Redfall preview: Arkane’s open-world shooter is coming first half of 2022

If there’s one thing Harvey Smith wants you to take away from Redfall’s gameplay trailer shown at Sunday’s Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase, it’s that Arkane Studios Austin’s next game is not a Left 4 Dead-like.

“It should, unless I’m mistaken, it should put all the Left for Dead comparisons to rest,” Smith, the studio’s director, said in an interview on Monday.

Redfall looks more like Borderlands than any of the asymmetrical or PvE cooperative multiplayer games that have made a revival of Left 4 Dead’s gameplay loop over the past two years. This is mainly because it’s an open-world title (although, to a certain degree, so are L4D-likes such as Second Intinction). More importantly, the campaign is a completely solo-able experience, and no, you can’t bring along bot teammates, another important distinction.

It’s probably better to talk about RedfallIn Arkane’s other Arkane games, players can fight for the survival of a New England city that has been overrun by vamps. Redfall is the studio’s first open-world game; that’s where the Austin developers are stretching their legs, seeing if they can present Arkane’s distinctive visual style in a more open-ended format.

“We’ve always tried to be fairly non-judgmental about the different approaches,” Smith said. “Missions that are very bespoke, with wide linear paths to a location are obviously very strong, and that’s what we did with the Dishonored games. A game where there’s only really one big mission, in one big space, like Prey, that’s also a strong approach. Openness gives you new opportunities. So we were excited about that risk, we’re excited about the creative strengths that an open world offers.”

You can also level up your protagonists as you play through the game. This Arkane First is where Arkane titles such as Deathloop And Prey were led by one player-character. “Of all the games Arkane’s made, it may be true to say that Redfall is the most …” Smith began, searching for the words, “it’s the party game, right? The game allows you to play in stealth or creep mode, as well as absorbing the stories and readables. If I was a player, the first time I played, that’s the way I would do it from beginning to end. But it’s also a party game because, as soon as you add another character, those two characters are talking to each other. And it’s just meant to be fun in that sense.”

Grid View

Redfall’s four heroes were introduced when the game’s original announcement trailer capped off 2021’s Xbox and Bethesda show. There’s Jacob Boyer, a sniper type who showed up in Redfall on a contract with the private military corporation that employs him; Remi de la Rosa, a Coast Guard officer and engineer-controller type whose gadgets buff the team and shape the battlefield to their advantage; Devinder Crousley, a cryptozoologist who packs a powerful offensive toolkit with attendant tradeoffs; and Layla Ellison, “the telekinetic threat in student debt,” an all-rounder who adds psionic capabilities to her athleticism and firearm skill.

“You can use your powers against the very dynamic AI in ways that would come to expect from Arkane games,” Ricardo Bare, Redfall’s creative director, with credits on Dishonored and Prey. Layla’s psychokinetic powers can form a shield, or elevate teammates to higher ground by literally manifesting an elevator car. Jacob’s sniping abilities are aided by the “vampire eye” and “ghostly Raven” familiar he acquired after getting ambushed by undead.

Redfall It is compatible with Arkane’s other games because of its bizarre blend of metaphysical and supernatural abilities, as well as basic combat in the first person, however it differs in its atmosphere and antagonists. Redfall’s seaside setting reflects a Massachusetts beach hamlet full of shabby tourist traps and accommodations; it’s deliberately familiar, at least moreso than Dishonored’s strange steampunk whaling port or Prey’s space station.

“What if, instead of a fantasy land, it was a real place you might have visited?” Bare recalled, going back to the original discussions the team had, shortly after Prey Inaugurated in 2017. “Like a seaside resort town in New England, with liquor stores, and a dumpster in the alley, and wires over the street, and a historic museum. What if we turned Arkane’s powerful art and narrative focus on that?”

Image: Arkane Studios Austin/Bethesda Softworks

Bare joined his fellow antagonists at the vampire incursion. He was assisted by a strong vampire witch who causes the Sun to go into permanent darkness. Bare said that narrative trick wasn’t meant to avoid a dynamic day-night cycle (it’s still plenty bright when the eclipsed Sun is out) but more to make the vampires more involved and active during the game’s daytime, instead of contriving a dormant period that is less action-oriented.

“We definitely wanted to do a day-night cycle, and our tech team has the muscle to do it —kudos to them,” Bare said. “Our tech team put an inordinate amount of effort into a dynamic day-night cycle.” This covers game mechanisms like enemy and monster spawning, their relative strength (sunset is a dangerous time), and other features.

Bands of human suckaups help vampires out. These people have the ambition to become just as powerful, and perhaps even more dramatic, than their idols. Vampires will set up “psychic nests” over in-world landmarks, where players can either battle the threat in Redfall proper or venture into a psychic portal, which distorts the location and ramps up the opposition, to take out the nest’s “heart” and get rid of the menace. One path is easier to control and provides more grinding opportunities, but it’s better for immediate, short-term results. Redfall’s world and driving the story to its endgame.

Redfall It was initially expected that it would be in the year 2000, but Bethesda Softworks announced its existence and Starfield, Bethesda Game Studios’ newest RPG, would be delayed to 2023. Smith said Arkane Austin developers were “given a lot of latitude, a lot of freedom,” when they were assessing development milestones and whether the project was truly on course for the delivery window that had been promised.

“We understand that the best thing is to make a great game that people will remember and play for a long time, and talk about the way they still talk about DishonoredOder Prey,” Smith spoke. “Ricardo and I worked on Deus Ex together 20 years ago, you know, so if you do it right, it gets under their skin. They get it in their blood. That’s what we’re always trying to do; make a game that we think is meaningful, both for our time and for your time.”

When it arrives — which Microsoft said is in the next 12 months, in a blanket guarantee made during Sunday’s showcase — Redfall will launch on Windows PC and Xbox Series X. It’ll also be available day one on Game Pass.