Hard West II Previews

With Hard West II set to go live on August 4, 2022, you might be wondering what to expect from this supernatural Western. If that’s the case, you should check out the previews below, especially since they feature quite a few quotes from the game’s lead producer Grzegorz Ziemba and chief technology officer Mateusz Pilski:

Rock Paper Shotgun:

“People have to find a way to properly plan their movements,” Pilski continues. “This is not about having a very good build and powerful weapons. Of course, this is important to a point, but it’s not crucial. What’s crucial is to outsmart the enemy and find the proper way to chain your actions and use Bravado as much as you can.”

It helps that your posse of characters in Hard West 2 are made of sterner stuff than their 2015 predecessors. While leaving characters out of cover often spelled certain doom in the original game, thanks in no small part to its punishing permadeath, your party in Hard West 2 now have more HP as standard, and falling in battle will see you starting over from the latest checkpoint instead of slogging it out with drastically reduced numbers. This was partly to encourage players “to get out there, experiment, push forward, play badass,” Ziemba tells me, citing the shootouts of The Magnificent Seven as a key touchstone (or should that be Tombstone?) for what the team are trying to achieve here. “The game is challenging, especially on Hard and Nightmare difficulties,” he continues, “but it doesn’t punish players with irreversible posse members’ losses for making mistakes.”

GodisaGeek:

As you’re almost always massively outnumbered in Hard West 2, each and every character brings a unique tactical element to the table. I asked Mateusz (who was streaming the game as I watched) if we’ll be able to choose our party before each mission.

“You can, yes,” he explained hesitantly, “but some of the missions have locked characters because of the story, though it’s mostly just one character or something like that. We wanted to give players the freedom of choosing their loadouts and play-style.”

This is a vital choice, too, as Grzegorz explained: “It’s going to be pretty important, if you want to get good in Hard West 2, to utilise the synergies between the characters. You can find synergies between basically every character.”