Arkane co-founder's new game Weird West will be out in January

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Weird West, the immersive sim in development at Rafael Colantonio's WolfEye Studios, will be out on January 11. The release date announcement comes alongside the first of a series of videos that go deeper into what the game is all about.

Colantonio is known for immersive sims—Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah, Dishonored, Prey—but Weird West is a big departure from the games he worked on at Arkane in one big way: It's isometric rather than first-person. We said in a preview earlier this year that the unusual perspective doesn't take away from the experience, which promises to be "as complex and chaotic an immersive sim as the best of them," and Colantonio emphasized that aspect of the game in the first "Road to Weird West" trailer.

"One of our goals for Weird West is for everything that seems interactive to actually be interactive," he says in the video. "We can loot things, search anything, take items from inventories or place items from your inventory into the world, carry bodies, bury bodies, kick things, set things on fire, and more. If you see something that seems possible, chances are it is possible, and it feeds in the simulation to create gameplay opportunities."

Unlike many first-person immersive sims, Weird West is more explicitly an RPG than a shooter. Players will be able to customize abilities and perks, embark upon quests, or just explore and see what's out there: An overworld travel map will enable open-ended roaming, complete with random encounters.

Weird West is available for pre-purchase now on Steam, and of course doing so will score you a little bonus—in this case, a horse named Calamity who will provide various bonuses and a bit of extra starting loot. To find out more, hit up weirdwest.com.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.