Wild Bastards is a damn good time, a complex but fun strategy shooter that takes cues from its predecessor Void Bastards but mixes in a healthy dose of Wild West action with robots and finger guns. It’s one of the better shooters of the year, and it warms the ol’ tum tum that another Australian based studio, Blue Manchu, is behind its vibrant world.
Who better to discuss how Wild Bastards came to be and the inspirations that brought it to life than Creative Director Ben Lee, former Art Director for Void Bastards and fellow lover of UK band Muse.
WellPlayed: What was the inspiration behind switching from a traditional sci-fi shooter to a Western-inspired setting for Wild Bastards?
Ben Lee: It was largely my desire to do a whacked-out sci-fi version of Lucasart’s Outlaws, a game I have always had huge respect for in terms of presentation. It was aiming for an animated looking Spaghetti Western vibe and I think the visuals, music and gameplay all worked incredibly well. It also had a few groundbreaking ideas for an FPS of its time.
The second piece of inspiration is the music video for Knights of Cydonia by Muse. It had a great feel and a lot of the kind of throwback references that I enjoy.
WP: Granted, it’s still very much sci-fi centric compared to Void Bastards. Were there temptations to branch out further into full-blown western? Or was the plan to always maintain that sci-fi aspect?
BL: Regular Western was never on the cards. We wanted the design freedoms that a science-fantasy setting would afford us. On top of that, a realistic looking or feeling Western game would have us competing in an area that doesn’t really suit our studio game methodology.
WP: One of unique elements to your games so far is in its visual aesthetic. How important was it to maintain that style given the positive response to Void Bastards and were any specific changes made to broaden the approach?
BL: If you put them side by side, Void Bastards was a lot darker and was pushing hard to convince the player they were looking at a comic-book from the mid ‘80s.
Wild Bastards drops the comic book analogy to present a widescreen neon-drenched experience, more akin to traditional animation than comics. The enemy visual design was closer to a TV animated production, in order to allow us to produce so many more varied enemy types.
WP: What was the biggest lesson learnt from Void Bastard’s that you brought into Wild Bastards design?
BL: Something we tried hard to bring into Wild Bastards was the variety of different matchups to be made between outlaw weapons and abilities versus enemy behaviours and quirks. The enemies are much more complex behind the scenes than in Void Bastards. They duck, hop out of cover and relocate in ways that combo with their attacks that demand adaptation of outlaw teams and abilities. The key to the game is understanding which outlaws will stand the best chance of defeating a given enemy type.
WP: The dialogue between characters remains loaded with humour, though obviously cowboy centric. Did you face any challenges in writing each character interaction, given the unique slang and jargon Cowboy’s bring to the table, or was it a case of letting loose every possible term you could think of just for the fun of it?
BL: We were fortunate enough to have Jerry Holkins write the dialogue. He and I both have a love of pseudo-western patois, with my examples for him being the HBO show Deadwood and Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man. Jerry did an incredible job coming up with a lot of unique phrases particular to this universe. Mixing this all together with frontier American vernacular gave it the flavour we were looking for.
WP: What initial ideas, if any, didn’t pan out exactly as intended?
BL: Early in development we had just one huge overworld map to explore instead of the different planet maps of the final game. It was much more about uncovering locations and encounters as you explored. It had more in common with a strategic RPG than the dynamic, changing experience we wanted and the idea was abandoned altogether. Moving around the planet map has a few bits of DNA left over from this idea, but it became something entirely different.
WP: Were there any difficulties in crafting each character’s unique identity, both in visual appeal and gameplay style? Were any harder to balance than others?
BL: Honestly, not really. We approached the characters and their abilities somewhat independently.
I came up with a cast of aliens and robots, repressed and rebelling against a human establishment. Jon had ideas for the various attacks and central abilities of this set of outlaws, and then we kind of assigned the visual designs to each of the character’s game mechanics and tweaked them a bit from there.
WP: Given how many elements there are for players to keep track of, from tech trees to character relationships, were there any concerns during development that it would take away from the first person combat sequences, or visa-versa?
BL: I guess the biggest difference between Void Bastards and Wild Bastards is that the combat is broken out into its own arena style experience in Wild Bastards, instead of occurring sporadically or in cascades like Void Bastards.
Each of the more complex systems such as relationships and Ace selection are already dealt with by the time you get into a showdown, so they lend context and have tangible impacts without requiring any mental overhead during the showdown itself.
WP: Was anything left on the cutting room floor that you can share with us?
BL: The robot showgirl with the mind control gun.
WP: Were there any thoughts in bringing weapons and characters from Void Bastards across to Wild Bastards? Just for the fans, maybe.
BL: That didn’t really occur to us. We were setting out to make a new setting and world. There was an awful lot in that world to come up with, so there wasn’t really a consideration of easter eggs on my part at least. We kept part of the name, does that count?
WP: What’s next for the team? Wild Bastards DLC? Something new? A well earned vacation?
BL: The team has been diligently working on post-release fixes and we are cooking up new game ideas when we can squeeze in the time.
WP: Lastly, what was your proudest moment during development and/or launch of the game?
BL: Given that we started making this game in 2019 and what happened to us all between then and now, my proudest moment was simply getting it finished and released. I feel very fortunate that we were able to achieve this together during such a difficult period for the world.
WP: Thank you for your time.
BL: Thank you!
Both Wild Bastards and Void Bastards are available now across all your favourite platforms.
Known on the internet as Kartanym, Mark has been in and out of the gaming scene since what feels like forever, growing up on Nintendo and evolving through the advent of PC first person shooters, PlayStation and virtual reality. He'll try anything at least once and considers himself the one true king of Tetris by politely ignoring the world records.