Video Gamers Podcast - Weird West - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

Gaming cowboys Paul, Michael and Josh are diving into the wonderfully wacky world of Weird West in this awesome Deep Dive. Don’t skip some very important announcements at the start of the show before we dive into all that Weird West has to offer. We break down story, gameplay, combat and much much more in this weeks’ incredible gaming episode! Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh, let me tell y'all a story about a man called Ted. He loves the multiplayer gaming podcast. He liked it so much, he now supports the show. He got some extra content now, he's having a blast. Hey guys, Michael here. If you're enjoying the content you get on this podcast, consider being like Ted. You can support the show and get bonus content by going over to MultiplayerSquad.com. We're an independent podcast, and we'd sure appreciate it.

Now, on to the show! This is not the Wild West as you know it. Hello, everyone. This is the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast, a group of three dads that love gaming. Today we're going to be covering one of the more unique games that we've covered to date called Weird West. Please rate our show 5 stars, leave a written review, follow us on socials at MultiplayerPod, and make sure to check out our Patreon page.

Support starts at 5 bucks a month which helps fund our show to keep it running and you will also get exclusive bonus episodes available only to supporters and you also get early access you can find our patreon page at multiplayer squad dot com my name is paul and i am the leader of the posse today i'm joined here by the retired bounty hunter who just wants to spend time with family retiring the guns to live a quiet life it's michael yes i'm also a girl um according to the story of weird west sorry spoiler there but um yeah yeah jane i'm jane uh michael jane that sounds like a fake actor name um yeah you know we'll go with that my second favorite jane uh only behind jane from rimworld which long-term listeners will remember

and then josh you know where this is going all right joining us he's the pig man who frightens and repulses everyone around him with his grotesque snout. It's Josh. Oink, oink, baby. But, but, but... I can't spoil anything. I almost did a story spoiler within the first minute of the show. I think somehow I got the better end of that deal. Just a little.

I don't know. Is it bad to be a pig man? He's pretty strong yeah he's bringing the cleaver very good think about how good you smell when you're sunbathing bacon is so tasty sunburn you start smelling like chicharrones yes exactly win-win man i'll take the pig man any day oh goodness all right so before we jump into all things weird west we do have a little bit of housekeeping we actually have like a lot of announcements to cover today. I was going to say, stick with us, because we promise we're going to get to the game stuff,

but we actually have some exciting news and some other stuff that we have to get to before that. But it's worthwhile. Yeah, I hope we don't have too many people that are just zipping right past all the introduction stuff. All right. So first of all, we do have a shout out for a new slash new again, Patreon supporter. So Yaya Arizona was previously an Epic supporter, had to stop for a short period of time. She's back. She's back as an Epic supporter and Yaya Arizona may or may not be my mom.

So the host moms are getting a lot of time on the podcast lately. I will say I did also troll my mom and tell her that your mom's supporting the show. Michael's mom is supporting the show. And so she is the only mom that is not supporting the show. Oh. Uh-huh. Yeah. And so I'm hoping that the guilt will start to overwhelm her soon.

We're on a guilt trip train right now with the moms. It's like, hey, I know that you gave birth to me and you love me unconditionally, but the other two support the show, so you should as well. Yeah. Josh is basically like Mona Lisa in Parks and Rec, just saying, money, please.

That's Josh. Josh to his mom. All right, so yes, we have arizona back as an epic supporter and so we wanted to give a shout out not just to her but also to legendary supporters red letter and michelle butler and other epic supporters yoda and michael the butler who's that so thank you so much for your guys support and josh i think we've got a review to read that someone left the show. We do have a review. This one is coming in all the way from Sweden. And I had to brush up on my... Is it Swedish? Is that the language that Swedes... Yeah. So anyway. I think

so. I'm going to try not to butcher this because this review was left in Swedish. No way. Yes, it really was. Are you about to speak Swedish? We have a good bit of... I am. And we actually have a good bit of Swedish listeners too. So I'm sorry if I don't do this right, but I'm trying my best here. So here we go.

It is titled Jättebra. And it says, Pankakor Silt i Grada. Five stars. And that translates to pancakes with jam and cream. Nice. Oh, that sounds so good. That does sound really good, actually. And the title was great, by the way. And that came in from DadGamer80 from Sweden.

Thank you very much, Ann, for teaching me a little bit of Swedish and reminding us that pancakes are phenomenal. Well, hold on a second, because our friends that are Swedish in the Discord revealed that what they call pancakes are really crepes, which kind of makes sense for why they would eat them with jam and what else? Jam and cream. Jam and cream. Yeah.

So I think that's more team crepe which pancake or pancock order is the is the way you say it so yeah so it translates to pancakes all right very nice and then uh yeah so thank you so much for that review we love getting these we've talked on the show that josh gets his morning coffee and checks for reviews so make sure you guys keep those coming and it doesn't hurt to double check we've had a lot of long-term listeners who didn't realize that they never left a review so just take a quick second and just you know find out leave us a quick review feel free to write it in swedish klingon spanish whatever we'll read it on the show please do cling on i will absolutely brush up on my clinging knees which by the way is old old star trek it's just called cling on a new star

trek but i will absolutely speak cling on for you guys if you actually get it right but do your research do it right also thank you you sweet sweet man you i appreciate you. Very nice. And we do have a couple of announcements regarding Patreon and also the perks that come along with supporting the show. So I don't know what you guys want to talk about first. Michael, do you want to talk a little bit about what we're doing with the Epic tier? Absolutely, I do. Hey, so every once in a while, we just kind of look at what we're doing and say say how do we make it easier for you guys to make it more fun for the listeners and what we've done is we've taken the epic tier which was thirty dollars a month and we're saying no more we're giving you

a wait it's i feel like an infomercial but wait there's more we're giving you half off if you subscribe right now. No, seriously, though, the Epic tier is now $15. We figured that we wanted to make it more accessible for our listeners and make it easier for you to support the show. And just, you know, ultimately, that's it, really. Just make it better and easier for you guys and make it more fun. So Epic tier is no longer $30, guys.

It's $15, and make it more fun. So Epic Tier is no longer $30. Guys, it's $15. And we appreciate the support. But Michael, does that mean you're going to give us less benefits? Absolutely not. They're not half the perks. Full perks, half the price. Subscribe now. Was I a Monster Jam announcer just now?

I have no idea what's happening. It was a little bit of a mix of Monster Jam meets infomercial. Little Randy Savage almost. Oh, God bless him. Oh, goodness. Yes. So Epic supporters that are currently signed up, your price will change. It'll drop down to the $15.

If you're on Apple, it'll ask you if you want to. Actually, Apple only has the one tier. So this only affects Patreon supporters. And then then Josh, we are also switching up our bonus episodes. So in the past, we've been releasing two five-minute Quick Take episodes every week. And we decided we're going to switch that up a little bit too. We are. Yep. The Quick Takes were great. They were a lot of fun. But now that we have Michael on the show as well, we've had a

lot of people kind of reach out and say, we absolutely love it when the three of you are together. And so what we have decided to do is give you more of that. So our bonus episodes that our subscribers through Apple Podcasts and Patreon get exclusively are now going to be closer to like 30 minute episodes with the three of us. It's going to be a little bit more laid back, a little bit less formal, but it's still going to be that amazing content that you guys and gals have come to know and love. And so we're going to give you more of that as a way of saying thank you for supporting the show. If you would like those episodes, you can get them by either subscribing on Apple podcasts or heading over to multiplayer squad.com and signing up for any of those tiers that will get you

access. And since they are longer episodes, we're going to do two a month since you're getting your, so you're actually getting more. Once again, you're getting more than you were actually getting more. Once again, you're getting more than you were getting before for supporting the show. It's just the response to this podcast, the growth of the podcast has been absolutely incredible. I know all of us are absolutely

blown away by it. We're very grateful for that. And so we sit around and we actually talk about that and we say, Hey, how can we give people more? Because all the listeners are giving us so much. And so that's one way that we can do that. So we really want to bring you those higher quality bonus episodes. Wait a minute. So hold on. I'll do what you did. But Josh, so you're saying that we get a cheaper tier to support the show and we get better content but wait there's more paul there is actually more thank you for the transition sorry so what we have done is we have a huge backlog of quick takes that we've been releasing to a week for the last i don't even know like eight months or something like that. And so what we're

going to do is we're going to start slowly releasing those Quick Take episodes once a week, and those episodes are going to come out on Saturdays. So right now, you'll still get the hour-plus long episodes on Mondays. There will be the 30-plus minute episodes on Thursdays. And then you're also going to get a five to 10 minute quick take episode on Saturday. And then if you also support, you'll get a bonus two episodes a month, which are quite a bit lengthier. So there's a lot of different formats of shows. We've also heard from a lot of people. Some people only like the deep dives. Other people really love the quick takes. We're just trying to let everyone pick and choose whatever they want to listen to.

So we want to have multiple tiers that are easily accessible. We want to be able to share a lot of this content. If you do sign up through Apple or Patreon, you will have full access to all of the previous quick takes, everything all at once. If you want, you can run through all 90 Quick Takes that we have in our backlog. But if you don't want to support, you are going to be able to get one a week, just as a little bit of an extra bonus. And they are going to be rather old because we recorded them a while ago, but most of them are rather timeless because it's a lot of game recommendations.

It's Josh and I talking about games that we love, things that we think you guys should check out. Michael was able to hop in and do a couple of quick takes, but now we just want to switch it up a little bit. So everyone out there will get more free content. Everybody will be able to get more time as far as the podcast goes if you're a supporter, and the Epic tier is now cheaper. i think this is win win win for everybody involved yeah we're basically costco we're giving you more for less the quick take is the is the rotisserie chicken that gets you in the door oh that chicken is so good i was gonna say man i don't know it's i'm kind of about that big slice of pizza for what a buck 50 oh yeah the hot dog and a soda for a dollar 60 and then i walk out with a 90 pound teddy bear for my eight-year-old yeah yeah very nice all right so i think that's everything by

way of announcements is there anything that we missed anything else we need to cover or is that all of it um i love the show keep doing what you guys do also how awesome is everything that we just talked about? Right? Yeah, so we're hoping that you guys will really appreciate those changes. And then also, we'd love to have you come join us on Discord, which is free. That's available to everybody. There's a link in the episode description. And we'd love to have you guys come join us on there as well.

All right, so I think that's it, guys. Are we ready to go ahead and deep dive Weird West? I'm down. Let's get into the West, baby. All right. So I think that's it guys. Are we ready to go ahead and deep dive weird West? I'm down. Let's get into the West baby. All right, let's saddle up and deep dive it. All right, guys,

the weird West description on steam reads survive and unveil the mysteries of the weird West through the intertwined destinies of its unusual heroes in an immersive sim from the co-creators of Dishonored and Prey. All right, now I will say right off the bat that calling this game Weird West is incredibly fitting because, man, guys, this game is weird. All right, now I did not know this, but Weird West is actually a phrase that's been around since the 70s. It's had its own genre in books and radio shows. So this is actually not a new concept, but it is new, at least for me to play it. But apparently, Weird West has already been a popular genre that blends fantasy, horror, and science fiction within a Western setting, which is exactly what we get with Weird West.

They hit the nail on the head. I had no idea that that was actually a thing. I thought these guys just made this up, man. Yeah, I had no idea. It is weird, though. If you Google Weird West Wikipedia, the first entry is like a generic genre, and it talks about how the phrase came about in the 70s but the idea has been around since the 30s so really this type of of uh art has been around

for a while but as far as i know this is the first video game at least that i'm aware of all right now i don't even really know where to start with this one, guys, because this game is just it's bonkers, man. Josh, I feel like you're the gameplay guy. Michael, you're the story guy. That's true. Maybe each of you can just kind of take those areas and just share a little bit. Let's start with you, Michael. How would you describe the overall story and setting of Weird West?

Well, so you already said it's bonkers. So let's go. Let's go back in time, folks. Back to, I don't know, like, let already said it's bonkers so um let's go let's go back in time folks back to i don't know like let's say it's 1870 um the same time as arthur morgan and possibly john marsden something like that except we're gonna add in i don't know pigmen and werewolves and witches and wendingo and zombies and we're just gonna mash all that up in a video game and say that's really kind of what it's about now i mean there's there's a lot of story elements in it it's it's really cool because you you do uh bounce around a little bit you play multiple

different characters in the game which is actually refreshing and really cool and um i won't spoil too much about it because actually i try not to spoil anything about it, because there's interesting things in the different perspectives of the different characters you play, which actually kind of keep the game fresh. But ultimately, you're really after two factions. If it's cowboys, you're after the Stillwaters, which is a gang that just, you know,

they're robbers and outlaws and all that stuff. And then there's this supernatural element by the Wanderists? Honorists? I don't really know how to pronounce it. Maybe you guys can help me out here. Ownerists is how my brain says it. The Ownerists. Yeah. And they're- I can tell you nobody knows how to say it because all the different characters within Weird West say it differently.

Yeah. And so nobody knows the correct pronunciation. And really, there's like a narrator that kind of like tells you what's happening. He kind of sounds like a discount Sam Elliott a little bit. And, and he's the one that's kind of doing the narration for it. I don't think he ever says onerous or anything like that,

but ultimately it's, it's a, it's a, it's a huge, awesome conglomeration of, of lots of different beasts that you're fighting. And you're also after outlaws. It's like the West with just a supernatural element. I think that's really as deep as I need to go, because if I go much deeper, there's a lot of spoilers. I don't know if you

guys have anything you want to add to it. I think the only thing I would add to that is that the way the game opens is that there's some kind of like cult that's meeting. And these are all characters that wear like full robes. Oh, that's right. And they are interrogating someone sitting in a chair in the middle. And then basically there's like five pictures around them. And that's kind of like the structure of the game. They are interrogating this person and they start talking about the first picture, which is Jane, the bounty hunter.

And then you play as Jane. And then when that chapter is done, you go on to the next character. And I think, without going into any spoilers, you're trying to figure out who are these people? And what are they doing? What are they trying to accomplish? How do we fit in with all of it? And then the game does have a lot of reveals that get made over the course of the game with some major ones toward the end. But that's kind of like what's drawing you to keep playing is trying to figure out what's going on behind the scenes. very interesting that it puts you into the traditional bounty hunter role like that part fits as a very good introduction into the game in the story and you're you know you start off very

close to the town which you know you have your sheriff it michael kind of said it it very much does feel like an isometric red dead redemption you know in a way in that regard. Like it almost feels like the town of Valentine to me. It's small, but there's everything you need there. There's your general store, your firearm store and all that. And so I like how they ease you into that kind of setting before they really start to throw the weirdness at you. So they do let you get your legs under you just a little bit. And then they introduce a lot of those other elements. And I actually really liked the fact that they did that because it kept that flavor, that Western flavor throughout the whole game that way.

Yeah. And it really does. Like to Josh's point, it gets more supernatural the deeper you go. But the first couple hours of the game really is a traditional Western for the most part. You know, you're after something happened to your family and you're after these people that's it you know yeah there's a little bit of like zombies and the people talking about zombies and right away when you enter the town there's already dead bodies strewn about the street i don't know about you guys but i immediately picked up a shovel and started burying every person because I said,

I know all of these are going to come to life and they're going to try to come attack me. But then my shovel durability broke. And so I was like, all right, forget this. Wow. See, Paul, this is the difference between me and you because I started digging up every grave. Imagine trying to find loot. Grave robber. I wish I hadn't gone with Paul's approach because i don't think this is a spoiler but when the town actually turns there's graves in the middle of the street and you'll never get rid of them they're just there they're there yep all right and then uh josh since you're the gameplay guy how would you describe the overall gameplay it almost feels like a twin

stick shooter like that's honestly the easy summary to give people like that, that kind of holistic idea of what the gameplay feels like. Now there are some RPG elements to it. You do have skill trees in a sense where, well, they're more like abilities that you can unlock. I wouldn't say skill trees, but you can unlock different like weapon-based abilities. You can unlock class I wouldn't say skill trees, but you can unlock different weapon-based abilities. You can unlock class abilities for each character that you're playing. You do find a lot of loot, a lot of different weapons. There's weapon rarities and armor rarities and things like that. So there are those RPG-ish elements to it. Um, but yeah, I mean, you know, you can, you can sneak around.

So stealth plays a big part in this game. I found myself being stealthy more than I thought I would. Um, there, you know, the shooting feels good. It's definitely not anything lacking in this game. Um, but yeah, you know, if you get into a fight, which you absolutely will get into a lot of fights, there's random encounters where people will stop you while you're traveling or wolves will attack you and things like that. You decide whether you're going to use your shotgun, your rifle, your pistol, a bow and arrow, or a melee weapon. So you can kind of play those different weapons, and they all do feel very different in that regard. And then they do some really neat things where you can dodge roll, but if you jump back, it kind of slows down time. And you can do that. So you can do this jump where you jump back and it slows down time to let you just kind of get a little

bit of distance and spacing. Or you can actually make that permanent. So you can go into this slow bullet time to kind of concentrate on what you want to do. Did you guys use that very much? All the time, especially when I, I, when I was fighting more difficult,

like, cause anytime you come up on a group of, of, of baddies, like there's always going to be a bunch of like cannon fodder. They're the pawns or whatever. Sorry, checks players. I know pawns are important, but They're the pawns or whatever. Sorry, Chex players.

I know pawns are important, but they're also very easy to take. But when I've got the queen in front of me, I'm like, I'm using this bullet time as much as I possibly can because it was so crucial to just go boom, boom, boom when everything else is working in slow motion. I use it as much as I could. That's very funny. See, I wonder if we all played this game very differently because I played almost exclusively in stealth. I tried to never shoot my gun unless I absolutely had to. And I think that when you see the isometric perspective, you're not used to that being a stealth game. But in this game, you can crouch and you don't make any

noise and it's very much like metal gear solid if you start shooting your weapon it shows you how far out the sound goes on the map and you get the where you get the little exclamation mark above their head and they'll come check it out if they see a dead body they're gonna run over and check it out and then they might go call their friends. So I played almost entirely stealth. I loved using the bow and arrow. I loved using the rifle, which you could add a point on, which would then let you shoot it silently, like a silent sniper. And that was almost entirely my combat. Michael, you look like you did not play this way at all. No, no first the first chapter and a half and and uh this is not a spoiler it's a five chapter story the first chapter and a half um

i was using stealth as much as i really needed to after that i was guns blazing the whole rest of the game i only stealth when i ran into a spot towards the end and i realized that i had made a choice in the game that allowed something to happen to where there were creatures in the fifth chapter that were very very very powerful and i could no longer kill them easily and there was like 20 of them and so i was like you know what i'm gonna have to actually use stealth again i really just don't have the patience for stealth i use stealth in almost no games ever i am a go in that's why i do sword and board in a lot of the in a lot of the rpgs and action games because i'm like you know i don't want to do stuff i can tell you that i fired a bow one time and i was like

that was dumb getting the rifle back out i literally fired the bow one time so you have to press and hold it, and it makes a sound when it charges. It has a little chime, and then you know to let go, and it does more damage. I got that. But you can do stealth kills like that, too.

Yeah, that's funny. I got that. I was like, nope, gonna kill him instead. I played a very much hybrid style, so I kind of split the line between you two because I would use stealth to kind of get into position or take out one or two people, and then I would use stealth to kind of get into position or take out

one or two people. And then I would just kind of finish off everybody else. Guns a blazing kind of thing. So that's kind of funny. So I mean, it's that just goes to show you the options that you have with the gameplay in the combat is you get to play this game how you want to play it. Yeah, absolutely. The first thing I ever did was run in kick a barrel shoot hope things blew up and blow up more things so that's one thing that's very cool about weird west is that it has a very interactive environment so there are oil barrels or fire barrels and if you hit these things or shoot them they will explode i don't know if you guys noticed but you can actually shoot if you see like a cartridge of shotgun shells on the ground, if you shoot it, they'll explode.

So they intentionally kind of made it so you can play this game a lot of different ways. I love going stealth where you could go behind a guy, knock them out, and then I'd carry and hide them in the bushes. I did a lot of that. And there's even a couple of, I guess you can call them bosses in some of the areas that you can actually get really creative and you can actually stealthfully take some of those out as well and save yourself a whole lot of bullets because the bullets uh honestly they're kind of pricey in this game rare aren't they i can't tell you how many times i ran out of ammo or i was like i'm down to two bullets in my pistol, one shot in my shotgun, and I'm scrounging for ammo, man.

Like, it is not. They make you think about your engagements. I know we're going way off course right now, but my ammo in every single act, no matter what, after the first act was collect as many bounties as i possibly could get as much as much money as i possibly can and then go to every single town with a gun seller and buy out all their ammo because i wasn't stealthing i was rolling in like literally i started almost every fight not worrying about stealthing behind someone i started every fight by throwing every stick of dynamite that i had on me except for two because sometimes you need the dynamite. Yeah, yeah, you do. Yeah, so I think calling it like a stealth twin stick shooter is actually pretty accurate.

There's a lot of loot in this game. There's a lot of equipment that you can use. None of it is terribly detailed, but it's all here inside the game you can pick pocket people you can rob things out of their dressers and cabinets if you want you can break into the town bank oh and you can go steal stuff out of their registers you know whatever you want to do so this game gives you a little bit of that sandbox feel where you just get to play in this Western setting and you kind of get to do whatever you want, which I thought was actually pretty fun. Now, Josh, you did mention a little bit about the abilities and the perks, which I found a little confusing in the beginning. So when you play as these five different characters in the five chapters, you do collect,

oh gosh, what are they called where those little uh the golden ace of spades well not those the other ones for the ability antler looking things oh what are they called i forget what they're called they had a weird name yeah it's a trinket or something it's like a nimit trinket or something something yeah basically yeah nimbus nimbus three nope that's a planet from star trek 3000 there it is that's what it is yeah so basically it is an item that you loot inside the game if you find them you loot it and then you can spend it on your abilities and so you have some specific abilities based on that character which are on the left side of the screen where maybe you can do like a spinning

roundhouse kick is like one of the options for jane in the very beginning and then on the left side of the screen, where maybe you can do like a spinning roundhouse kick is like one of the options for Jane in the very beginning. And then on the right side of the screen, you have abilities related to guns. And when you play as a new character, you lose all of those abilities and you start over fresh. But you also have a series of perks, which you unlock by finding the aces around the world. And those do persist across all of your characters. And those might give you bonuses like your posse does additional damage, or you can walk faster while in stealth, or increasing your HP, things of that nature. I was curious to know if there were any go-tos that you really liked using in the game.

Absolutely. Absolutely. The most important one for me on the actual aces, because the only thing in the game that's more scarce than ammo is probably lockpicks. And there's one that allows you... Yep. There's one that actually allows you to have... Really?

A double chance. If you max it out, it's like a double chance that your lockpick's not going to break when you're using them. So I went all into that pretty early. I 100% only went three different abilities. What do we call them? Abilities?

I think they're abilities. They are perks. They're the perks. Okay. I only went the increase to health, the increase to how much your bandages heal you, and the speed that you walk in stealth. I maxed all of those out.

I didn't unlock a single tier of any of the other ones. Really? Because by the end of my game, I had almost all of them maxed. Really? Wow. Yeah. But I also never stopped on the side missions.

I played the game probably too much, and I know that I probably shouldn't have, but you guys know how I am. I talk about this all the time. I tend to get a lot caught up in side missions. I treat them like the real story, and I was looting everything the whole way. It's probably why I got like 40 hours in this game

and finally beat it. Which means, I'm sure, you had tons of inventory problems, Michael, because in this game it is impossible to try to loot everything you are always constantly dropping items trying to maximize your space and if you're like me i was always carrying like a full load of the dynamite and the lightning bottles yeah and the other uh dynamite that then explodes into other dynamite 30 30 healing packs at a time yeah the healing yep the bandages no i didn't i didn't have an inventory problem at all actually

um because i used my horse and i used both of my companions all the time i dumped everything on them and then i would roll to the general store sell everything use it all for ammo and health packs and i was good to go now on my person though yeah i had a real problem but i was able to well and also once i figured out half of the game that you can dismantle a gun and get ammo for it every i every gun i picked up just dismantle dismantle dismantle and i i didn't really have a huge problem yeah it was kind of annoying but the fact that you can dump your inventory on your companions and also your horse helped a ton and then you also don't have to take it off them when you're selling because one of the best things that i found about this game as opposed to a lot of other games where companions can carry

your things for you when you go to a vendor um and you're selling there's a tab up top for each of your different companions and your horse and you can sell directly from their inventory so it made it super easy and i love that including sell all junk which is always the best button in these games yep yeah i i was not a huge fan of the inventory system to be honest and michael is smarter than me because i did i i only used a companion like once. And I think I only bought a horse in like two of the five characters. So I ran into a lot of inventory management problems to where I was looting a lot of stuff. But I would not dismantle the guns because I wanted to sell them because they generally sell for more money. And so I was constantly doing that inventory shuffle of like, oh, well, this thing's only worth $2.

So I'll go ahead and throw that on the ground. Let me pick up this thing that's worth $3 and doing a lot of that. And there's no way to expand your inventory space, which is a crime in any kind of RPG-ish game. One of the abilities or perks should have been add three spaces to your inventory i would have maxed that out right away i completely agree it's it's one of those things that in almost every game that is like this there is a perk or ability where it's like hey add spaces to your inventory and i actually actually looked it up and i i googled it said hey how do i get more inventory slots in Weird West? And it basically just said, there's three ways to do it.

Your companions, your bank account, or your horse. And I'm like, I'm already using those, so I guess I'm stuck with that. Yep, that's about all they let you do. All right, so moving on to the next topic here. I think one of the things that makes Weird West very, not unique, but it makes for a very unique experience is that they give you a ton of choice. There are several ways that you can complete every quest that you find in this game. The game's tooltips even tell you, hey, you can kill anyone in this world. And if you kill a

quest giver, look around. There's always another way to solve it. And I thought that that was actually really neat. Did you guys run across, Can you share any examples of that in this game where you were presented with a choice of multiple ways to solve something? I mean, we kind of touched on it. You can use stealth. You can go in guns blazing. You can talk to characters that can help you out. You can aggravate people. You can make enemies of people that generally wouldn't be your enemy, and then they have a vendetta against you. And they'll actually come hunt you down. If you tick off enough people, they'll come hunt you, which is really neat. So the world definitely reacts to you. I do feel like without getting

into spoilers, that each character is generally given some big choices throughout their story to where you really have to make an A or B decision. And the game does a really neat thing at the end of each chapter where it kind of summarizes the choices that you've made, which I thought was a really neat touch. But yeah, there's freedom of choice to do a lot of different things. I mean, you can do a quest where you help out the mayor of the town, right? Maybe he's not a good guy, right? And so the mayor's like, hey, you need to go extort this land deed from this person, bring it back, and then I'll help you, right? And so you go to the farm and you're like, I'm totally going to just rob this guy of his land deed. But then you talk to the guy and he's like, Hey, the mayor's not all he's cracked up to be. You should go investigate his basement. Yeah. And then you're like, Oh, what's down there? Yeah. Well, what's down there? Like,

maybe I don't want to take this deed from you. I want to go check out the basement instead. So then you go back to the town where the mayor's at and you got to look around and find a way into his basement. And then it's like, oh, okay, now I'm siding with the farmer guy, not the mayor at that point. So that's a very prevalent in this game, which is really neat because it's kind of like you think you're going to go one route and then you wind up doing a complete 180 and going a different route. Yeah. And I don't want to go into spoiler territory because a lot of the major choices... Well, I'll give an example, and I'll keep it very vague. But essentially, it's like Josh said, when you finish a chapter, it summarizes a lot of stuff for you. But pretty much at the end of each chapter, you have a choice to make with the character and that

choice that you make carries on in the world to the rest of the characters and i made a very very poor choice at the end of one of the chapters and i actually went back later on and i realized that i didn't have a hard save i only had quick saves and i couldn't go back i was about an hour into one of the chapters and i was like i want to go back and make a different choice. Because this game got unnecessarily hard because I made a really poor choice. And I couldn't go back and do it. So I had to deal with the world that I had made on a whole different character in a different chapter.

And so that's essentially the example that I can give without going into spoiler territory. But yeah, just your choices do matter. And there's a lot of optional quests. And the optional quests are not necessarily, air quotes, optional. It will change the story if you do an optional quest. Yeah. And I think one of the cool things also in the game is that you can read the newspapers. And they will tell you choices that you made with other characters, how it has impacted

the world. So they'll give you little updates. And so having that kind of persistent world where all of these choices really do impact the way the game works to where you can actually hunt certain gangs into extermination, where they will no longer give you... Because we haven't even talked about the random encounters i guess maybe maybe we'll talk about that in a few minutes here because i do have it on our outline but you can eliminate gangs where they will no longer fight you you can clear out entire towns which become abandoned but then something else is going to come in and take over that area so the fact that they have that kind of world building, I think is really cool.

I don't know about you guys, but I felt like Weird West had a lot of DNA from other games. I don't know that this game had anything in particular that was groundbreaking, but I felt like it kind of picked things from other games. Like Divinity Original Sin 2, right? Famously, there's like a hundred ways to solve every quest. I felt like Weird West kind of incorporated that stuff into it. And then even with things like, I felt like almost stylistically, this game reminded me of Disco Elysium a lot. I was about to say that one, yeah. The art style is very prevalent.

Yeah. With the portraits and stuff? Yeah, absolutely. very prevalent which is yeah yeah with the portraits and stuff yeah absolutely yeah the portraits where and you don't hear every line of dialogue but you'll hear like a little bit of like murmuring in the background that looks exactly straight out of disco elysium but it has like a ton of shooting and any other games that this kind of reminded you guys of that you would compare it to i it's kind of its own thing it's like a hybrid of a hundred other games made by the devs that made dishonored and prey which are phenomenal devs and so you can see because

dishonored gives you that kind of freedom of choice how are you going to approach us you're going to go through the front door guns blazing are you going to teleport up to the balcony and then kind of sneak your way around to try to you you know, you know, do what you need to do quest wise. And so you can tell that they definitely follow that, like that DNA is there. You know, the art style is very unique. The art style almost reminds me a little bit of like Darkest Dungeon. I don't know if either of you guys have played that game. You know, the shooting mechanics are almost like the Ascent, not quite as fast paced it really feels like a miss a mishmash of games and what's even weirder is it's it's got like a roguelike element to it with a little bit yes where it's like there is absolutely permanent progression

and you're progressing a story but there's this weird reset almost every time you go to a new character, which is very much like a roguelite at the same time. They've really mashed up like 10 different things here. Yeah. I mean, it has elements like one of the things that I... And this is absolutely not a ripoff by any means. But one of the things I like most about Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion is the fact that the world reacts differently to you with the choices you make. And this game absolutely does that as well. So it's kind of one of those things where it's a lot of elements from a lot of different games, but I don't think it truly borrows from a lot of other games. I would say the closest thing would absolutely be the art style

and the portraits and stuff and the murmur from Disco Elysium and that's really about it. Yeah, it's a very hard game to try to succinctly summarize both story and gameplay because this game is just very unique in that regard. Now, I was curious, was there anything that you ran across in the game, either something that was funny or something that was surprising? What kind of memories are going to stick with you in regards to weird west there is one part and this is not a spoiler um but i go on top of a building and i'm talking to these children and i i can't spoil what i am because it'll kind of spoil part of the later game but essentially these kids keep calling me a witch, and I get kind of annoyed by it. And I'm like, don't call me a witch anymore. And they're like, I told you, don't call her a witch.

And the little girl's like, what are you going to be called? I'm like, Empress. You can call me Empress. And every time I run across these kids again, they're calling me the Empress. And I'm like, I just made a choice, and these kids are calling me Empress. And all the little kids in the game start calling me Empress. And I'm like, this is just fantastic. It just cracked me up about just the choices that you make. And then also, I'm not going to spoil anything.

Josh, what do you got? For me, one of the funny things, you know how sometimes you play a game a certain way, but then you kind of switch your play style up a little bit, or you really kind of set this self-goal for no reason whatsoever? There was a point in the game where you have to go to this brothel to talk to this person to get a clue for the next area that you're supposed to go. And you have to sneak into the upper level of this brothel. So you have to dodge some guards and stuff like that. Normally, if you get caught sneaking, you just pull your guns out and start blasting people. But there was like a side mission

where it was like you had to go unnoticed. And so I remember stealthing through this brothel. I made it up to the second floor and I was like, you know what, man, I've made it this far. I'm taking out every single person that is on the second floor of this brothel. And I remember I spent a solid like hour just stealthing around, avoiding the pathing of the different NPCs to where I straight up murdered every living thing on the second floor of that brothel without getting caught like at all. I don't know why I did it. You know, it was just like, well, this is a stealth part of this game. So here we go. You know, and these people shouldn't be up here they're doing bad things that was they gotta go that was simultaneously my favorite and least favorite part of this entire game because yes I had to

stealth for like an hour because it was required of you and I've already mentioned I had no interest in stealthing at all so when I completed the stealth part i did exactly what you did and i mowed everybody down i was like i finally get to go noticed and you're going to hear me oh that's so funny i did not alert a single guard because they tell you please do not alert anyone and i was like okay and i had already played the whole game stealth so i actually didn't find it that difficult you just pop an elixir that let you see where everyone is behind walls, and you can very easily stealth your way around. So I went through that whole brothel without alerting anybody, and I completed the side missions. And you get to kind of see some of the things that come out of that, which I thought was kind of fun.

So that's very funny how we had very different philosophies on that mission. I sold that elixir every time I went to a doctor. I didn't use that elixir one time. I never used it one time, to be honest with you. I'll say this too. One thing that this game does very, very well that I do think is fairly unique to this game is if you go into a new area,

like let's say that you discover a small little town, and you go into that town, and you instantly go and you rob the bank and you get away with it. Nobody actually sees you. They will still blame you because you are a new person that came to the town. Oh, that's right. You know what I mean? Which I think is really, really smart because it's like, hey, new guy. Oh, look, our bank got robbed.

Even though nobody actually saw you do it. You're the new guy in town. Process of elimination. Our bank bank got robbed. Even though nobody actually saw you do it, you're the new guy in town. Process of elimination. Our bank just got robbed, and so we're blaming you. And it's like, dude, how smart is that? Yeah, and conversely, on the same point, when you first walk into a town that you've never been to, they call you drifter or wanderer or things like that.

If you do a couple of bounty missions there or a couple of things to gain you, you don't gain reputation with individual towns. You gain reputation with the whole game. But people start to notice you and they start to refer to you differently if you've been around the town more often, which is really cool, I think. Very, very neat. Very clever programming. Did you guys get into a slap contest with the witch?

Yes. That made me laugh so hard i hated that but i beat her oh did you there's this wandering witch that will randomly pop up so the one thing that we haven't really talked about is as you travel in this game there is like an overview map of the entire area and you can click anywhere on the map and you're gonna travel there and if you're on foot they tell you how long it's going to take and it might be like a two-day journey by foot but if you're able to save up the money and buy a horse then that journey becomes a lot quicker but as you're traveling there is always a chance that you're going to get random encounters

sometimes you just get attacked by a bear and now all of a sudden there's just three bears on the map. You got to fight all three. Or if you have angered one of the gangs, they might stop and want to fight you. Or there might be people who say, hey, you're on our territory, pay us $100 or we're going to kill you. And you have the choice to fight or to pay them off and carry on your merry way. Well, there is this mysterious witch that constantly pops up over the course of the game. And there's some things that you can process with the witch and it informs the story. But the witch says that she's really bored and wants to get into a slap fight with you. And it literally involves dodging and pressing a button to slap the witch. And I could not believe that that was an actual mission in the game,

is to get into a slap fight with the witch. This witch messes with you, man. Okay, now we won't get into, again, no spoilers here, but the witch gave you guys all the box and told you, don't open the box. Yes. Yep. Right? Now, if you give me a box in a video game and then say hey this is very important whatever you do do not open this box did you open it i didn't i was like oh

surely surely like there's gonna be something great if i hold on to this box through all of these characters because the box persists through the characters and I don't want to spoil anything. I just wanted to ask whether you guys open the box or not. I played the entire game and I never opened it. I also never opened the box. It was hard

for Jane. What's in the box? What's in the box? It was hard through Jane, the first character. After that, I kind of forgot it was in my inventory and after I looked at it, I'm like, oh, there's the box. I'm just going to hold on to it. It's hard through Jane, the first character. After that, I kind of forgot it was in my inventory. And after I looked at it, I'm like, oh, there's the box. I'm just going to hold on to it. It's going to make sense later. Yeah.

And it never resolved for me, at least. Such a mean thing to do, though. I didn't want to spoil that. That just gives you ideas of what this witch does and how she messes with you. And it's like, don't give me an inventory item and then tell me I can't open it. Yeah. And so, Paul, you said it, but nothing ever happens. and it's like don't give me an inventory item and then tell me i can't open it yeah and so so paul you just you just you said it but nothing ever happens with the box it's it's just like a dangling story that really does not resolve i beat the game and so now i'm gonna go i'm gonna go start

the game up again well the first thing i'm doing is opening that. See, we did not really talk a whole lot about the game, but Josh did tell me that at one point she told you to open it, and you're not talking about her chest. You're talking about the box in your inventory. The box in your inventory that says she gave you this, and she told you whatever you do, don't open it. And then there is a point where she said, hey, do you still have my box? And I'm like, oh, finally.

And then she's like, okay, go ahead and open the box. And again, I can't spoil anything. See, I never got that. I talked to her. I talked to her 30 times. And a lot of times she says, go ahead and open up this chest. But for me, she never said open the box that I gave you in the beginning of the game. I wonder if it's just because we made different choices.

And because we made different choices, Paul and I didn't get to open the box. It's very possible. I think the last thing that really surprised me in Weird West is that when you finish the arc of character one and you go to character two, the very first thing I did was I went right back to where Jane lived. And you can make different choices with different characters. Everyone's playthrough is gonna be a little bit different, but I was very surprised to find Jane living there on her farm,

and I was able to just talk to her, and she would make reference to things that I did when I was controlling Jane, but now she's talking to the second character. And I mean, I don't think this really counts as a spoiler, but it does allow you to recruit your previous characters. I love that. If they're still there. And I loved that.

I did too. The best thing about that is I figured out early on that because one of the things, if you're going to a new character, you don't have any of your items with you. When you recruit that character, and this might be kind of a spoiler, if you're going to a new character, you don't have any of your items with you. When you recruit that character, and this might be kind of a spoiler, it might be more of a tip, because you'll find this out if you find the five things about Weird West to do early, is that almost all of your items that you had on the previous character, if you go recruit them as a companion of yours, you can take all of those items that you had in your previous character in your previous chapter and just grab all that stuff

and so immediately immediately what i did on the second character once i figured that out i went and got all of my guns to legendary status i spent probably a couple hours going to mines and mining all the stuff to upgrade all the weapons i did a bunch of bounties to get a whole bunch of money um i actually did 38 bounty missions i know this because there's a stat at the end of everything and it tells you how many things you do in the game and um i did 38 bounties uh but basically i just went and upgrade all my weapons right away because i know they'll pass on to the next character yeah uh i think one last thing that's kind of neat also is randomly when you kill someone, they might have a treasure map of where they have hidden treasure. And sometimes you'll go and it's like a graveyard with like 50 graves and you can't dig up every single one because you're not going to have enough shovels. Let's have seven shovels on you.

Yeah. I mean, you could, but you're not going to have enough shovels let's have seven shovels on you yeah i mean you could but you're not going to but those treasure maps will actually tell you okay i've hidden my treasure in the grave of the name of this person in this graveyard and you can go find new loot and things like that which i thought was really neat and also added to the whole like treasure hunt wild west kind of theme within the game which was kind of fun uh what'd you guys without going into spoilers what did you guys think about the ending of the story did you find it satisfying did you enjoy it i think it was neat that there were choices to be made and that matter yeah that mattered and that you got to see ultimately how your playthrough affected the world around you.

Yeah. It's tough to be vague, but again, it's the ending we're talking about. We don't want to give any spoilers there. But I will say that I think it was very satisfactory in how they kind of tied everything together. And then you got to kind of participate in the ending to answer questions and things like that, and then to see the results of not only your answers to those questions, but your play style throughout the game. I thought it was a really neat touch. Yeah. And I think the ending also really invites you to play the game again,

to find different endings because there were like we the three of us haven't we don't discuss our play at all before our deep dives because we don't want to influence anything we want to have a purely objective inorganic experience as we talk through this I am very curious to find out

what happened at the end of Paul and Josh's games because they're going to be different from mine because there's like 30 different choices you make that all culminate to the end of the game. And so I kind of want to go back through and just see if I want to spend another 40 hours playing the game again, but see what it's like to do a different result, especially with two choices and one very poor choice that I made. Very poor choice that I made. There is one thing that they do at the end of this game that i absolutely love and it is when they almost like review things that you've done over the course of the game so like disco elysium does this where at

the end of the game lieutenant kim starts talking to your your lieutenant back at the police station, and he starts telling him, he's been running around with one shoe for the last three days, and he has really spacey memory, but he might just be a brilliant detective. And that was because my character literally ran around with one shoe, and I never bothered putting on the other one. So the fact that the game recognized that and they actually talked about it in the game, they do some of that in Weird West as well, where they're like, well, when this happened, you know, and they might even ask you like, why did you do that? Or what happened here? And then you made this choice and then you made this

choice. And I love when endings of games recognize everything you've done up to that point. I thought that was rather brilliant. Yeah, that was kind of where I figured out that I'd killed 38 bounties, because they basically just asked me, Hey, you did 38 bounties. Do you enjoy killing people? And I'm like, Oh, man. And I've got multiple choice answers. And the answers that I had there actually were...

That's one thing I liked is that the answers I had as choices were pretty robust. Actually, like I one of them fit. Yeah, I thought that the ending was very satisfying in my opinion. Anything that we left out that you guys want to cover before we jump into community reviews? Anything that may have slipped through the cracks? Were there any negatives for you guys? Yeah. reviews anything that may have slipped through the cracks were there any negatives for you guys um yeah or should we save that for when we review the game um i i can kick it off now um i do i do feel like the game had a lot of repetition that was my number one negative yeah quite quite a bit and there wasn't there wasn't enough differences

in the abilities perks and the different things the different characters did to really remove that i found myself doing the exact same play style with every single character in fact i went and got the exact same guns and i was like i'm using the hip cannon as much as i can the revolver because i've got a legendary revolver it's's the most versatile weapon, it seems like, with my guns a blazing idea. And there were subtle changes. There were definitely subtle changes where you had to go through and you did have to stealth sometimes. But, I mean, ultimately, it really just... The only negative is that I did find that by midway through Chapter 3, I was like,

I feel like I've played the whole game and I'm just wanting to see how the story plays out at this point. I am 100% with you in that my one overall complaint, I guess, is that I did feel like the game started to be very repetitious. And even though you're playing different characters and there's different story arcs for those characters, the gameplay itself was exactly the same.

Like, yes, your character had three or four different class abilities that you could use. I'll be honest, I hardly ever used the class abilities. That's why it was repetitious. Literally, you pumped the same points into the same abilities for all of your characters, and you played it the same. If you put your points into those class abilities, they are wildly different. Like, the first character is very much a gunslinger. The second character is supposed to be played melee. And as you look at characters three, four, and and five it actually gets to where you're primarily

casting spells that have to do with going invisible and shooting fireballs around you and uh spawning false dummies that the enemies attack if you if you go out of your way to put points into the class abilities the gameplay does not feel that repetitive i feel like a little bit of that is because of how you guys chose to play i repetitive i feel like a little bit of that is because of how you guys chose to play i don't feel like it was the combat so much that was repetitive i think it's mostly just like it's the same mine every time you go into a mine you're in one of three different minds period you know what i mean like that's that's it so i did use the class abilities um which by the way is it spoiler if I ask you guys which act was your favorite character without saying the name of the character?

For me, it was Act 1. I think I actually enjoyed Act 2, believe it or not. Because what Paul said, and maybe this is my fault, is that I played Act 2 as a melee character, which was very different from act one, you know? And so, and I actually use that class's abilities a little bit more because it kind of fell into play with the melee aspect that I was trying to do. Right.

You know, and so I did like, because act three, I played with like a stealth ranged, you know, much more in that regard. So I did play it a little bit differently, but I still felt like it just wasn't different enough, I guess. Yeah. Act 3 was my favorite character overall.

And I did not play the character as it was meant to be. You get a bow and arrow, and I'm like, no, I'm going to go get that other character real fast and get my shotgun back. I will say Act 3 is the one that I would want to replay the most. Because Josh and I did talk a little bit about this, where there are some things that are said as you go on the final mission. And Josh and I were both like, hey, did you do something on this final mission? And we were both like, hey, did you do something on this final mission? And we were both like, no, absolutely not. And a little part of me wanted to go back and just make completely different decisions just to see what would happen. I do think Act 3 was a lot of fun.

Yeah. No, I think. But for me, the repetitious part of it also was like by the end of the game, when I was trying to get somewhere, I was like in the beginning, the first several acts, I was very excited about the random encounters. By the end of the game, like I'm just trying to, I don't want to kill any more coyotes. I just want to get to where I'm going. I want to finish the game.

I want to see how the story plays out. So it wasn't so much the combat because I did use the abilities differently. Even though I use the same guns and the same play style, the abilities were different. I did enjoy that. But by the end,

I was like, it's the same mine every time. And that's my biggest gripe. And you did a lot of side missions. I did not. I did all the side missions for Jane in the beginning. I did very few for the rest. Although at least if you do buy a horse, I'd say about a third to 40% of the random encounters,

you can just hit escape and you'll run right past it. So at least you do have a little bit of a choice there. But you do have to do a little bit of a grind in order to get a horse. Or if you're like me, I just sold all of my copper bars and silver bars and you have almost unlimited money if you just sell all that stuff. Right? Yeah.

All right. Well, I think it's time to hop into community reviews. So that's a little bit about what we thought. Josh, what you got for us? All right. I have pulled some reviews from Steam on this one. I always try to find ones that give different viewpoints, good ones, bad ones, and that sort of thing. So just so that the listeners can get an idea of what people like and what people don't like. So this first one is recommended 34 hours on record. So probably a very solid, either one playthrough or like a playthrough and a half. And it says,

this game is fantastic. The story is amazing. The music is great. The setting is stellar. And I have never wanted to play a pencil and paper RPG in a setting like this before. I love it. Now, I have problems with the UI. In combat especially, I felt discouraged from using my cool abilities. And the progression system with the perks and abilities seems strange. Ultimately, though, that didn't detract from my enjoyment of the game. Absolutely recommend.

Okay. I could see why someone would say that. I do. I will say the Weird West setting, I actually really like. I thought it was really fun. I really did like that. I didn't know that was a thing like we talked about earlier in the episode, but now it's kind of like I could totally see like reading a book in that setting or playing another game like that. So, okay. This next one is not recommended. 21 hours on record. To its credit, I did actually finish the game. About, okay. This next one is not recommended 21 hours on record to its credit. I did actually finish the game about 20 hours. Definitely could have done it faster,

which is more than I can say for a lot of RPGs. Even those that I love, I still haven't finished Baldur's Gate two. I started out pretty excited by the setting and style of gameplay, but quickly found that there really wasn't much to the progression or the combat. And even the random encounters started repeating pretty quickly. It all starts to feel the same pretty quick, and whereas with the first character I did some exploring and bounties and such, it quickly became apparent that not only was that pretty pointless, but you'd just be repeating the same things over and over.

So it kind of echoes what Michael and I were saying that we felt like the game started to get a little repetitive at one point. Okay. And then, so this next one is recommended 35 hours on record. Do you long for the days of isometric RPGs where your choices matter and everyone is fragile as glass? Do you also lust for the aesthetic of the American Southwest and have a thing for the occult?

Do you still have dreams of slow motion diving across a table so you can shoot a werewolf in its stupid face? Buddy, I have the game for you. I don't know how many people are sitting around wanting those things, but they do give it to you. You might realize you didn't know that you wanted it. If you told me, Josh, you have an opportunity to go slow motion, shoot a werewolf in the face, I'd probably take you up on that. Whilst diving over a table. Yeah, exactly.

And blowing up a stick of dynamite. All right. And then this last one is not recommended. Three hours on record. Horribly lackluster and chock full of repetition. The story lacks any real punch and everything outside of the main quest line is generally boring bounties will send you to areas you have already cleared to either kill or capture npcs who carry zero weight in the world

weapons feel awful and the skill system doesn't function well overall disappointing spend your money elsewhere i don't i don't know that I agree with any of that, to be honest. I mean, I don't know how you determine that after three hours, because honestly, the repetition doesn't kick in. Well, that and the repetition doesn't kick in until later in the game anyway. So I'm not real sure, unless they had like offline playtime or something.

I don't know. Yeah, I do feel like that one's a little harsh for the amount of playtime that that person had. Because I was probably like 10 hours in before I said, this is starting to get pretty repetitive. And he's 100% right about the bounties and stuff. Literally, I went to the same town like four times in a row. And once I looted everything in that town, there was nothing to loot again.

It was done. And so I'm just there to kill the guy with the orange box on his head and get out of Dodge and go get my bounty. But after three hours, that didn't happen to me. Yeah. So, all right. So that is what some of the other players of the game think. It is time for us to guess the overall Steam score.

I think Paul... No, wait. I won last time, didn't I? I thought it was Michael. Didn't I win with Tiny Tina's? I definitely did not win. I was right in the middle. I'm pretty sure I won with Tiny Tina's because I? I thought it was Michael. Did I win with Tiny Tina's? I definitely did not win. I was right in the middle. I'm pretty sure I won with Tiny Tina's.

It was whoever guessed lowest. That was me. Because remember, you guessed like, and then Michael guessed right in between. And I was like, I'm going one lower then. I messed up. All right. So I guess I'll go first then since I'm the champ to even level this playing field here. I thought that the game has a lot to like.

I do think that it has some faults to it. So for me, I figured it's not going to be exceptional, but it's definitely not going to be low either. So I kind of came in real safe on this one at an 84%. I wrote down 84% as my gut shot reaction. Paul, you've been copying my guesses, man. Yeah. So I'm going to say 86%.

Michael, please go 85%. Am I pleased to say 85%? It'd be so great. No, I'm not doing it. I've learned enough. If you pick 85%, I'm going to absolutely lose it, man. If it is 85%, I'm going to lose it man if it is 85 i'm gonna lose my mind if it's 85 um i think it's lower so you said 84 josh i did and i'm gonna stick up to you and say 83

i see we've fallen straight into strategy for all of these guesses now there's no more trying to hit the nail on the head i was trying to guess real for a long time, and I just didn't win. In fact, I win nothing. I haven't won. No, I'm not going to bring it up. I will say the winner is one of you two. Oh, no. And the actual score from the community is 73%.

Michael, you have won. Ironically enough, my choice, my actual choice was going to be 74 well so you said that would have been more impressive than cheating and you said 84 man i should i should oh that'd been a lot more fun if i'd get 74 oh wait i will say this i will say this in that you know a lot of negative reviews a lot of times if if a score is low it tends to say hey there's a lot of times if a score is low, it tends to say, hey, there's a lot of bugs, or it didn't run properly, or I'm review bombing this because of whatever. There was not one overarching theme with the negative reviews other than repetition. And that wasn't super prevalent.

But if I had to say, hey, what's one thing that I noticed in some of the negative reviews, that's probably the only one. But again, not overwhelming. It's not like, hey, I couldn't load this or multiplayer doesn't exist or it's buggy or something like that. Yeah, no. And I feel the same way about it. It's...

The game crashed for me one time and it was probably my laptop that overheated because it does that. I had a crash twice where I got an Unreal Engine error. Really? I never had a crash. Yeah, that's weird. Alright, Michael. Well, as the new reigning champion, you get the time-honored privilege of

introducing this next segment. Oh, man. I didn't prep anything because I've never won before. Welcome to my world, Michael. Man. Alright. Paul, play that sexy music and Michael, bring us in, buddy. Hey, Weird West, what do you want on your tombstone? I think it's a man flying across a table, failing miserably at a pickup line, shooting a werewolf in the face.

I 100% thought you were going tombstone pizza because that was their that was their slogan what do you want on your tombstone what do you want on your tombstone i'm gonna have to prep her next time i literally did not expect to win man i was not already i literally just googled real fast uh uh old west pickup lines it's a of 89. There's not a single one of them that's in there that's appropriate for this show. And I was like, I gotta wing it. Got nothing. So yeah, this is Make Love, Marry, or Murder,

where all three of us give this game a rating. Is it a game that you did not enjoy? It's not worth buying. You're gonna murder it. Is it worth picking up for a short while? Or does it have enough content that you feel like it's marriage material? And I don't know. I feel like I've got the closest handle on what Josh thinks. Why don't you go first, Josh? This one's actually very tough for me,

to be honest with you. Me too. Because there was a lot about this game. I was the one that pushed for this game. If you guys remember, I was kind of like, I really am intrigued by this. The art style is really drawing my eye. I was talking about it in our Discord server. I was very gung ho on this game. In playing it, I enjoyed a lot of it. And I disliked a large portion of it at the same time. The repetition in this really started to hit me. I fully admit I have a shorter attention span when it comes to video games. People know that. But I really started to get to the point where I was like, I don't want to play this game anymore. And it's like, I don't want to murder it because on the one hand, I did enjoy it.

And I think this game has a lot to offer to people. But then on the same side, it's kind of tough for me to say, I'm going to make love to this game at a $40 price point. If you purchase the game on Steam, I'm not sure that it's worth it to me. Now, we all play this on Game Pass because it is available on Game Pass. And for that $1 for your first month of Game Pass, well, that's a no-brainer. But I am actually legitimately very torn on what rating to give this. I'm going to say I'm going to make love to it. But man, this is like the least enthusiastic. You're just laying there.

Honestly, we're talking dead fish. Fair enough. You've been married for 20 years. It's one of those things where I don't think I have the heart to say I want to murder this game because it's not a bad game by any means. But it's also not a great game to me and so i'm gonna give it the least enthusiastic make love i think i've ever given a game what about you michael i echo everything that josh just said in so many ways because like there were times when i absolutely wanted to murder this game especially the last like five or six hours when I'm traveling.

And I'm like, no, I don't want to fight. I don't want to fight anymore coyotes. I just want to go to the story. I want to finish the game. With the bounties, it's like every bounty is same town, same three towns, every mine, same three mines. But I wasn't intrigued by the story. I thought the art style was great.

And I loved the bird's eye view of the way you play the story. I thought the art style was great and I loved the bird's eye view of the way you play the game. I love that. The first time when I load in the game, I'm like, oh, this is different. This is cool. I haven't played a lot of games like this. I'm very excited about this.

And the ingenuity behind the game makes me want to marry it. I love the fact that I feel like the game sometime is talking to you through the fourth wall and i know we talked about this earlier you guys just completely disagreed but like sometimes i feel like it's talking to the player sometimes you know because it talks about this immortal person controlling the game you learn this very early on so that's that's a baby spoiler but not really a spoiler and i apologize if that was a real spoiler but the whole thing is like i'm like this is a very unique idea. I love the fact that I'm fighting werewolves in the Old West.

I love the progression on the fact that when you start as the bounty hunter, you're really not fighting werewolves. You're not fighting zombies. You're fighting Old West stuff. But at the same point, I also just... The repetition killed me. Killed me. By the end, I found myself literally being driven by my love for story and story alone. So when I say, okay, would I marry this game because I do want to go back and play it again? I do because I want to find out what different choices I can make. Only the part of me that wants to solve a mystery wants to do that. The gamer in me says I'm never touching this game again. And so a very unenthusiastic make love is what I'm giving it as well, because I really want to murder this game. I really do. But there were so many elements about it that I

really loved, but the repetition killed, absolutely killed me. And so I'll make love to it because I might someday, when I forget how painful it was to go into the same mine a hundred times and go in the same town and kill the same generic bounty hunter a hundred times, or the bounty as a bounty hunter a hundred times. Five years

from now, I'll probably be like, Hey, I still have Game Pass. I'm going to play that game real fast. But it won't be soon. So I'll make love to the game i am coming at this from such a different place than you guys i'm not gonna say that you guys are wrong because i will fully acknowledge that this is a very niche game and i think that this game is like almost tailor-made for me i i don't understand you guys saying that it's repetitious at all. To me, that would be like saying, yeah, Mario, all you do is run to the right and jump on stuff. Or like, oh yeah, it's Halo. All you do is run around, point your

gun and click on heads. Like to me, I fully disagree. I loved every element of the stealth. I loved every element of the story. I loved the choices. I loved the ability to just run around and decide whether or not I'm going to steal stuff or kill people or knock them out and see how all these things affect. I also just goofed around in the game a lot with the quick save because they encourage you. They even tell you, hey, if you want to do something wild, just hit quick save, do whatever you want, and reload. So moderate spoiler for Chapter 1. The whole point is that you're trying to find your husband who's been kidnapped. And at least in my playthrough, I ended up successfully saving my husband.

Well, in Chapter 2, I went straight to that farm and I shot the husband right in the face and I killed him right in front of Jane. And Jane immediately had a vendetta against me. She said she would hunt me down until I would die for what I did to her husband. No. And just doing stuff like that in this game. And then, of course, feeling awful and then quick load and then recruit her to my team and play perfectly.

I loved every single element of this game. I am not saying that it's a better game than Elden Ring, but I enjoyed this game 10 times more than Elden Ring because this game is made for me. Elden Ring is so much more repetitious than this game. In my opinion, I think you guys are nuts. You know, it's funny. I actually, because, I mean, full disclosure, I finished this game in my opinion i think you guys are nuts you know it's funny i actually because i mean full disclosure i finished this game i beat it like three hours ago i played it

for a couple weeks i kind of want to see how it simmers i kind of want to see how i'm going to feel about this game in a week or two because all the things you talked about i did love about the game i really did i just by the, I felt myself sitting there saying, I kind of don't want to finish this game, but I got to see how the story plays out. And all the things you just talked about are the story piece, which you and I have a lot common, but interesting take. It really is because you can see I'm struggling with how to rate this game. Michael's struggling with how to rate this game. Michael's struggling with how to rate this game. And Paul is not.

Paul is like, I love this game. You know what I mean? Highly recommend. It shows that there are aspects that really work. Because otherwise, this would be an easy murder for me. But there's some very enjoyable parts. The problem is that the negatives kind of balance out the positives. And it's kind of like, I'm just left feeling meh. Right? Like, the game is meh. negatives kind of balance out the positives and it's kind of like i'm just left feeling meh right like the game is meh like i enjoyed it but would i recommend it like

meh oh see i would i would not have a single criticism about the game i don't i absolutely love it so are you i would absolutely recommend this game 100 oh he's marrying it yeah he's just that was better than elden ring come on i mean i i explicitly said i'm not saying it's a better game than elden ring i'm saying i like it way more it's geared more towards paul's which i can understand that elden ring like objectively is a much vast you know it's a much better game critically but i i really liked playing elden ring but it had its drawbacks that i did not like weird west does not have a single drawback for me i do not find it repetitious i found it to be an utter delight start to finish i will say at the beginning of chapter two i did

not like the character you play but it grew on me so right off the bat i was like i just want to go back and play as jane like why am i this dude But then by the end of the chapter, I fully loved that character. And I brought the chapter two character with me for the entire rest of the game. And he ended up being one of my favorites. Yeah, I did like the chapter two character quite a bit by the end. Now, just a moment of clarification. I do recommend this game. I recommend people play it. If you like story, you like unique gameplay. The gunplay is incredible. I love the combat in this game. And I thought when I first

started playing, I was like, aiming is hard. And by the end, I was like, aiming is awesome. I do recommend the game. I'm just... Maybe I need clarification on Make Love, Marry, and Murder. I just don't know if I want to play it again. And so that's why I make love to it

because it's like, I enjoyed it. I appreciated it. I'm not murdering it by any means, but it's not a game that I'm looking forward to playing again right away. I think the game that this most closely represented for me is Dragon Age Origins. The choices, the way it impacts the world, the way that you build

your posse over time and you have these long running connections and the random encounters, all of that stuff really reminded me a lot of Origins, except with a completely different perspective and obviously a completely different setting. But everything that I love in Dragon Age Origins, I feel like that DNA exists in Weird West. And I know it's not for everybody, but if any of this sounds interesting, I think you absolutely should check it out. If you're bored within the first couple hours, then just request a refund and don't play it. Or pick it up on Game Pass, and I think it's an absolute must play. If you already have Game Pass, there's no reason to not at least give it a try. All right.

Well, I think it's time for our last segment. Let's go to the leaderboard and see where this game stacks up. I think Paul just made us feel really bad for... I don't feel bad. I'm used to disagreeing with Paul. Josh doesn't care. All right. I will say this before we get into the lead.

I love the fact that you have three lifelong gamers that can agree and disagree on game styles. A lot of times people listen to this show and the three of us rave about a game and then somebody goes out and they pick it up and they play it. Right. And then it's like, Oh, I was waiting for elder, your Elden ring review. And all three of you guys said, it's great. I went and bought it and I love it. It's like, these are the episodes that honestly, I think are actually better in a way because you're getting different takes from different people.

You know what I mean? And so it's like, if you were hoping to make a decision based off this episode, I'm sorry. Unless you always agree with paul like if you agree with paul's takes then you're probably gonna love the game you know but that it's just i i actually really enjoy it when people get different viewpoints on and recommendations from a game because i think it's really beneficial i agree yeah so the leaderboard if this is your first time hearing a deep dive at the end of a deep dive episode, we decide where the game ranks on our leaderboard. We have to come to a three person consensus. So we kind of have to do a little bit of negotiation and compromise, figure out where it goes. We are currently sitting at a total of 70 games on our leaderboard all the way at the top we have uh sorry scrolling

back up to the top of our list we have red dead redemption 2 god of war overwatch rust apex legends games of that caliber kind of in the middle around 30 ish we've got games like hollow night stardew valley tribes of midgard far cry 5 and down in the dregs we have the likes of uh left for dead 2 which is still a crime sea of thieves the forest player unknowns battlegrounds halo reach some games like that so i don't know i can kind of kick this off i know where i would put this game i would put this game at 13 i know that's way too high for you guys I would put this game. I would put this game at 13. I know that's way too high for you guys. I would put this above Elden Ring, Call of Duty Warzone, and GTA Online,

but I would have it below Hearthstone and Divinity Original Sin 2. That is high praise from you, Paul. I'm actually really glad that you enjoyed this game that much, because I felt kind of bad with a couple games that we reviewed where I'm like, this is not Paul style of game. He's going to have to such a slog. That is not my game at all. No, I mean, for me in my, my opinion on this, I would say I'm in the, to try to be fair to how I know, I think there are a lot of people out there that will really like this game.

For me, I'm in the like 30 to 31 range. I can't in good conscience put this above Hollow Knight, in my opinion, but I could easily, yeah. But I could, I love Hollow Knight. Dude, but I enjoyed it man the app like there was a lot about hollow night that i really liked i i could see like stardew valley tribes of midgard far cry 5 i can like it no problem for me to put it in that range whatsoever so for me it deserves to be lower but i i'm having a hard time putting it higher

so hold on if that's your compromise then that means you actually have it like in the low fifties. Like where did you have this on your personal leaderboard? Right, right in the thirties. Oh, okay. I thought you said to try to be fair, you'd put it in the thirties to be fair to the game itself.

Not to you. I could care less. What do you think, Paul? Yeah. I thought you were trying to say that is the compromise. No, no,

no. I think you're really low on it. To be fair to the game itself, I can see it being right. And I mean, that means it's a game worth checking out. I mean, we have 70 games on our leaderboard. So putting it in the 30s is saying it's better than half of the games that we've looked at. And we like almost all the games we've covered. Right.

Yeah, exactly. So, Michael, I have no idea where you're thinking on this. Michael looks lost. Michael looks like he's doing the calculus. So, Michael, I have no idea where you're thinking on this. Michael looks lost. Michael looks like he's, yeah, he's doing the calculus. Like, where do I put this? No, no. I've got a solid spot

where I want to put this. This is definitely on the high end of Make Love for me. So, where I put this... You said it was on the low end of Make Love. No, I never said that.

You said unenthusiastic Make Love when you rated it. Well, no. Unenthusiastic rating. Like, I don't know how to rate it. So, I unenthusiastically rated it Make Love because no unenthusiastic rating like i don't know how to rate it so i unenthusiastically rated it make love because i don't know where to put it

oh i think you're saying like me like where it's like i'm barely giving this a make love no i think i'm higher on it than you are for sure all right but but i it's it's more of like uh i unenthusiastically have to pick a place for this game, and I don't want to. Gotcha. Okay. So where do I go? For me, this lives somewhere between Forgotten City and Among Us. Okay.

So mid-20s for you? Yeah, because I love Forgotten City. Among Us is great. I would much rather play this game than Among Us. And I think a year from now, if I'm picking up a game and saying, do I want to play this game or do I want to play Forgotten City? I'll probably play Forgotten City and make different choices in that game. So right now we've got votes.

Right now we have votes in the early teens, the mid-20s, and the early 30s yeah we're all we're all a little different so i i read that to mean it's going to be maybe pretty close to where where michael's got it i was yeah he's kind of splitting the difference there huh yeah the big thing about this though is a big caveat is i didn't rate most of the games on here so it's kind of hard for me to put it in between certain things yeah it's not it's not a hard for me to put it in between certain things. Yeah. It's not, it's not a negative thing.

I'm the new guy. Um, but the whole thing is I'm like, I'm looking at the list here and I'm like, uh, what would I rather play? You know, deep rock galactic or among us probably deep rock galactic.

What do I ever play? Deep rock galactic or forgotten city. See, I think resident evil village is far superior to this game. I think they're both in the same tier. I know Paul disagrees. I think they're in the same tier. They're both so good.

One below Resident Evil Village? I would be okay at 26. I think, I mean, I'm the lowest of the bunch. You know what I mean? So it's like Michael's kind of splitting it. That's right in the middle of where Michael would rank it. Because he said between Forgotten City and Among middle of where Michael would rank it. Cause he said between forgotten city and among us. So that would put it right at 26.

And I, I have a personal hard time rating this game higher than resident evil village, but I also want to at least respect Paul's love of this game. This is very funny. Cause this is kind of reminiscent of like how we ended up rating Outer Wilds so low for you, but so high for me. And Stardew Valley is so low for me. I know.

I still cannot believe Stardew Valley is in the 30s. I can't believe Outer Wilds is as low as it is, man. I'm looking at Stardew Valley and just wondering what's doing. And how is Stardew Valley rated higher than Outer Wilds? Outer Wilds is 37 and I let you talk me into Stardew Valley at 30? Apparently. I don't know how I lobbied that either, Josh. Kudos to you, man.

All right. So I wasn't sure because Michael did say he would rather play Deep Rock Galactic, but you guys know out of the three of us, I'm by far the lowest. Talk about repetition. It's Deep Rock Galactic. No, no. I was talking about... Sorry. of us i'm by far the lowest yeah you talk about repetition it's deep rock galactic but no no i was talking about sorry i was i was kind of looking at among us in deep rock galactic and trying to figure out why i wanted this because deep rock galactic is very repetitive but it's

also fun to play with friends yeah um yeah i i i would say 26 is a great spot for this you're okay with 26 absolutely with 26 i will i i will just be fullout honest i did not think it would end up rated that high i i kind of knew i was going to be on my own island here i just played this entire game with a giant grin on my face and loved playing every minute there was like one time where i was like you know what i played this game for like three hours today i'm just gonna do hearthstone right now for half an hour and then i'm done gaming for the night but other than that one time i couldn't wait to get back to my computer and launch this game so that's awesome yeah i really did love it i hope other people check it out i love getting games like this where it's not the full 60 price tag but there's a lot of content if you did every side mission in this game which

i i don't i think i would fizzle out before doing all of that. But there's a lot of content that you can pick up in this game if you really want to. All right. So we'll lock it in at 26. I did not see that coming, but I'll take it. Nice. It's a well-done game. Like I said, there are some negatives for somebody like me. And know like michael expressed a few of them as well but i mean it's polished it's enjoyable it's got a great style there's a lot of options i mean it's not without its flaws in my opinion but i could definitely understand like people loving this and you know what's funny is when this game released the reviews were kind of very much all over the place there were some people that were like dude this is the most fun I've had in a game in a long time.

And then other people that were like, I don't get why people are liking this as much as they're liking it. So it does seem to be kind of polarizing to gamers. I'll have to go look that stuff up because I have not read a single word or a single review on any of it. So I'll have to go check some of that stuff out.

All right. Well, that wraps up everything for weird west what a weird crazy game i hope that you guys check it out we'd love to hear your thoughts on it i'm sure your guys thoughts would be all over the map as well and then our next upcoming deep dive i know michael's really excited michael why don't you tell the people what game we're going to cover for the next deep dive all right the people have spoken the show has listened and also i lobbied for it um so we're playing elite dangerous that's right yes yeah the open universe not open world game that is by far better than no man's sky which i've also never played um that's

what we're doing elite dangerous yeah so that'll be a crazy deep dive that'll be a lot of fun to talk about and i think if if we end up really loving it we could consider posthumously giving michael the win for best space game if never elite dangerous ends up being that good. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Didn't I win that one? I'm not giving that up. You did. Pretty crazy. Yeah. Josh did win that one.

You'll pry it from my dead hands. This game is very different from Mass Effect 2. Yes. It would be very difficult to kind of compare the two. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much to everyone for listening. Thank you again to all of our supporters on Apple and on Patreon. If you want to join those ranks, MultiplayerSquad.com is the place to go. That will let you see our Patreon page. And come check out that new epic

tier that has dropped down to 15 bucks, but still has all the same perks. And our next episode will be on Thursday for This Week in Gaming. Can't wait to see you guys again for that episode. I think we're done. Stick a fork in it. Absolutely. Cheers, everyone. See y'all.

See everybody.