Weird West - Influencend by Ultima 7 and Fallout @ PC Gamer

Game designer Raphaël Colantonio uses ideas from Ultima 7 and Fallout for Weird West:

How Ultima 7 and Fallout helped shape Weird West, the next immersive sim from Arkane's founder

WolfEye Studios is reworking the immersive sim genre for a dark western game.

The story of Raphaël Colantonio and Arkane, the studio he founded and then left, is well told. But there's one episode that he recounts less often. While working for EA in Guildford, England, he interviewed for Richard Garriott—an RPG legend, and a personal hero.

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"When we did Arx Fatalis [at Arkane], it was the Looking Glass and Ultima Underworld version of those values, that looks like a first-person shooter," Colantonio says. "Whereas this time, it's the Origin and Ultima VII version, more tactical and top-down."

It's almost eerie how closely Colantonio's formative influences echo those of Swen Vincke of Divinity: Original Sin studio Larian. While one is famous for immersive sims and the other RPGs, the principles they both cling to are the same. There's a shared physicality to their worlds, a sense of coherence and possibility. A dedication to rewarding players for finding unusual solutions to their problems. "I can see how we overlap," Colantonio says.

"When I played Divinity: Original Sin, I felt I was having a conversation with developers I've never met. They tried to convey, and honour, and celebrate Ultima VII. I felt like, 'I see what you're doing here. Me too.'"

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Thanks Henriquejr!