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Redfallen on Face
Redfall was recently released and the results… aren’t great.
Developed by Arkane Studios Austin, the same developers behind Dishonored and Prey, Redfall is a $70 game (also on Game Pass) pitched as an open-world, story-driven, action-shooter. The premise is that some vampires showed up in town of Redfall, and you are one of four characters with special powers that can do something about it.
The problem is that the game is terrible. And it is terrible for a lot of fundamental reasons. You may or may not have heard already about the braindead AI or the incredibly lazy art assets. Those are embarrassing corners cut that can be glued back together – update the AI, add some shaders to the chimney, ensure each area has different dead body models.
What cannot be fixed is the overall direction of the game and the utter destruction of any semblance of “immersive sim” the studio is known for.
The “open-world” in Redfall is basically dead. The enemies you face are vampires, a cult of humans working with the vampires, and more humans working with a corporation that attacks everyone on sight. However, the game itself is structured like a looter-shooter: you gain XP to level up and gain skill points to upgrade your powers, and you can loot more powerful guns from drops or in certain containers. So things play out like Borderlands… minus the inventive weapons, the vehicles, the enemy variety, the humor, or simple enemy density.
It is “immersive” that there are no NPCs running around outside, because vampires. It is also “immersive” that there aren’t zombies or a more filler enemy type that you plow through. But the end result is that you spend a lot of time walking around an empty world where 99% of the buildings are boarded up, desperately seeking any gameplay, only to face the same two enemy types over and over.
Amusingly, Phil Spencer (head of Xbox) addressed this vision problem in his recent apology tour:
Spencer also addressed a common question: Why not delay Redfall until it’s ready? (The game was already delayed significantly in 2022.)
“There are quality issues and we’re working on those, but I think there’s a fundamental piece of feedback that we get that the game isn’t realizing the creative vision that it had for its players,” Spencer said. “That doesn’t feel like a Hey, just delay it [situation]. That feels like the game had a goal to do one thing and when players are actually playing they’re not feeling that thing, that creative execution of the team.”
Polygon
Ouch.
Phil does say that they are committed to continue working on improving the game, but I have no idea how they imagine that will go. If they are going for a Borderlands vibe, they are going to need more enemies, like vampire dogs, necromancers, or anything else that might fit the “vision.” What they got right now doesn’t work. Like there is supposed to be a spooky vibe, but all the game systems revolve around you farming XP and getting better guns to farm XP faster. And while you can sort of handwave away the human body count, at a certain point the sheer number of vampires you kill as a matter of course gets ridiculous.
When it comes to game vision pivots, Fallout 76 successfully went from no NPCs to a more traditional Fallout NPC experience because the systems were already there. You technically already talked to robots and got quests and the game world supported all of that. It’s hard to imagine Redfall changing in this way. It’s not like Arkane can suddenly start leveraging their Dishonored or Prey experience, and fully committing to the Borderlands direction would make it even more generic than it already is.
Redfall was and is simply a bad idea.
In An Age 
Microsoft Fallout
May 9
Posted by Azuriel
About a week or so ago, the rumor mill was a-churnin’ about how the surprising popularity of the Fallout TV show – 65 million viewers in 16 days! – was causing Xbox execs heads to extend (pardon my Seuss). Even Todd Howard was saying Bethesda wants to “find ways to increase our output, because we don’t want to wait that long either.” Which is funny, considering that it is Bethesda’s own metered cadence which will ensure that Fallout 5 is not released until the 2030s; Elder Scrolls 6 is next in line after the tepid Starfield, with Fallout 5 not coming out until, presumably, the ending of the TV series.
Welp, cue that monkey paw finger-curl:
A further quote from Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, says:
Cruel irony abounds, considering a year ago Matt Booty said Microsoft has no plans to shut down Arkane Austin “right now,” after the disastrous Redfall launch. And I guess he was technically accurate. There are fewer charitable interpretations for axing Tango Gameworkers though, considering the effusive praise Hi-Fi Rush received from Microsoft brass – “Hi-Fi RUSH was a break out hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release.” Certainly seems like they could have been happier after all.
I don’t want to undersell the sad reality of thousands of game devs losing their jobs. That shit sucks.
…however. In the specific case of Arkane Austin, I have to wonder if there is the barest glimmer of a silver lining. For one thing, it is worth pointing out that no one at Arkane actually wanted to develop Redfall. It was a studio known for immersive sims, and Redfall wasn’t that. In fact, that same report stated that 70% of the team members who worked on Prey left the company during Redfall development. So, really, Microsoft is kinda putting the zombie studio out of its misery.
Oh, but know what might be an interesting franchise for an immersive sim? Fallout. That is wild-ass speculation on my part, and contradictory besides considering most of the immersive sim devs already left. But. BUT! Can you imagine? Of course, it would probably be best (and poetic besides) for Obsidian to take up the mantle of Fallout again, especially considering both studios are under the same (reaving) Microsoft umbrella. Unfortunately, Obsidian is releasing Avowed this year and they are also working on The Outer Worlds 2 for some reason. Seriously though, was anyone asking for that?
Alas, we will have to see how things shake out. Just… goddamn, could someone give me more Fallout?
Posted in Commentary
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Tags: Arkane Studios Austin, Cruel & Usual, Fallout, Fallout TV, Layoffs, Microsoft