At a time when the video game industry could use some good news, former Arkane Austin head Harvey Smith and longtime collaborator Ben Horne have formed Black Pony Immersive, a studio focused on building narrative-rich first-person action RPGs. This is the genre Smith is known for, as the designer of the original Deus Ex and co-head of the Dishonored series. Horne has worked with Smith for eight years, recently as production director of Redfall at Arkane Austin. Additionally, Redfall, Prey and Dishonored creative director Ricardo Bare is on board as design director of Black Pony Immersive. The new studio is staffed with veterans from Insomniac, Epic, Avalanche and Volition studios, and it's based in Austin, Texas, with remote workers tagging in from across the United States.

Although Deathloop has been well received by critics and fans, the game is far from perfect. It has been criticized for a handful of issues, from its lack of accessibility options to the problems plaguing the PC version. Many fans have been pointing out just how "dumb" the game's AI is, especially for the bullet-fodder enemies that are the Eternalists. This isn't Arkane Studios' first time working on an immersive sim, so some fans are disappointed at how simple the AI is. However, there's one key to the game's AI that it seems like a lot of criticism is missing: despite how dumb they are, the Eternalists are nothing if not consistent.

Weird West isn't a horror game, but it has at least one narrative arc involving cannibalism. In some scenes, citizens in quaint Old West towns lay dead in the streets for mysterious reasons. In others, red-soaked pentagrams are etched into the dirt, surrounded by animal bones. A large man wearing a pig's head as his own walks slowly through the dust, shirtless and splattered with blood. Miles away, in a flooded cavern, a 20-foot-tall monster with sleek black skin, no eyes and a grinning maw of shark teeth lurches forward for the kill.

I stayed perfectly still after they chased me into the air vent. I hadn't heard anything for several minutes. Surely they'd left by now. Crawling out of my hiding spot, I found myself face to face with one of my pursuers. He started shouting, but he remained locked in place, unable to move at all.