Redfall

Vampires took control and Redfall City fell

The majestic sun disk turned dark black, the waves receded and the seas parted, and the humans fell to the mercy of those with long claws who thirsted for blood red. However, despair has no place in Redfall, and where there is will, life responds. The counter-battle was launched to regain control of the city from the clutches of the forces of evil and their followers, and after hours and hours we have delved into the depths of Redfall, here is our final review.

Redfall between ambition and reality

Redfall is a first-person cooperative game for up to 4 players from the talented development team Arkane Austin, which previously developed Prey, which remains one of the masterpieces of the gaming world despite its lack of commercial success and perhaps that fate led the studio to a completely different one Attempt. In fact, it seems to us that Redfall originally wanted to be a game based on collecting loot (or a so-called looter shooter) always connected to the network, and after a number of games in this direction failed, a came up To do this, try changing direction. Of course, changes cannot be effective once the fundamentals and ideas of the game are in place.

In the beginning, the game is given a burden and responsibility that it doesn’t live up to, for example being the first or one of the first completely exclusive games for the new generation Xbox Series, or generally high demands on graphics and technology due to the price of the game ( $70). Although in reality Redfall is not a game that any platform can carry on its shoulders, its release was unfortunately accompanied by a wave of negativity and long waits from the audience of the Xbox platform until it became more of a savior, especially after 2022 a barren year for Xbox in terms of… Firstly, we would have been very happy if the game had achieved its technical goals, but unfortunately this was not achieved.

The storytelling is a bright spot, but it could have been better

Let’s start by highlighting the storytelling in Redfall, which is a strength of Arkane games, which have always been good at world-building. Despite everything, we really felt the studio’s brilliance in this regard: the city is believable with its various locations such as the hospital, theater, the church and the fire station. The scattered paper cutouts reveal the hidden secrets of the world and its inhabitants. There are also several scenes that reveal the stories of the residents of this troubled city and their final moments. Additionally, playable characters have backstories that justify their motivations and goals. There are no great characters in Redfall, but the development team has done an excellent job building the city with its suburbs and harbor, its landmarks and its history. With sadness in our hearts, we asked ourselves: What would it be like if Redfall was a purely single-player game? Couldn’t she have used this structure for clever and interesting storytelling?

How to play and how Redfall collapses

The player must complete basic missions to progress through the story, and there are sub-activities including side missions that can usually be obtained in safe houses, in addition to the ability to attack vampire lairs on the map to reduce their influence. Vampire Nests perhaps could have provided experiences for raids that ended with a main vampire battle, or that was the original intention, but in their current form they are very limited and paltry, offering nothing to the overall experience as they are limited to destroying the traverse Core of the cave and get some loot. Then you go outside and there are just a few vampires there.

Our first experience with the game with the demo version months ago was very encouraging. In less than two hours of play, we encountered a number of different vampires with different abilities, including the Guardian, a vampire who drains the player’s blood from a distance, the powerful vampire Rook. At the time, the idea was that the finished game could hide many other wonderful ideas or different ways to counter them, and we liked the idea of ​​requiring ultraviolet rays to eliminate the vampire or stab him through the heart with a wooden stake. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case in the final version of the game. For the most part, these are the types of vampires with whom we spent more than 20 hours of play in the final version, and it even became very monotonous and boring time.

The art direction is good, but the technical level is mediocre

Despite the aesthetics of the art direction in the game Redfall, which beautifully presents the dark character of the city and incorporates prominent artistic inspirations from many films and novels, the technical aspect disappoints the game and the artistic aesthetics. The character models, for example, look like they come straight from the Xbox 360 era. Yes, they really are that bad. The game also doesn’t feature any film or story clips, instead making do with animations with voice acting to tell the story. Even the graphics of the enemies and vampires appear technically mediocre and the polygonal structures appear inferior. The previous game we played was Dead Island 2, which looks much better than Redfall. At least the sound effects are good, as are the music and voice acting.

Is Redfall really a disaster game? Not really, it is a completely incomplete game and needs noticeable improvement in many aspects, especially artificial intelligence, and perhaps the technical vision of the game was not implemented as desired.

Despite it? This game is still fun and it still has Studio Arkane’s DNA. This is ultimately the advantage of a service like Xbox Game Pass. No matter whether the rating of the game is very low or not, if you really want to try it out, the subscription can easily get you by without the big sum of money ($70), right? Redfall certainly isn’t the huge exclusive that Xbox fans wanted, but it wasn’t able to carry that responsibility even when it released flawlessly.

We tested the game on PC after receiving it from the publisher before release