Immersive Sim.
Based.
It's decent top-down shooter with some im-sim mechanics and emergent gameplay. I had blast with this game, mostly due to really good aesthetics, world-building and story framing, but besides that... well, it's a good, ableit janky video game. Nothing more and nothing less.
No, that really is all there is to it and I was just as perplexed as you seem to be. It's very confusing to me when people on this sub praise the game generally and also when they insist that it's an imsim, but there's a lot of really confusing echo chamber stuff on this sub from time to time (to the point where I think I might even be modded for saying so in this reply). Even the gameplay choice between stealth and combat is mostly academic since the stealth is so bad and wonky and the enemy placement so dense and untailored to stealth that combat is pretty much an inevitability. And the number of outcomes that can be decided through dialogue can be counted on one hand.
Edit: okay you can go to some optional places if you want, but there isn't really any point beyond killing some more guys or stealing some loot that you don't really need. The overarching story does have a pretty cool concept once it's all revealed, but it's executed poorly.
I completely agree about the stealth. I'm that guy who save scums in Dishonored and reloads every time I'm seen. That ended quickly in Weird West. If I'm spotted I just say fuck it and shoot everyone.
And yeah, I've got to every optional location that pops up but they just feel like procedurally generated random encounters. At first I'd get excited by the promise of them but I quickly realized nothing interesting was happening.
Man, what a disappointment.
I'd say there are a few I suppose systematic features within the game that cause it to fall somewhere within the orbit of imm-simms. You can fully clear out towns causing alternative factions to move in. You can also check graves in towns to retrieve possessions from a body you could not get to. When you kill people there's a very rudimentary "nemesis" system wherein they may have children (presumably from before they were murdered :P) that will bear a grudge, or if you somehow screwed them over they may seek you out later; likewise there is a system wherein characters can be friendly and save you at a later point. You can rob stores to the point they go out of business. Some enemies if allowed to survive critical story junctures can be encountered again in other missions. There's also unusual physics based interactions between various powers (tornadoes combining with elements for example).
It's not what I would call a truly "play your way" imm sim as a game with simulated systems that do interact in unexpected ways at times. Having a character you helped in a mission come back to help you only for them to then die because of your electric tornado and have their descendant then come to take "revenge" was kind of funny. I think I did enjoy sort of finding weird interactions for certain abilities. I really enjoyed using the pigs "toxic trail" and igniting it. I also enjoyed making my entire party into werewolves for fun.
It's obviously not the first example people reach for when they think imm-sim but it does have some systematic features which I think lead to it being classified as part of the genre. It's also not a AAA title like some of the immersive sims that have come before so I guess I hold it to a less high standard. I imagine with more time and money it could have had more weirdness crammed into it. I was really disappointed by the lack of things like a train robbery scenario, cattle rustling and other western tropes being largely absent.
All of the major choices you make carry consequences within the game and fairly dramatically alter both the game world and the people within it.
I absolutely love this game. I realize it has problems and isn’t for everyone however I think it’s a fantastic title.
I think it’s more about the moment to moment gameplay that makes it an imsim. Stacking boxes to jump to a higher window, setting traps with barrels, it been a bit since I’ve played it but I think it falls within the outer boundaries of the genre. The location specific opportunities really did it for me even if they were a little rare.