The idea is simple: the Broken Wine Bottle is a wine bottle that’s broken in such a way that the neck has become a makeshift handle for a crude knife. It’d be a lethal weapon that’s likely reusable in melee but definitely shatters upon being thrown. Possibly suspicious to carry/wield, though maybe onlookers just believe it’s trash.
Here’s the twist: all four variants of the existing wine bottle (Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, etc.) would break and become the Broken Wine Bottle after one non-lethal melee swing. This would turn wine bottles, otherwise unremarkable blunt melee weapons, into a unique hybrid of a non-lethal and lethal melee weapon that I think would be situational enough to be balanced.
It’d make a wine bottle the ideal weapon to bring into a room that’s occupied by one target and one non-target: just whack the non-target and stab/slash the target in a fluid combo that would feel incredibly satisfying to perform.
It may have some mild contract potential too, since “Broken Wine Bottle” as a kill condition would require players to essentially “craft” their weapon in the field by whacking some poor soul with the intact bottle first. And Mendoza is chock-full of wine bottles.
Some players were disappointed when the Pinot Noir was released as a challenge unlock, but I think this change could redeem it by giving it some novel functionality that isn’t found in other items.
Similar functionality could possibly be given to the Whiskey Bottle and Vodka Bottle, but I also think it would be just as intuitive for this functionality to only apply to the wine bottles since it could be rationalized that the others are simply sturdier than the fragile wine bottles.
Anyways, thanks for reading my bizarrely long post about broken bottles. lol