Tomi on 26/5/2023 at 18:54
I didn't want to jump aboard the hate train, because that's always a stupid way to ruin any experience for yourself, but having played Redfall on my Xbox lately (it's on the Game Pass so it's "free"), I have to admit that all these people do have a point. Redfall isn't very good. It's not terrible either, to be honest. It's just not very good in any way. The problem seems to be that Redfall doesn't even know what kind of a game it wants to be.
As a pure FPS it fails to hit the mark, because the gunplay just isn't that great. It's somewhat decent, but I feel like it could be so much more fun. All the guns lack any kind of 'oomph' and the enemies don't react in a satisfying way when they're hit. It's not a stealth game either, because even by Arkane standards, the stealth is very simple - at times even sort of annoying, actually! I'm playing with the character that has sort of a invisibilty skill, and the way how I play this game is that I run towards the objective marker, wait until the enemies go "huh?! who goes there?!", then I hit the invisibility button and I either kill everyone while I'm invisible, or do whatever I need to do and get out. The enemy AI really is that terrible. I know that fun AI isn't the same as the most intelligent AI, but we're almost talking about Wolfenstein 3D level of AI here. The enemies don't seem to care when I kill their comrades right in front of them, and their vision and hearing seems to be so bad that "stealth" really is way too easy. And when they occasionally do detect the player, the poor things often seem to choose the shortest route to their deaths.
Redfall could work as a survival game, but it's not that either. Death has no real consequences, and you'll never run out of ammo or anything. There's no feeling of danger anywhere. Collecting all the "survival" stuff lying around becomes sort of pointless once you realise that there's no reason to do that. The story isn't bad, but it doesn't seem interesting enough to carry the game on its back. The quests (particularly the side quests) could be copied straight off some free-to-play MMO. "Can you fetch my grandmother's necklace? I'm not brave enough but you look like a tough guy. It's very important to me." "Can you place this old pocketwatch on my father's grave? It would mean everything to me." The main quests may be a little bit more complicated, but their execution isn't exactly very imaginative either...
So why am I even playing this game? To be honest, at this point I just want to get it over with, but every now and then Redfall manages to get the tense atmosphere just right. I also really like the locations and the gameworld itself. Exploring everything for the first time is exciting, but pretty soon you'll realise that there's nothing to do in that world - it's just an empty shell for something that could have been good. I think there might be some fun to be had in co-op, but as a single player game Redfall just isn't worth it.
Tomi on 26/5/2023 at 19:03
Inline Image:
https://i.ibb.co/WVwtHvd/Redfall.pngHere's a good example of the AI in Redfall. These well-trained supersoldiers won't know what's going to hit them in a couple of seconds. That's five quick knockouts in a row, and none of them are going to suspect anything! They should ban those noise-cancelling headphones from the military personnel.
Also, see the conveniently placed oil stains if you prefer playing with the fire instead... (I think that all the environmental hazards in Redfall are actually a bigger threat than the vampires!)
henke on 1/6/2023 at 11:46
Jason Schreier has spoken to some of the devs behind Redfall and dug into (
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-01/arcane-s-redfall-misfire-for-xbox-panned-after-7-5-billion-microsoft-deal?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTY4NTYxODIzNywiZXhwIjoxNjg2MjIzMDM3LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJSVktNS1VEV1gyUFMwMSIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJCMUVBQkI5NjQ2QUM0REZFQTJBRkI4MjI1MzgyQTJFQSJ9.eeX5BYdsJhqgSi3aqDZTZUVYmm92ZItcoOCXfP7-j8Q) the story of its development. We usually don't get this kinda post mortem this soon.
Some interesting bits:
Quote:
to the makers of Redfall, the mediocre reception was no big surprise. The project suffered from unclear direction, frequent attrition and a perennial lack of staff, according to more than a dozen people who worked on the game, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Quote:
Development of Redfall began in 2018. At the time, ZeniMax — the large, privately held owner of Bethesda Softworks — was looking to sell itself. Behind the scenes, the company was encouraging its studios to develop games that could generate revenue beyond the initial sales, a popular trend dubbed “games as a service,” which was taking off in the late 2010s thanks to lucrative hits like Overwatch and Fortnite.
According to people familiar with the process, ZeniMax was strongly urging developers at its subsidiaries to implement microtransactions — that is, recurring opportunities within games for players to spend real money, say, outfitting their characters. Although this wasn't an absolute mandate, several ZeniMax franchises such as Fallout, Doom and Wolfenstein would soon release new versions incorporating online multiplayer and monetization options.
At Arkane's headquarters in Austin, Harvey Smith and Ricardo Bare, respected industry veterans, were tapped to serve as co-directors of Redfall. Following the commercially unsuccessful release of its sci-fi shooter Prey a year earlier, leadership across the company wanted to make something more broadly appealing.
Quote:
Developers under Smith and Bare said the two leads were outwardly excited but as the project progressed failed to provide clear direction. Staff members said that, over time, they grew frustrated with management's frequently shifting references to other games, such as Far Cry and Borderlands, that left each department with varying ideas of what exactly they were making. Throughout the development, the fundamental tension between single-player and multiplayer design remained unresolved.
Quote:
Morale at Arkane suffered. Veteran workers who weren't interested in developing a multiplayer game left in droves. By the end of Redfall's development, roughly 70% of the Austin staff who had worked on Prey would no longer be at the company, according to people familiar as well as a Bloomberg analysis of LinkedIn and Prey's credits.
Quote:
For the first three years, Redfall had a significant microtransaction plan in place. Only in 2021, with “games as a service” growing more controversial among gamers, did Arkane finally scrap its unwieldy in-game monetization plans.
I still haven't played this thing. Planning on getting gamepass next month so I can play the new Amnesia, will probably give this a whirl, but I don't have much hope the game will ever be refined much beyond what it is at the moment. Seems like no one really had a strong idea of what this game should be, nor desire to make it. What a shame.
nicked on 1/6/2023 at 12:19
That all tallies. Asking Arkane to make a multiplayer live service game is like forcing the D&D nerds to take part in the school sports day. They don't want to be there, they're never going to be passionate and have the drive needed to be competitive in that space, and everyone just has a terrible time all round.
Aja on 1/6/2023 at 15:00
As always, the suits ruin everything.
Renault on 1/6/2023 at 15:13
Would have been nice if Arkane just stayed Arkane and not been bought by some giant entity, but oh well. Can't expect them to turn down a big fat check, I guess.
PigLick on 1/6/2023 at 15:25
Prey was so good, it's sad to think that Arkane had to dumb down stuff for mass appeal.
Jason Moyer on 1/6/2023 at 16:24
Quote Posted by Brethren
Would have been nice if Arkane just stayed Arkane and not been bought by some giant entity, but oh well. Can't expect them to turn down a big fat check, I guess.
Being bought by a large company gave us Dishonored, Prey, and Deathloop though.
Renault on 1/6/2023 at 16:33
Yeah, I guess it was more a reference to the Microsoft acquisition, which they didn't have any real control over.
