With Dishonored games, Prey, and Deathloop, Arkane has a pretty solid track record for himself. But the problem with a good track record is that it, in turn, creates high expectations. People know what they’re getting into when they load up an Arkane game, so there’s a lot of pressure on the studio’s latest game, Redfall, to meet and exceed those high expectations.
We recently had the opportunity to travel to Zenimax’s London headquarters to meet some of the team working on the game and check out 90 minutes of unblocked Redfall gameplay. During this time, there’s a major story objective to complete, but there’s no need to complete it, and we’re left to roam the open world Arkane has created as we see fit.
Before jumping into the game, we got a quick tip from game designer Harvey Smith, who let us know that while a lot of the marketing on Redfall points to it being a co-op experience at its best, Arkane also puts a lot of effort into making sure the solo The gaming experience is also great.
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Personally, I never doubted that Arkane could make Redfall an experience that could be played well alone. After Dishonored, Prey, and Deathloop, the studio has pretty much proven that single-player games are what it does best. Again, it makes this clear in Redfall.
I can only speak for Redfall’s single-player experience, but in the 90 minutes I got (as best I could), the experience was exactly what you’d expect from an Arkane game. The level design remains flawless, even with Redfall’s sprawling open world. You can pretty much think of any way to approach enemies and objectives, with a strong sense of verticality, as you gain excellent vantage points to snipe vampires, or just sneak past them.
There’s also a lot to do in Redfall’s open world. Running around the map, I found myself stumbled across random side quests that let you help surviving townspeople, or learn more about the mystery behind turning many of the local residents into vampires. Speaking of Nightcrawlers, there are also plenty of ways to combat their influence on Redfall. From entering vampire lairs, which will take you to alternate dimensions filled with super-powered versions of vampires, to securing new safe houses that serve as fast travel points and places to resupply, there are plenty of options for you to fight back against the game’s main enemies. Vampire lairs in particular seem to have a lot of potential, since they basically offer their own mini-quests.
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From the level design and the things that can be done in the map, Redfall believes that variety is really the spice of life. The same goes for the characters, who each have their own intricate backstories and skill trees that you’ll flesh out as you play. Unlike other role shooters like Borderlands, you’re not limited to one main skill in Redfall, and each survivor has multiple ways to navigate the map and kill enemies. Jacob, the character we go with, can use his magic bird to seek out enemies, hide himself to make sneaking and running away much easier, and whip out his mind-blocking sniper rifle to deal a ton of damage.
There’s a lot going on in Redfall. Before we sat down to play, Harvey Smith described the game as “trying to drink from a fire hose,” and while I did see the connection when I first ran around the map, it did It feels like you can master Redfall fairly easily, especially if you’ve delved into Arkane games before. In fact, Redfall can feel a little too much like another Arkane game, especially when played alone. The question, though, is whether that’s enough for the studio to truly wow audiences again.
Despite its level design, character options, and quite a few things to do, there’s a slight sense that Redfall isn’t living up to its potential. Maybe because there wasn’t a chance to see the co-op experience, it seemed critical. Single-player is something that Arkane doesn’t throw aside in Redfall, and that’s important, but without the chance to roam around town with a few allies, it feels like the experience isn’t fully lived. Also, while the story segments we did get a peek at did a decent job of creating plenty of intrigue, it also felt a bit awkward and didn’t make the playable characters feel directly tied to the plot like Arkane’s other games.
The same goes for combat, which feels too simple. I by no means claim to be the best gamer around, but I still found myself absolutely crushing enemies in Redfall. Even Rook—the superpowered vampire that appears when you kill enough special vampires or draw the attention of their god—is eventually brought down only by bullet shots and a stake in the heart. Rather than the fact that the vampires really felt they were dangerous enough to take over the town, I found myself wondering how the community didn’t bite back overnight. This might just be pedantic criticism, though, as the difficulty of the preview campaign could have been changed, or the single-player game is much easier.
Aside from mentioning some minor performance issues, there isn’t much to say about Redfall. From the looks of it, it’s another strong Arkane game, but whether it’s the expectations created by the studio’s past success, or the hype built by multiple delays, Redfall seems to be missing something special that would make it a A must-play at launch.
