Look, I’ll level with you: I was rubbish at Guns of Eschaton during my recent hands-on time. There are some very obvious reasons for that – it’s a hard game that doesn’t currently especially explain itself very well, for one. But it’s a distinct enough riff on the familiar Soulslike formula, classic campfire respawns here mingling with Weird West-inspired first-person shooting, that it just takes a bit of getting used to.
Welcome, then, to the Old South, a land of “dust, blood, false saints, broken history, and occult horror”, as developer Eschatology Entertainment puts it. It’s also, notably, a world as envisioned by the late Viktor Antonov, the artist behind some of video gaming’s most memorable spaces – Half-Life 2‘s City17 and Dishonored‘s Dunwall – who sadly passed away last year. And when Guns of Eschaton eventually unleashes its first sweeping vista – an endless desert of sand and flame, where a giant worm winds its way over fracturing mesa beneath looming planets and swirling stars – it’s a striking one. It takes a little while to get to that point, though, given Guns of Eschaton’s adventure pretty much starts in a hole.
You are a man with no name (or perhaps just a name I didn’t catch), and you’ve awakened at the bottom of a ravine. Or maybe better thought of as a tutorial pit, for it’s here Guns of Eschaton guides you through the basics of its three core bits: shooting, dashing, and parrying. Those three words might suggest a nimbleness to combat, but instead this is a slower, more deliberated paced sort of game. And that begins with your deliberately cumbersome six-shooter. Eschatology Entertainment, a studio founded by alumni of War of Tanks developer Wargaming, has opted for a kind of pseudo-realism here. Shooting isn’t just about pulling the trigger, it’s about cylinder management too. Using the default weapon, you’ve six shots before you’ll need to perform the sort of slow reload liable to leave you dangerously exposed. And crucially, after each shot, you’ll need to cock the hammer to rotate the cylinder – an extra step that gives Guns of Eschaton a unique, if slightly tricksy rhythm. Carefully lining up a hit and pulling the trigger only to be greeted by the ‘click’ of an empty chamber is, in turns out, quite dispiriting, especially given how hard your undead opponents can hit in Guns of Eschaton.
But Eschatology Entertainment takes things even further. The supernatural underpinnings of its mysterious half-world means that simply getting a bullet through an opponent won’t do much harm. Instead, each enemy is weak to a specific sequence of attacks, requiring you to target specific limbs in a specific order: your bottom-rung undead cowboy dudes won’t need much more than a blast to the face to bring them down, but others might take a one-two-three punch of right leg, then left arm, then head shot to efficiently bring them down. As the Eschatology’s CEO and creative director Fuad Kuliev puts it when we chat after my hands-on time with Guns of Eschaton: “In our game, not shooting is far often better than shooting until you understand what actually you need to shoot at.”
This kind of “sequence shooting”, Kuliev explains, is intended to create “a smart shooter, not a fast shooter” where the focus is on thinking through your approach before implementing it. And so enemy weaknesses,which are usefully recorded in Guns of Eschaton’s lavishly illustrated Codex for perusal as required. But even with that reference guide, it all – in heated combat against multiple enemy types – felt like a lot of information for my brain to hold. Thankfully, then, there’s an alternative: melee and ranged attacks can be countered dealing increased damage following a well-timed parry or two. Chuck in that dash – loosely equivalent to Dark Souls’ classic roll, and sporting a deceptively generous window of invulnerability, according to Kuliev – and you’ve got your fundamental tool kit for survival in Guns of Eschaton’s Weird West world.
And I’d love to tell you that it clicked immediately for me, and that I wowed everyone in attendance with my rootin’ tootin’ slidin’ shootin’ skills. But I did not. Guns of Eschaton really does throw a lot at you early on – there’s a mechanic that lets you ping bullets off environmental objects to auto-target enemies, and there’re duels with specific rules of engagement: basically, no shooting first. You’ll need to keep an eye on gunpowder reserves, which limits the number of times you can shoot and reload before you’re forced to switch to your pokey little knife (this, helpfully, restores some gunpowder when used effectively). And there’s stamina to think about for your dashes and parries. Then you’ve different inventory belts, different ammo types with their own effects; ability upgrades, magic-like prayers, item buffs with built-in debuffs (chewing tobacco clears afflictions, for instance, but temporarily reduces max stamina) and there’s more. That’s a lot to consider while my brain was still stuck at the DON’T FORGET TO COCK THE HAMMER bit. No wonder I died.
And with the tutorial out the way, Guns of Eschaton shows even less mercy. Once you reach its first proper area (the game’s action is split across multiple discrete locations, accessed via a spooky hub known as Hounds Camp), you’ve suddenly got to contend with multiple enemies attacking from all directions, some enemies charging in from around corners and others, unsportingly, sniping from afar. Most areas, including the Spaghetti Western sprawl of pueblos blanco that open the game, require you to locate and defeat a boss. And death is almost an inevitability until you attune yourself to Guns of Eschaton’s ways.
Because, yes, Guns of Eschaton is structured like a Soulslike, meaning campfires (which all have wonderfully evocative names like Muttering Path) where you’ll rest and recuperate, causing enemies to respawn. Or where you’ll return on death, requiring a frantic dash back to your shame-puddle – which holds all recently accumulated Memories, used to buy upgrades and the like at Hounds Camp – before death invariably arrives once more. I even saw evidence of a Soulslike messaging system, allowing players to leave warnings (or otherwise) scrawled upon the world. But despite all these familiar elements, there’s a unique rhythm to Guns of Eschaton’s gunplay that feels like it’s bringing something refreshingly distinct to the formula. I might not have been even remotely good at it, but on the occasions I briefly settled into a groove of cover-dashing, determined kiting, one-two parrying, and even a quick-shot ricochetting flourish, it felt properly rewarding.
And encouragingly, Kuliev explains Guns of Eschaton has been designed for different styles of play, suggesting I might have had better success in those clumsy early hours if I’d tried something more radical. Stealth is said to be a perfectly valid alternative, and players can unlock perks to help tilt combat further in their preferred direction. Lovers of sneakery might opt for the one allowing them to see enemies through walls, for instance, making long-range ambushes a possibility. Certain custom bullets might create powerful synergies too, such as those that increase the range of your weapon. And there’s a darkness curse (curses being a form of in-game magic) that effectively blinds enemies with supernatural smoke. Those preferring a more direct approach, meanwhile, might alternatively choose to utilise one of the magic-like prayers, briefly but significantly reducing incoming damage.
And there’s more! Weapon modifications are supposedly possible at certain branches in the story, so you might choose to strip away the Buffalo Rifle’s handy scope attachment in order to invoke the spirit inside, essentially turning it into a powerful one-shot revolver. Further tweaks come via ammo mods that add multiplier effects to the likes of range damage and recoil. And that’s on top of armour, and consumables like dynamite and throwing knives.
It sounds like a rich and malleable toolkit, and it’s the driving force behind Eschatology’s “dynamic” approach to difficulty, wherein players can make things significantly easier or harder for themselves depending how they tailor their builds and deploy the available tools. Kuliev adds that he isn’t really a fan of rigid difficulty settings while we chat. “For me,” he explains, “this [kind of custom] experience … is much more important because [it] allows you to design the level of hand-holding you wish for.”
But for players who find themselves particularly struggling, Guns of Eschaton has two more tricks to its name. Kuliev briefly mentions a Nightmare World; a sort of mirror version of the main world that’s easier to traverse. Supposedly you get a tutorial for the mechanic if you’re doing particularly badly, so maybe I wasn’t quite that terrible afterall. Additionally, Guns of Eschaton features optional two-player co-op. And while this technically makes the game harder, Kuliev says the synergy of two players is “much more powerful”, which might go some way toward easing the pressures of the solo mode.
So yes, I was rubbish at Guns of Eschaton. I died a lot, I swore a lot (in my head, obviously, I’m totally a professional), and I felt mildly infuriated on occasion too. But here’s the important bit: Guns of Eschaton is interesting – a refreshing FPS twist on a familiar formula and, after a couple of hours with it, this Souls fan, while unquestionably rubbish, walked away intrigued.
