Last year, the art director behind titans of visual design like Half-Life 2 and Dishonored, Viktor Antonov, died at the age of 53. Prior to his death, in 2022 he co-founded Eschatology Entertainment with Dmytro Kostiukevych, Fuad Kuliev and Boris Nikolaev, who were yet to announce their first game formally. But today it’s been revealed and it’s called Guns of Eschaton, the “world’s first soulslike FPS.”

Guns of Eschaton is set in a wild west inspired world, one that’s apparently dying, albeit with some fantastical, Soulsian elements. Very quickly, you can tell that Antonov has his fingerprints on the game. Despite being a western, there are some big, urban, industrial spaces and giant borderline brutalist buildings that loom in the distance you could easily picture in some of his previous works. That’s not to say it looks unoriginal. Grimdark wild west isn’t the most unique vibe in the world, but there are some snazzy looking beasties and baddies here, and some vibrant, stretching prairies. And oh lordy, those skyboxes look good enough to put on your wall.

Hard to comment on the gunplay, but they’re all obviously inspired by the type of firearms you’d find in 19th century America. There’s also an Ultra Kill blip where you shoot a coin into an enemy, which always looks cool as hell. The game’s Steam page notes that it is “not a fast-paced shooter where victory comes from reflexes alone. Every bullet matters. Every gun has its own character. Every monster has a weakness.” It goes as far as saying that you can’t rely on any instincts you have from other shooters, but obviously time will tell as to how true that is. You can also play the whole thing in solo, but there is an option for co-op throughout the whole thing, and it apparently offers PvP as well.

The setting does also seem to be quite literally America, specifically in the south, “now transformed into a haunted frontier of ruined settlements, mythic roads, impossible machines, monstrous factions, and historical figures caught between legend and damnation.” I’m curious to see how Guns of Eschaton deals with the obviously horrendous politics of the era. No release date attached to this one, so you’ll just have to wait until there’s some more news.