![]() No matter how personally invested I was in the well-being of my anxious doctor or a particularly abrasive engineer, there was a point where each gentle little ping became a crampon to the head. Mid-game, I became inured to the soft little chimes alerting me to each individual crew member’s frostbite or demoralization - several times, I impatiently sat through an unskippable sequence of death notifications, one by one. But despite its branching paths on a locked tree system, The Pale Beyond remains an overwhelmingly linear experience - one undermined by a distinct lack of polish and small UX choices that snowball into genuine frustration after repeated mission deaths and failures.įor instance, the “locked” save/load tree system means that if you die (i.e., you run out of decorum and the expedition ends), there are only a handful of points on the tree you can return to before reliving a parade of tedious UI notifications and prompts for 20-plus individual characters until you die again. There’s a grim sense of inevitability as Shaw leads the crew closer to the Viscount’s last known position - an endeavor hampered by constant failure and tough decisions. As further misery unfolds, the very concept of privacy feels as distant as warm, dry land. The claustrophobic polar setting is a quick and effective way to push Shaw uncomfortably into each character’s minuscule radius of personal space. The claustrophobic polar setting is a quick and effective way to push Shaw uncomfortably into each character’s minuscule radius of personal space When Hunt goes missing, Shaw must take up the captain’s mantle, at least temporarily, to see things through. Templeton, an uptight biologist who fittingly resembles a steely-eyed draugr, seems to be the only one invested in finding the twin ship. It’s clear that Hunt is keeping secrets, and once we’re aboard, it becomes even clearer that the captain - while loved and respected by the crew - is totally checked out. The job is to find the Temperance’s missing sister ship, the Viscount. The story begins by meeting Captain Hunt, an enigmatic old salt who hires my faceless character, Robin Shaw, as first mate aboard the Temperance. But really, what are humans without hubris? At first blush, it’s a straightforward survival simulator where I expect the worst to happen, because there’s nothing positive that can come from forcibly inserting a bunch of soft, vulnerable mammals into an icebound hellscape that simply does not wish to host them. I’m not doing an intense gastronomical LARP - I’m playing The Pale Beyond, a survival-driven adventure that takes a page from tales of late-19th-century polar explorers, and perhaps more recently, the first season of AMC’s historical thriller The Terror (which was, in turn, based on an actual lost expedition). It’s survival cooking - hoosh is a sort of Antarctic explorer’s gruel made with whatever’s lying around, from penguins to dead sled dogs, and under dire circumstances, the unsavory products of “the custom of the sea.” As someone with a morbid fascination with weird historical food, it’s easy for me to obsess over the hoosh, but as a stalwart upholder of civilization, I refuse to succumb to cannibalism. A press release from WolfEye reinforces this, noting bugs and dead ends were still an issue in the game.On my maiden voyage to the middle of frozen nowhere, I’ve made a new best friend: the hoosh pot. However, we want to iron out some stuff, because we are committed to delivering the best experience." He went on, citing the developer's experience with immersive sims and the importance of getting everything right so all players have a good experience. The game is being tested in a private beta and they're having a blast. "On the other hand, we realize it's not quite ready yet. "We are passionate developers and gamers at WolfEye, and as we are playing our own game, on one hand, we realize that the game is really great," Colantonio said. Attached with the tweet was a video from WolfEye's creative director and Dishonored co-creator Raphaël Colantonio explaining the decision to push the release date back. The announcement came in a tweet in which Devolver attested to "some wonky moments" that require fixing in order to make the game its best self possible before launch. ![]() ![]() Devolver Digital announced a delay in the release date of WolfEye Studios' weird, wacky, western fantasy action RPG Weird West to March 31, 2022. ![]()
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