Redfall Preview – First Details On How You Take Back The City

Arkane Studios may want to reprise the Dishonored series. However, Arkane Studios’ talented developers repeatedly showed that they might be more successful exploring other ventures. Prey and Deathloop support this theory with thunderous success, and the studio’s next experiment, Redfall, looks just as promising.

I recently sat down with Arkane Austin’s studio director, Harvey Smith, and co-creative director, Ricardo Bare, to learn what players can expect from this vampire-slaying experience.

“We’re taking on a giant creative challenge,” Smith says. “We want to hold onto Arkane’s core creative values while taking on an open-world game. It’ll still have the rich narrative design accompanying every square inch like we always do.”

Redfall, Massachusetts is the very first picture I have seen. This image clearly shows that storytelling is a strong focus. This island’s seabed is dry and there are scattered fishing boats on the sands, leading to buildings in colonial style. This all creates an illusion of a flourishing community. The city is dominated by an eclipsed sun. This effect was caused by dark magic applied to vampires who allow them to freely roam the streets and hunt for the living.

You must first choose your character before you begin investigating Redfall. Everyone has their own stories and each approach vampire-killing slightly differently. Layla Ellison was a biomedical engineers who signed up for a trial. She awoke with telekinetic power. Jacob Boyer, an ex-military Sharpshooter, prefers to hunt from the shadows. His ability to summon the spectral raven is unmatched. Remi de la Rosa assumes the role of combat engineer and is never alone, thanks to her robot friend Bribón. Devinder Crousley (a popular internet personality) is perhaps the strangest. He has traveled to Redfall and proved that vampires exist. He also brings Tesla-like weapons from his own creation to the conflict.

This allows them to level up and gain new skills. They also hunt for more weapons. True to all Arkane’s games, Redfall offers a single-player experience, but, in a first for Arkane, also supports four-player cooperative play. You and your friends can bring all four characters to the fight be the same if that’s how you want to play.

“Let’s imagine you and I select Devinder characters, and we squad up to play together,” Bare says. “By the time we’re 10 hours into the game, my Devinder probably is different than yours. I spent my skill points on different things and wear a firefighter costume.”

In order to advance the story, the players will need to complete missions. Redfall is made up of two large districts that each house a number of different neighborhoods and an active player base.

“We deliberately chose community houses,” Smith adds. “The first one is a firehouse.”

You can liberate an area by undertaking a special mission. This makes it easier to navigate. Taking territories also brings ramifications, but Smith and Bare wouldn’t reveal what they are.

In various gameplay clips set throughout the city’s streets and buildings, I see what all four characters are capable of and how Redfall’s conflicts encourage varying approaches, such as stealthy sniping from rooftops or alerting enemies to create a cluster for an electrical blast. They are science-based vampires and not romanticized as the romance they portray. The vampires float on their backs, move quickly and out of the hail of fire to get at you. One clip shows a pink-tinted rifle connecting with a vampire. Sparks fly off the body, and then explode in a torrent of fire, ash, and water. In another, one character cautiously calls out a “blood bag,” which is a vampire with giant, pulsating sacks of blood on its back. When the bags explode, the bloody scent instantly attracts vampiric hordes.

The visual design of the characters and environments is similar to Dishonored’s realistic yet subtly cartoony aesthetic. Although the themes are dark and the world is vibrant at night, they still have a lot of color. Every character can jump, run, sneak and climb. However, each one has its own traversal abilities. Layla has the ability to build an old-fashioned lift so she can reach higher places. Layla can bring up a friend. Devinder can also transfer power.

Arkane’s ability to flip genres and create innovative experiences is what makes Arkane so special. Redfall’s run-and-gun gameplay looks rote at first glance but quickly takes on a different vibe when the characters give us a taste of their wild abilities.

The 2022 Redfall deadline has been extended. Arkane now plans to be in the first half year of 2019. Smith seems to believe that they are getting closer to the finish line, despite uncertainty regarding the date. “We’re very clearly past our launch date,” he says with a laugh. “I don’t know what we can say on this, but we’re moving toward content lock. And after that, it’s just months and months of polish.”