Redfall fails to capture the iconic horror of Stephen King

Redfall stands in the towering, Count Orlok-shaped shadow of more than a century of popular vampire fiction — especially, because of its small-town setting, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot The heavily King-indebted television series Midnight Mass. It’s also the most recent game to come from Arkane Studios, a developer whose portfolio includes the Honored series, PreyThen, Deathloop. It’s a storied lineage to live up to — one whose heights RedfallConsistently fails to achieve.

You can also find out more about the following: RedfallPlayers must take back an entire island that has been overrun with vampires. They will need to drive bullets into the heart of the bloodthirsty creatures and their worshipers, while also trying to discover how the monsters came to be in power. The game’s narrative is unevenly delivered, presented mostly through brief, stilted, pre-mission cutscenes and bits of in-universe text that can be easily missed while chatting with a co-op partner or avoiding a cultist’s gunfire. Its roots in King’s novel, Arkane’s immersive sim philosophy, and vampire fiction in general are buried beneath layers of distraction, but they do exist. Unfortunately, the signs of that inspiration don’t so much rise dramatically from the ground as wiggle a finger from the dirt.

Image: Arkane Austin/Bethesda Softworks

You can also Like Honored, RedfallThe story is about the scrappy, but effective revolution of a few remaining holdouts against totalitarian oppression. They use their cleverness to take down their oppressive systems. In the same way as in Salem’s LotA small town setting is ideal. Redfall to create a microcosm of society — American society, in both cases — and position its vampires as a powerful elite whose malignant influence takes hold of a population too naïve or frightened to resist.

You can also find out more about the following: Honored — and, to a lesser extent, 2021’s Deathloop — assassins fought back against a fictional status quo through game design that prioritized clever thinking and subterfuge over brute force. Even the most aggressive HonoredPlayer has to hide in the shadows at times and devise plans to defeat an enemy that is more powerful. Redfall’s heroes are also battling overwhelming odds, but their supernatural powers, ever-growing arsenal of firearms, and the game’s dimwitted enemies position the rebels less as bedraggled freedom fighters than as a Red DawnThe militia retaliated with resources nearly as equal.

Even though this is the case, RedfallIt is clear that the game tries to convey a feeling of revenge for an underdog, similar to games featuring a lone assassin destroying a fantasy state. To look at the novel King where a group of citizens from a small town thwarts a vampire’s homicidal plot, it is clear that this game aims to evoke the same feeling of underdog comeuppance as games featuring solo assassins.

Image: Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks

As described by director Harvey Smith in an interview with Eurogamer, Arkane’s intent with RedfallIt was a way to express the parasitic character of the richest members of society (and their businesses). The aristocrats were also parasitic. HonoredLiving in luxury, while lower class suffers from disease and poverty. Redfall’s vampires are twisted mutations. They’re born from the exploitative goals of a Theranos-style biotech start-up and the privileged few who see personal opportunity in its innovations. As one character puts it when describing the game’s vampires: “When they had everything, they wanted more.”

Cults devoted to the vampire’s worship operate as foot soldiers for their new rulers, policing the town of Redfall by shooting at those who, like the player, attempt to resist their masters’ control. It spreads through the use of individual flaws in key characters of the town. The startup preys on greed, fear, or selfishness of these individuals until healthcare and addiction treatments are under its control. The vampires — tall, spindly creatures who physically resembled an insectile, invasive species of predators — target the average person’s desperation to survive the takeover. They do so having already taken advantage of key community figures’ desire for longer life, and the willingness to chase that longevity at the expense of others. They use desperate patients, family members, and trusted friends to reach their ends.

RedfallThe core terror is not in its physical monsters but rather in their all too human actions.

A healthy suspicion of authority runs throughout Arkane’s past work, from the perverse spectacle of feasts laid upon gilded tables in Honored” Deathloop’s filthy slums, to the administrative trickery of Prey’s sci-fi horror setting. It’s the same suspicion that runs through Salem’s LotIt’s also evident in, where heroes ignore official channels when combating the vampire threat. It’s also apparent in Midnight MassIn, a local revered church is used as a gateway to a monstrous epidemic. In general, vampire fiction offers many dramatic chances to criticize structures of power.

Image: Arkane Austin/Bethesda Softworks

In King’s novel, the vampires are memorably terrifying — a nearly omnipotent threat. In Arkane’s past games, the enemy leaders were often equally dangerous, made to seem enormously powerful through design that saw them sheltered by ranks of intelligent guards and labyrinthine, ultra-secure headquarters. Both times, the players had to plan and think carefully before they attacked. There was an emphasis on stealth gameplay in Arkane’s case, and a description of grassroots insurrection in Salem’s Lot This reinforced the fact that those who were trying to overthrow authority had a very difficult time. This isn’t the case in Redfall, and, as a result, its narrative’s intent is undermined. They are the only enemies that can be killed with a shotgun. Horror media, and Arkane’s past games, both showed how to convey a sense of pervasive menace — but the studio was unable to emulate it this time around.

Redfall doesn’t do enough to center its best qualities, putting its plot too far in the background of a dull open-world shooter. But it’s also not a failed deviation from the tenets of either the vampire stories that influenced it or the Arkane games that preceded its release. It’s better to see its flaws as missteps in design — experimentations with a structure that doesn’t serve the strengths of its storytelling — than a complete departure from what worked in its prior games, or what made some of pop culture’s best known vampire fiction endure over time.