Shadow Warrior developer Flying Wild Hog revealed a new project tonight at The Game Awards called Evil West, a gun-slinging tale of a dark menace that threatens the American frontier, and the supernatural superheroes who hold the line against it.
As a member of a top-secret cabal of vampire hunters, it falls to you to fight back the horrors that are emerging from the shadows, with guns, gadgets, and a “lightning-fueled gauntlet.” Evil West will feature a narrative-driven campaign with support for solo and co-op multiplayer, and a range of ugradeable weapons and unlockable perks.
There’s not much in the way of detail at this point but it based on what I’ve seen so far, it strikes me as a sort of a Wild West take on Shadow Warrior: Replace Lo Wang with Jesse Rentier (that’s the name of the trailer hero) and turn the dial from samurai to cowboy, and I suspect you’d end up with something very much like this.
That’s not a complaint—I like Flying Wild Hog’s Shadow Warrior reboot a great deal. But one of the things I enjoy most about it is the faint sense of goofiness that underlies the whole thing, and I really don’t pick that up from this Evil West teaser. Hopefully it’s not too grim and gritty: Even Clint Eastwood told a joke once in awhile.
Evil West is due out sometime in 2021.