A trailer for Guns of Eschaton was released recently. The game's genre is quite a hook: it's a fusion of "Soulslike" and "FPS" set against a Western-themed backdrop. Following One More Level, the studio behind Ghostrunner, revealing their new title Valor Mortis, this is the second game on the market to attempt this kind of hybrid gameplay design.
Eschatology Entertainment, the creator of this work, has an impressive background. Although this is their debut title, most studio members have experience working at major AAA studios. The art director is Viktor Antonov, who single-handedly crafted the fantastical "Whale Oil Punk" world of Dishonored. Therefore, what we immediately sense in the Guns of Eschaton trailer is the distinct visual style of this game.
This producer unfortunately passed away late last year, which is deeply regrettable—Guns of Eschaton is the last project he worked on.
Visuals and theme are the most captivating and intriguing aspects of Guns of Eschaton. The fusion of "Soulslike," "FPS," and "Western" elements is interesting. While they seem unrelated and even conflicting, the possibilities generated by their merger appear to have broad potential.
"Western culture" is a creative genre with deep roots, having even become a cultural motif. Born from 19th-century American history and influenced by 20th-century literature and Western films like Stagecoach, it gradually evolved into a romanticized story type and a spiritual symbol representing bravery, independence, and a love for adventure, remaining enduringly popular in pop culture.
Still from Stagecoach
But nowadays, we rarely see those particularly traditional Western stories. Especially after Red Dead Redemption 2 turned the "West" into a cultural and industrial spectacle, we must admit that ordinary cowboy stories struggle to offer novelty. The "Western" genre has gradually entered a phase of deconstruction and reconstruction.
On one hand, we are seeing more and more anti-genre films emerge. For instance, the famous meme "First time getting hanged?" comes from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. This film consists of six stories, each filled with deconstructions of Western tales. For example, it spends a long time portraying the image of a sharpshooter with perfect accuracy, only to have him unceremoniously shot in the head just as he displays his prowess and charm, delivering a dose of dark humor.
On the other hand, more and more works blending Western themes with other genres are emerging. For example, Westworld is a fusion of "Sci-Fi" and "Western," while Evil West blends "Western" with the fantasy theme of "Vampires."
Still from Westworld
When a genre enters a phase of deconstruction and reconstruction, its core is continuously distilled into concepts and elements, receiving new interpretations. Many classic genres and concepts have undergone this process. For example, "Jianghu" was originally a concept from Wuxia films, but in subsequent developments, it also became synonymous with Hong Kong gangster films. This is because it points to interpersonal conflicts, fame and fortune, and being swept along by circumstances beyond one's control.
What makes the Western genre interesting is its highly compatible core. Essentially, it describes not just stories of cowboys, deserts, and tumbleweeds, but stories of "the frontier of civilization and the imbalance of order."
In the Guns of Eschaton trailer, the opening line states, "The world is marching toward destruction, but the law remains, and everyone has their place." This points to the Western genre's obsession with the "spirit of the law."
The Western stories in people's minds are often about "people struggling to maintain order in a world sliding into chaos." Thus, in Western tales, we find a contradictory phenomenon where bounty hunters and murderers exist in an equivalent ecological balance. In a world full of shootings, chaos, and bandits, people heavily emphasize law and faith—because law and faith represent human order and divine order.
Western stories often feature a small town, typically guarded by a sheriff carrying a shotgun and wearing a cowboy hat. The town contrasts sharply with the chaotic wilderness. Compared to the wilds filled with cultists, bandits, fugitives, and Native Americans, the town represents the place where order still exists in the story.
But looking back at the sheriff's shotgun, we realize that what maintains this order is guns and executions, i.e., "violence." And order maintained by violence is often fragile; once stronger violence appears, such as gangs of bandits, this order is destroyed. Therefore, Western stories represent not just a "geographical frontier of civilization," but also a "frontier of order."
Stories born from such fringe environments naturally have ample room for narrative development.
Because "disordered fringe environments" are created by high-pressure survival conditions resulting from both resource scarcity and cultural factors. In such "high-pressure environments," human interactions become extreme, amplifying many issues. You can use it to explore eternal human topics, or extend it by blending with other compatible elements to form new stories. In fact, you don't even need to blend anything; if you just shift the visual elements, you'll find that the West itself is a natural "wasteland."
And Viktor Antonov, the art director for this title, has always enjoyed depicting worlds like this.
In his previous representative works, we often see human civilization on the brink of collapse.
In the 20th-anniversary documentary for Half-Life 2, he discussed how the team's shared vision when designing City 17 was to create a "George Orwell-style" city under authoritarian rule. Unlike the West, this is high pressure created by civilized order itself. But they didn't stop there; they introduced an invasion of external violence into this environment, causing the order to collapse and layering on additional pressure. This approach created City 17 and the unique aesthetic charm of Half-Life 2—a cold, gloomy, and dilapidated atmosphere akin to Soviet aesthetics, forever looming over this world.
In Dishonored, this sense of decay was rendered even more grim. With authoritarian power hanging overhead, the Tower's eye watching everyone, police committing atrocities below, plague running rampant, doctors conducting human experiments—in this world shrouded in whale oil grime, order is dying. All that remains alive are the roars of the whale oil factories and the industrial smog blanketing the world.
This is a crucial aspect of Viktor Antonov's aesthetics—"constructing a world where Everythinggj is rotting," a world where civilization is lingering on its last breath.
Visually, Guns of Eschaton differs significantly from the Western themes we've seen before. It resembles a world where the original fragile order has completely rotted away. Skulls hanging on wooden stakes, haphazardly placed tombstones and crosses, bodies dangling from gallows—Everythinggj is dying.
But besides those twisted, mutated monsters, dilapidated towns, and stranded wrecked ships, we can also see glimpses of a city with a complete industrial system, its factory chimneys constantly emitting thick smoke, and within the city stands a massive, pure white, and magnificent cathedral.
We can easily infer the world's plight from these associations, just as Viktor Antonov loves to depict: after the original order collapses, a new authoritarian power emerges amidst the chaos, but this new power cannot stop the world from rotting.
Interestingly, Viktor Antonov found a great entry point within the Western genre.
As mentioned earlier, Western stories often reinforce fantasies of order through law and faith, representing human order and divine order. In the world-building of Guns of Eschaton, Viktor Antonov uses his expertise in architecture and city design to depict a worldview where these two orders are unified after undergoing extreme development under divine influence.
The only building kept pristine white in the dilapidated town is the church, while the city roaring with factories is clustered around towering cathedrals. Standing outside the doors of both are bounty hunters with guns ready—this is a rather magical realist "Western Apocalypse."
It goes without saying that when the world setting reaches this point, compatibility with "Soulslike" mechanics becomes a natural progression.
Because what "Soulslike games" love to express is precisely this kind of world.
However, it would be inaccurate to say that Guns of Eschaton only touches on "Soulslike" aesthetically. Although "Soulslike games" often set their stage in apocalyptic worlds on the verge of collapse, influenced by FROM SOFTWARE, the creators of the genre, one fundamental reason for choosing such worlds is the self-consistent design philosophy pursued by "Soulslike games," where aesthetics and gameplay merge. Visuals must extend the gameplay, and gameplay must be expressed through aesthetics. A world on the brink of collapse better supports the high-pressure gameplay of these titles.
This is actually the root cause of the contradiction players feel towards Guns of Eschaton, or any work combining "FPS" and "Soulslike"—gameplay incompatibility.
The general impression of "Soulslike games" is high difficulty, death, rolling, and clumsy movements, so people often associate "Soulslike" with melee combat. Because most modern FPS games design in the opposite direction, emphasizing speed, satisfaction, firepower suppression, and one-shot headshots.
This difference in impression makes "FPS" and "Soulslike" seem completely misaligned in the public perception.
But this misalignment is entirely within the scope of what gameplay design can resolve, because "melee combat" is not the core of "Soulslike game" combat mechanics; "risk management under high pressure" is. Almost every discussion of outstanding "Soulslike" works requires significant effort to analyze how combat resources cycle within the gameplay. For example, if we discuss the Nioh series, we could spend three episodes just explaining the Ki Pulse system.
The reason we often associate "Soulslike" with melee combat is also due to the core theme of "risk management under high pressure." Melee combat involves facing much greater risks than ranged combat—this also explains why players favor oversized weapons in "Soulslike" games; besides looking cool, they offer safety and peace of mind.
Therefore, if gameplay design leans in this direction, "FPS" certainly has the potential to combine with "Soulslike." Strangely enough, when this direction emerged, the "Western" theme appeared as if it were meant to be there all along.
Nothing suits "Soulslike" better than "Western guns."
The cultural characteristics of the "West" naturally steer weapon design in this genre toward "duels." It's hard to imagine an MP4 appearing in a sunset showdown on a main street between cowboys. The firearms featured in "Western" themes are shotguns, revolvers, and bolt-action rifles.
The common characteristic of these firearms is high power and slow pace, creating a high-density decision-making experience where every shot requires weighing the risks of the next.
You can see this kind of experience in other current titles, such as Hunt: Showdown 1896. In Hunt: Showdown 1896, the core player-versus-player engagement isn't about the reaction speed, precision, or recoil control emphasized in traditional FPS games. Instead, it focuses on capturing environmental information, understanding terrain, knowing enemy capabilities, and relying on experience. It involves constant risk management based on your position and available resources, making choices and judgments to ultimately complete the hunt.
To capture the flavor of gunfights in the "Western" genre, this gameplay design is a natural direction. And this direction clearly possesses the foundation for merging with "Soulslike" combat design—simply lengthen the combat rounds and emphasize risk management.
Just as demonstrated in the Guns of Eschaton trailer.
In the trailer, the confrontations shown in Guns of Eschaton don't emphasize shooting skill as much as they repeatedly highlight the importance of information.
Each enemy shown in the trailer has clearly designed visual weak points, and their movement patterns are exaggerated in amplitude. During combat, the protagonist also makes obvious strategic choices, specifically targeting enemies' weak spots to gain an advantage. In the boss fight footage, a UI indicator appears below the boss's health bar to mark how many times the player has hit weak points.
The final piece completing this gameplay loop is the "Hunting Journal" that occasionally appears in the protagonist's hands. Each page records a monster's background, behavior patterns, precautions, and weak points.
The combat gameplay guided by these combined designs should be a system that emphasizes the player's learning ability, experience, and judgment. Combat rounds will constantly shift during specific processes, requiring players to control the timing of attacks rather than grinding hip-fire skills—
In short, it's a very "Soulslike" combat template.
This is what makes Guns of Eschaton so anticipated.
If they merely slapped Viktor Antonov's name on it as a gimmick, hastily made a "Soulslike game," impulsively added some "FPS" innovations, and injected a bit of "Western" pop culture elements, it would only result in a mediocre work.
But in the content shown by Guns of Eschaton, "Western," "Soulslike," and "FPS" actually fit together quite tightly. From conceptual art design to gameplay mechanics, they have clearly carefully considered the compatibility between these tags and how they should be integrated.
By deconstructing and reconstructing "Western" elements, they have built an apocalyptic world with a strong Viktor Antonov personal style, which is also a high-pressure world well-suited for "Soulslike" gameplay. Furthermore, the cultural characteristics of the "West" itself serve as a bridge between "Soulslike" and "FPS," making it possible for these two seemingly incompatible genres to truly merge.
Ultimately, the quality presented by Guns of Eschaton so far aligns well with our imagination of excellent "Soulslike games"—self-consistent and complete.
Although we can currently only see what's shown in the trailer, with the game's strong aesthetic style being the only thing we can directly perceive, and without having actually played any content, our anticipation for this work remains just that—anticipation.
On one hand, distinct aesthetics are one of the qualities valued in "Soulslike works." On the other hand, it seems we won't have to wait long to see the true form of this game.
At the upcoming BiliBili World event in Shanghai this July, Guns of Eschaton will offer the game's first global public demo. If you're interested in the specific gameplay, feel free to visit the site to try it out.
Additionally, the game's Steam page is now live. If you want to keep up with the latest news, feel free to add it to your wishlist.
Guns of Eschaton Steam Page Link >>>
