Black Hole Sun, won’t you come, and wash away the lame.
Redfall has certainly been an interesting game not only to play but to see the discourse around it consume social media. Developed by Arkane Austin, Redfall is the studio’s follow-up to 2017’s Prey, a game that certainly made them a household name and put them on the map for their expertise in crafting stunning immersive sims.
In the months leading up to Redfall’s release, there was still confusion on just what exactly this game even was. Many were convinced it was yet another Left 4 Dead clone and others were hopeful it would retain something similar to what Arkane itself was noted for. Eventually, it was revealed that Redfall was designed to be something more akin to Far Cry or The Division, and still maintain some immersive sim elements while offering a full four-player looter-shooter online experience. While later reports would illustrate a troubled development and various cuts to strip the game of its live-service elements, as well as the team hoping it would have been canceled, the resulting product that shipped feels unfinished to an insane degree.
My time with Redfall went from actually enjoying it to almost loathing it, settling somewhere in the middle but ultimately feeling extremely disappointed with it. While the game launching strictly in 30fps on Xbox Series consoles is certainly a downer, it’s not the title's biggest issue by any means. Even if Redfall launched with a fully locked 60fps mode, I would still be writing the rest of this review practically as is. The game is certainly not a technical showpiece, with extensive pop-in, shadows only appearing when close, or surface-level textures like posters or decals taking upwards to 20-25 seconds to load finish assets. Every single frame of this game feels incredibly unfinished.
Redfall’s gameplay places you in two locations throughout the game, Redfall and its neighboring community, Burial Point. Each map will need to be fully explored to its fullest as once you make it to Burial Point, you cannot return to Redfall, with the same in regard to Burial Point as it cuts you off when you wrap credits. The only way to return back to these locations is either with a fresh new save or by joining one of your friends alongside wherever they might be in their own games.
It’s a bizarre situation since both maps are littered with collectibles that convey some of its story or the few costume pieces you'll track down in your travels, as well as a variety of other activities you can take part in. This choice of designing these maps as a single expendable experience is baffling, denying you any chance to wrap up what you may have left unfinished. It's almost as if the game doesn't want to be something you keep returning to or fully exploring its surroundings.
Each map has a home base filled with shops, civilians, and strands of narrative of folk simply trying to survive. The issue is that none of these people are here because of you, making their presence feel hollow, empty, and unsatisfying. Even their stories and dialogue are bland, uninteresting, and lacking. Had these places been filled with people we helped along the way, or rescued from various vampire dens, then it would have made me care about them even if just a little. In fact, when one character runs off and gets themselves killed, it meant nothing, Hell, even the ‘shop’ they ran was still there. This is how little the developer wanted you to care about them.
Occasionally you see them having conversations with one another, and I sat there during one such moment as they discussed whether or not one of them felt as if they belonged there. The delivery and performance of the voice acting was incredibly atrocious and sluggish as they spent what felt like 15 minutes getting to the point. Afterward, one of them had a side quest for me, requesting I go track down a birdwatching book. The whole town is infested with vampires and you want me to die over knowing the mating habits of a red sparrow? Sure, why the fuck not.
Across Redfall and Burial Point, you'll find locations that offer gameplay opportunities. The first of these are safehouses. While most offer a reprieve from the action once you secure them, they allow you to top up your ammo or health if you've got the coin that is. Safehouses also act as a fast travel location to zip around the map a bit faster, as do landmark pillars you'll find here and there. Safehouses also present two missions at each location. The first is always a repeated event like destroying a structure built to worship a certain vampire god or killing waves of enemies around a cop car, even if, my god, enemies would sluggishly approach the area, or get stuck on their entry points, making this event astonishingly slow-paced, broken, and dreadfully boring.
Once the first mission in the safehouse has been completed you'll be ready to kill what are called Vampire Underbosses. These are generally more advanced vampires that are found at a set location. Some of these fights are intense and offer a good challenge, while a few have been so easy I swear it was just a regular ol'ass vampire that I often killed without even knowing it was the boss. These battles mostly reward you with some pretty mediocre loot but also that of an underboss's skull, which grants you access to a vampire god's lair later on. Since there are a set number of safehouses, there are a set number of skulls to collect. It is missions such as these where I can see where the live-service elements still clung to parts of the game’s original design.
The real meat of Redfall's activities; however, comes in the form of vampire nests. These are both Redfall's best bit of content but also its weakest in how they are executed. Vampire nests are procedurally generated strongholds that offer decent loot and some fairly good experience. Each nest acts the same way; you proceed down a randomized tileset of hallways before you end up at the nest's heart. There will be some vampires to defeat along the way, but rarely more than a dozen at best.
Once you release the tethers that are powering the heart; mutated forms of people trapped in a glowing red crystal, the heart will become vulnerable. Once you've destroyed the heart and taken its loot, the nest will become unstable, giving you about a minute to destroy a number of crystalized doors that either hide the exit or more loot. If the timer runs out, you retain the loot but miss out on any experience gained from the event. In most cases, I never found the exit and ended up looting everything I could in the time given. Had the timer been another thirty seconds longer, at least for when you play the game solo, then I could see a point of grinding these for the experience. However, due to the game's incredibly lacking platforming, I simply hated navigating these areas to find all the doors.
The biggest issue with these nest runs is that they pull from maybe a half dozen tilesets, meaning you are going to see the same basic components these areas are built with dozens of times. They are also empty, boring, and contain maybe two or three groups of enemies at most. It's a shame they were not more thought-out since the idea of a procedurally generated mission system is something I've wanted from online looter-shooters for years, but this feels so incredibly half-baked in its execution. Again, these are the types of moments where the game clashes with being a one-and-done experience and that of a live-service game. It doesn’t know what it wants to be and the player suffers for it.
Even the world that is presented here clashes with Arkane’s sense of design and doesn’t tend to offer up compelling reasons to play it any other way than just going in guns’a blazing. Leading up to the game’s release, Arkane had mentioned the game would offer traditional ways to play it in ways typical of an Arkane release, but none of that is truly here. The two maps here are open-world locations but rarely present anything interesting or engaging to go off the beaten path for. While a recent patch has addressed some of the lack of enemies as you navigate the empty streets, since leading up to this review I often could walk for anywhere up to five minutes and not find a single baddie to shoot. And, even if I did, it would be two to three human enemies and maybe a single vampire here and there. The game world simply felt empty. It’s better now in some ways, but far too little too late.
Arkane got by being who they are by creating meticulously hand-crafted experiences, which makes these locations suffer even more because it lacks the strength of what this studio is known for. Now, let’s forget for a moment that Arkane is Arkane and look at the levels for what they are. Each map comprises neighborhoods, streets, various buildings, businesses, open areas and hiking trails, and areas on the outskirts of town. The biggest issue is that none of these feel like handcrafted or combat-focused setpieces. Nothing really stands out or feels like an appropriate location for any sort of engagement. Locked buildings rarely contain anything of importance, making accessing them to be often for naught.
In games of this genre and style, you could often approach a location and see the possibilities for combat, the telltale signs that something is about to go down, and sure enough, combat would ensue. Redfall has none of this as battles and enemies feel randomly placed in locations that are simply no fun to engage in or offer compelling moments of gameplay. Both of the game’s available maps feel as lifeless as the threats you are tasked with taking down.
Redfall's story is something I doubt very few are even going to dive into or dissect. Most of the narrative is told through slideshow cutscenes that feel largely slapped together and lifeless. These cutscenes are built from the in-game models, as indicated by your character being dressed in whatever costume piece you have on. Still, they just feel like a jpeg that has some accompanying dialogue. Redfall starts as you wake up after a failed attempt at escaping the town. A vampire, known as the Black Sun, has blocked out the sun, despite there still being a day and night cycle that rarely seems to offer up much difference. While the concept of these vampires taking the town, and even solidifying the water around to create mile-high waves can be an interesting premise, nothing here in the game's opening moments really looks to make good with its gameplay.
Redfall features four characters that have different roles in how they engage and what abilities they have as you work through a pretty bog standard skill tree. Your heroes consist of Jacob, a private mercenary, the "cryptozoology" influencer in Dev, a mechanical engineer in Remi, and a biomedical engineer in Layla, who is the character used in nearly all the game's marketing. Had Redfall allowed us to create custom characters instead, I feel I would have been more attached to my hero, as opposed to not finding one of these characters even remotely interesting, even with their collection of outfits you can find or earn through quests. It also doesn't help that each of their abilities is just not that interesting.
Jacob is a sniper, primarily operating as the ranged specialist of the group. Using his "undead eye" he will gain additional precision. Jacob also has a raven to send out to mark enemies as well as a cloak to navigate around them stealthily. Jacob also relies on an ability called the heartstopper, a ghostly rifle that deals heavy damage. Dev, the influencer, is a bit of an inventor, and this comes in the form of a few gadgets such as a staff that emits UV light to roast a few vampires should they get close. Combine that with a lightning javelin, a teleporting ability that can be shared with the group, and a camera rig that can fire off blasts of UV light, and you have largely what Dev is capable of.
Remi is always joined by a small mechanic friend in Bribón, who can distract enemies and take a lot of abuse while you finish them off. Remi can also throw out C4 charges and act as the team's healer, providing a healing aura that does what it says on the tin. Layla herself packs a few psychic/telekinetic abilities to aid the group, such as producing a psychic lift to launch you into the air, a psychic umbrella that soaks up damage, to summoning Jason, her vampire ex-boyfriend.
While each character comes with their own backstory and dialogue during both the game and its basic cutscenes, neither they nor their powers are really that interesting, and often don't feel like their powers really complement team play that well. Each skill tree then provides incremental upgrades instead of radically changing the characters to make them yours. If you play as Remi and take the game online to play with another Remi, it's very likely you'll have the same build as there is just not enough freedom to really make them yours.
Exploring Redfall and picking a character to hunt down vampires results in some pretty typical combat with AI that is some of the worst I've seen in a long time. I've had entire battles next to a group of vampires that couldn't care less I was there. During the game, you'll be often hunted by a challenging foe called the Rook, a vampire that shows up once you've filled a certain meter. While this battle can often be tough, I've had numerous times where he just stood there and took everything I threw at him until he became a pile of ashes on the ground. It’s a shame this foe is the same each time and not something else to add some variety.
Now, apart from your abilities, you'll be relying largely on your loot. Redfall does nothing to be original here with the same guns, tier colors, and stats you've seen a dozen times before, but done better elsewhere. Guns range from pistols to shotguns to UV rifles that can decimate groups of vampires If you handle them correctly. And, in typical loot fashion, you'll have whites that oddly outpace your blues and greens at some point and oranges that will eventually become nothing more than a peashooter later on. The biggest issue here is that this game doesn't feel like it needs this loot system. The weapons are unoriginal but they service the gameplay and shooting can often be anywhere from fine to good. But given the one-and-done approach to Redfall’s current design, where each area cannot be returned to, it makes no sense for Redfall to offer up a grindable loot system at all.
While you can certainly tend to Redfall as a solo-player experience, the game does benefit from the "everything is better with friends" experience. However, while you can play with up to three other friends, only the host will retain any story progress. ANY. Co-op players will retain their character’s progress, but should they want to play while waiting for their host friend, they will have to start right from the start all over again. It's a bizarre move that while Diablo IV shares in a host game instance if you are at the same progress as the host, you'll at least save your story progress. It's a bizarre choice here to limit your friend’s progress for literally no reason.
Redfall's issues run far too deep to believe that any patches or quality-of-life updates will somehow save the game. As mentioned at the start of this review, I don't feel Redfall would have had a different reception even if the game ran at a locked 60 on the Series' consoles. What Arkane delivered here feels like a fractured vision of a game that doesn't know what it wants to be. I started my journey with Redfall wanting to believe it wasn't as bad as I had heard, but regardless of the few moments of fun I did have with it, Redfall simply ended up disappointing me more so than anything else has in some time. I don't think the game is horrible and I can see a group of players enjoying it to a certain degree, but I can't see Redfall being a title that really has an audience in the long run, or is capable of having some sort of redemption story. As it is, Redfall simply lacks bite.
Developer - Arkane Studios Publisher - Bethesda Softworks/Microsoft. Released - May 1st, 2023. Available On - Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Windows. Rated - (M) Blood, Drug Reference, Strong Language, Violence Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - Redfall was downloaded and played on Xbox Game Pass.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.