It has been a long time since a soulslike truly humbled me. After a decade of playing FromSoftware’s games and their flock of imitators, I’ve earned a more-than-solid understanding of how to achieve victory without hurling a controller into the TV. It turns out there is some truth in the “soulslikes aren’t actually hard” line that the genre’s most battle-hardened fans parrot on Reddit – after you’ve mastered the fundamentals, climbing the Souls mountain isn’t quite the impossible challenge it first seems.
Guns of Eschaton isn’t your typical soulslike, though. It’s a first-person shooter set in an apocalyptic weird west, a setup that means a great deal of your third-person melee-focused muscle memory is utterly useless here. While it still adheres to the genre’s core rules – you earn level-up currency from kills, lose it when you die, have to fight tooth and nail to reach the next bonfire checkpoint, and can battle alongside a co-op ally – it has so many of its own complicated quirks that playing it feels like learning to walk all over again. Chief among the new challenges to adapt to is that most of your enemies wield ranged weapons, and so a walk through the Old South feels like dealing with Anor Londo’s army of archers all over again.
Over the course of a recent two-hour demo, I suffered through dozens of deaths on the path to understanding Guns of Eschaton’s gunpowder-heavy rethinking of the soulslike. The most important aspect is, of course, your weapon. Developer Eschatology Entertainment has recreated a number of authentic 19th-century firearms, and throughout my demo I used a six-shot single-action revolver. It’s an admirably fiddly piece of hardware; the hammer must be cocked before each pull of the trigger, and the empty shells must be ejected one-by-one before refilling the cylinder with fresh ammunition. Reloading is an excruciatingly lengthy ordeal, and getting caught in the open with six spent cartridges is a death sentence.
You can also manually rotate the cylinder to line up specific chambers, a function that becomes important when you begin to acquire bullets with special properties, such as armour piercing or more esoteric, cursed projectiles. While the demo didn’t allow me to tinker with this system in any depth, I can already see the potential of arranging a full drum of different bullets, firing them off in sequence to cause maximum pain.
What I did get a better handle on is Guns of Eschaton’s shot sequence system. While you can dispatch enemies by simply pumping lead into them, you can achieve much more efficient kills by shooting them in particular patterns. The bucked-headed Serviteur, for instance, can be quickly eliminated by blasting its left and right leg in sequence. The rifle-wielding Severed Lawman, meanwhile, must be capped in the left leg, left arm, and then the head. Your gunslinger is equipped with a book, and pulling it out while looking at one of your ragged foes will flick to the relevant page that reveals the correct sequence.
Your gunslinger’s bullet-stopping powers are a vital part of each engagement.Having only been able to play for a couple of hours, I’ve yet to decide if this sequence system is a work of genius or simply much too complicated. In general, I’m very much drawn to games that radically rethink genre conventions – I adore Doom Eternal’s lock-and-key approach, and there’s an echo of id Software’s divisive design in Guns of Eschaton. Repeating enemy types makes it easy to commit sequences to memory, and each new foe introduces a one-off scramble to do field research under fire. But even on its higher difficulty levels, Doom Eternal was never quite as punishing when it comes to progress lost, and the Doom Slayer didn’t have to reload any of his weapons, never mind feed in each cartridge one at a time. And yet, the approach ensures there’s purpose in each stand-off, so much so that even “cannon fodder” enemies are combat puzzles to solve. I admire Eschatology Entertainment’s dedication to making each and every enemy feel like a duel.
Side note: there is a dedicated duel mechanic, which demands you stay perfectly still and only fire back after deflecting the enemy’s shot. But this is how almost every face-to-face shootout functions, so at least at this early stage the dueling feels a bit redundant.
Oh yeah, you can deflect bullets. Guns of Eschaton wouldn't be able to lay claim to the soulslike badge if it didn’t have a parry system, and your gunslinger’s bullet-stopping powers are a vital part of each engagement. Enemy weapons emit a flash of light and make a mechanical “chambering” sound before firing, which is your cue to perform a parry. A pair of spectral arms shield your face, and perfect timing triggers a brief window of slow-motion within which you can fire off a damaged-buffed counter-attack. As with so many melee action games, it’s a source of deep satisfaction. However, there are some frustrations that come as a result of this being a shooter – often there are multiple enemies firing at you simultaneously, and parrying plus countering all incoming attacks is a difficult exercise. Additionally, I’d often be shot at by snipers I’d not yet seen, which blindsided me with crippling damage. It felt cheap in a way Dark Souls’ surprise hidden enemies typically don’t.
In a game that already asks you to relearn many of the fundamentals of both the first-person shooter and the soulslike, there are multiple other new ideas that I was only able to briefly touch. There’s a library of abilities to be acquired from the world’s NPCs, plus a magic system with both prayers and curses, but the thing that interests me most is the bandolier worn by your protagonist. Creative director Fuad Kuliev tells me it can eventually be filled with unique handguns, each equipped with its own custom-arranged cylinder of special bullets. With multiple guns ready to go, you can fire off every round in one and then pull out the next, allowing for uninterrupted battle. It’s an approach with exciting potential – I’d love to craft a bandolier tailored to each of the game’s boss fights.
I’ve yet to decide if the shot sequence system is a work of genius or simply much too complicated.While I didn’t face any of those bosses in the demo, the trailers suggest there’s an array of fantastic-looking horrors waiting in the decaying wastes of the west. That won’t come as a surprise to those who know the name Viktor Antonov, the art director of Dishonored, Half-Life 2, Wolfenstein: The New Order, and now Guns of Eschaton. Antonov sadly passed away last year aged just 52, a tragic event that has somewhat uncomfortably become the focal point of Eschatology Entertainment’s promotional material, which constantly references that this is his final project (which is not strictly true, as Antonov also worked on the still-in-development Forest Reigns).
The Bulgarian artist’s distinct style is clear to see in Eschaton’s world, with his bold, brutalist line work that previously created gaming’s best dystopian cityscapes now present in the frontier’s sheer cliffs and chunky details. So far I wouldn’t say it’s as striking as his work on Dishonored, in part due to the demo’s sparse desert area lacking the lived-in character that Dunwall communicates, but – as with the bosses – the trailers suggest there’s plenty of his magic in later environments.
I won’t lie: getting through Guns of Eschaton’s demo was arduous. Everytime I felt like I’d conquered a milestone – mastering the parry, nailing the sequence system, paying proper attention to how many shots were in my cylinder – I was knocked back down by a bleed-inflicting beartrap, a surprise stick of dynamite, or an encounter with the Glutton, a grotesque priest who relentlessly tracks you with a damaging energy ray. But while I left the preview session feeling rather dejected by my inability to truly connect with it, I can’t help but wish I was back in Guns of Eschaton’s world, tinkering with bullet arrangements and finding new solutions to the seemingly never-ending array of frustrating horrors. That’s the curse of being a soulslike fan, I guess – you really do become a masochist.
As with Bloodborne, my initial introduction to the genre, I’m entranced enough by the world and systems to want to endure the painful processes of “gitting gud.” And with any luck, the promising depths of Guns of Eschaton’s campaign will make it worth enduring.
Matt Purslow is IGN's Executive Editor of Features.
