Redfall Review: Falls At The Finish Line

So here we are. Redfall, a project that really needed to be a statement game for Microsoft. The first major exclusive to be born out of their purchase of ZeniMax Media, and, if we’re being honest, the first major exclusive for Xbox as a platform since the release of Halo Infinite, which, if we’re to be brutally honest again, didn’t exactly set the world alight.

All that considered, Redfall needed to be a home run. This is a message to players worldwide that Xbox as a platform is still to be taken seriously as a hub for great exclusives. With Arkane Austin at the helm, the branch of Arkane responsible for the excellent Dishonored and Prey, you’d have been forgiven for being quietly confident that Redfall had all the potential to be just that given the pedigree. Hell, going into my review playthrough, I was confident, despite all the warning signs – the 30fps debacle, the less than stellar promo materials that done little more than to confuse the public as to what Redfall actually was, and, of course, the preview footage that appeared to show a game that suffered from a lack of identity. Despite all that, I was quietly optimistic that once Redfall landed in eager players’ hands, Arkane’s magic would shine through, and all would be forgotten.

It’s with an extremely heavy heart, then, that I must admit I was wrong. So very wrong. Redfall is not the game that Microsoft needed it to be. Redfall is not the game that I wanted it to be. And, perhaps most devastatingly, Redfall takes so much of what you know and love about Arkane Austin’s previous work and throws it out the window in an extremely one-dimensional open-world shooter.

A Far Cry From Original

Before we dissect Redfall further, it’s probably worth getting out in front with what it actually is. The marketing that kicked in when it was initially revealed did very little to clue players into what type of experience Arkane Austin was working on. Was it a Left 4 Dead clone? A Far Cry wannabe? Oh wait, no, it’s a paranormal take on Borderlands, right? The truth is, at some point or another, Redfall tries to be all those things without ever really coming close to the quality of its inspirations.

Set in Massachusetts, players are dropped into the vampire-infested island town of Redfall. Things have gone to hell following an experiment that totally spiraled out of control, leaving Redfall completely cut off from the outside world, and crawling with an army of vampires led by the mysterious Hollow Man. Adding further to the mayhem that has the once idyllic town whipped into a frenzy, is a demonic cult that worships the Hollow Man and his legion of vampiric followers, and so it falls on the player to work out just what the hell went on while also trying to restore order and reconnect Redfall with the outside.

In practice, this results in a fairly bog-standard open-world framework that sees you picking up missions and sidequests from safe houses dotted around the world, liberating districts as you go. In terms of how it feels moment to moment, it probably lands closer to Far Cry than it does its other inspirations. There is a whole host of repetitive busy work that you’ll need to engage with in your quest to liberate Redfall from the bloodthirsty threat.

The Borderlands flavor comes in with randomized loot that you can pick up, offering the usual varying tiers of item rarity, though you can forget about picking up anything as interesting or zany as you would find in the beloved Gearbox-developed series. Weapons tend to follow simple archetypes, including pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles. This would be fine if there were variety within those archetypes, but even as you start seeing loot from the higher tiers drop, it tends just to be better versions of the same weapons you were picking up at the start of your playthrough, with none of the exciting perks or gameplay modifiers you expect to see from a shooter with a heavy focus on loot. You will get access to some more unique weapons in the form of stake launchers and UV guns, designed to make killing vampires a touch easier, but that’s as crazy as it gets.

Redfall’s framework is predictable, then, but as we know, that doesn’t have to mean bad if it serves as the foundation for fun gameplay loops and missions. Unfortunately, this is where things really start to fall apart at the seams.

As Soulless As Dracula Himself

Pretty much everything you do in Redfall results in combat. And this is where we encounter our first major issue. Firefights in Redfall are, for the most part, not fun to engage in. Weapons suffer from feeling weightless, movement feels floaty, and aiming down sights feels twitchy and imprecise. The majority of my time in combat was spent popping off with a shotgun, the main reason for that being it naturally doesn’t require as much precision when being fired, alleviating some of the frustrations that come with using weapons requiring a more accurate touch.

Gunfights also suffer from some of the most broken AI I’ve ever encountered in all my years immersed in this medium. Enemies vary from running around so aimlessly that they don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of landing shots on you, to standing so still that dispatching of them becomes ridiculously easy. The human cultists are particularly guilty of this, often running headfirst into your gunfire with no regard for personal safety at all, or any sense of when it might be a sound idea to run for cover. The town of Redfall is an impressively designed space, with a lot of thought that has gone into providing varied environments that could easily serve as a setting for epic combat encounters if the AI was up to it. Engaging against the vampires presents a little more fun, as they possess otherworldly movement and teleportation capabilities that make them much less predictable. Even then, despite there being numerous different vampire types to contend with, disappointingly, they never really require you to change up your approach, with emptying as many bullets into them as possible frequently being the most efficient option.

It’s a shame that the combat isn’t up to scratch, as the actual acts of traversing the world and engaging with the various missions are fairly satisfying in their own right. The town of Redfall itself can be a treat to explore. It has this eerie autumnal tone and style that brings me right back to some of my favorite Halloween movies, with the attention to detail that Arkane Austin is known for largely correct and present.  The different districts all feel varied, from fog-filled woodlands to desolate urban areas, each packed with the studio’s trademark environmental storytelling. It’s an intriguing space that I wanted to dig around in, stuffed to the brim with documents and collectibles that slowly help you piece together what life was like in Redfall in the lead-up to the vampiric invasion, as well as what transpired in the aftermath.

Missions start out fairly uninspired but do improve, with the combat-heavy focus of the earlier objectives eventually supplemented with more methodical, explorative tasks. A huge standout was a trip you’ll take to the Hollow Man’s mansion about a third of the way through the campaign, which turns out to be a lore-heavy, narrative-filled trip into his twisted past, revealing the origins of his depraved plans. You’ll track down clues that then enable you to connect to the mansion’s past, revealing its tragic history. Moments like these, where Redfall slows down and lets you explore, represent the game at its best. It’s unfortunate, then, that for every mission like this, there are half a dozen that do nothing apart from falling back on mindless combat.

Side activities are another let-down, boiling down to the type of uninspired busy work that so many other open-world games fall foul of. Vampire nests and district bosses are functionally similar to outposts in Far Cry, allowing you to take back control of certain portions of the map, the former also being a great source of weapons and trinkets that provide passive buffs to your characters, such as increased health and damage, making them feel just about worthwhile.  Save for those narrative-heavy missions that punctuate the campaign, it’s all just very…safe, and, dare I say, soulless, which aren’t terms I’m used to having to associate with Arkane’s work. Most tragic of all is that stealth gameplay is largely a thing of the past. Arkane Austin’s trademark immersive sim stealth systems feel as though they should be viable given how varied and intricate some of the environments are, but the heavy focus on action and lacking AI often make trying to take a more covert approach feel pointless.

Better With Friends

Despite the general moment-to-moment gameplay falling short in terms of variety, the class system Redfall implements does help to alleviate some of this monotony, with each class bringing something unique to the table.

Given I was playing solo for the most part, I opted to spend most of my time with Davinder, a cryptozoologist who specializes in controlling the battlefield with his paralyzing arc-infused javelin and taking advantage of the verticality offered by Redfall’s environments with his teleporter, which is pretty much Corvo’s blink ability from the Dishonored series. I found Davinder’s ability to crowd control and added maneuverability invaluable, but there are other options if you so wish, such as the sneaky Jacob, who can cloak himself and summon a spectral sniper rifle, or Layla, who fills more of a tank-type roll with her ability to conjure up a psychic umbrella that can soak up damage. There’s also Remy, the only character I didn’t spend at least a little time with, who specializes in putting down AoE heals for her team, an ability I didn’t find much use for playing solo, but that I’m sure will come into its own in group play.

Truth be told, coming from Arkane Austin’s previous work, the class system initially feels pretty limiting. I never quite felt like I was fully able to take advantage of the opportunities the environment offers when playing solo, unable to master my environment in the same way that Corvo’s versatile move set allowed me to master the streets of Dunwall in Dishonored all those years ago. Moves that would have previously been accessible on one character in the studio’s previous work are now split between the four playable classes, which can add to the one-dimensional feel of playing solo.

It’s clear that the main focus of Redfall is intended to be co-op play. While the majority of my playthrough was spent flying solo with Davinder, I did dedicate an afternoon to exploring the twisted town of Redfall with HPP’s editor-in-chief Francis DiPersio. I wouldn’t say the experience was transformative, as the overall problems that plague Redfall are baked into its systems to a degree that adding more players won’t remove them entirely, but it does make things a hell of a lot more fun. Being able to synergize with, and compliment your squad mate’s abilities adds some much-needed variety to combat encounters. And with the increased difficulty we seemed to be hit with, missions and general exploration become a touch more perilous, leading to a more enjoyable, less pedestrian experience overall. Plus, playing through anything with a buddy just makes things a lot more fun in general, and I can easily say that the few hours I spent teamed up with an ally gave me plenty of belly laughs – unfortunately, not always for the right reasons.

Not Fit For Purpose

Simply put, Redfall just wasn’t ready for launch. I’m not just referring to the questionable cap of 30FPS, as within a short period of time spent slaying vampires, that’ll be the very least of your concerns.

To be completely blunt, the state in which Redfall has shipped is nothing short of an embarrassment. Bugs and glitches in big-budget releases are nothing new, but the rate at which I encountered major issues, and the overall lack of polish was nothing short of astonishing. Textures are abysmal and pop in and out with alarming frequency, lighting seems to flat-out be missing from huge parts of the environment, and when it is there, it has a habit of flickering in and out of existence. Enemy animations frequently break, the AI has a tendency to fail completely, and even when it does work, the AI pathing is so hilariously busted that enemies will simply run at you in reverse. I fell through the map numerous times, though that didn’t prove much of a hurdle as the geometry is so broken that I was always able to make my way back out, and, when playing co-op, my character spent a large amount of time appearing on my teammate’s screen as though I was swimming through concrete and twitching as though I had just had a bucket of itching powder poured down my pants. Co-op actually seemed to make things worse, with NPC’s getting stuck in T poses, weapon scopes becoming solid masses that couldn’t be seen through, and the general number of graphical glitches increasing significantly.

Believe it or not, I’m really only touching the tip of the iceberg here with just how bad a state Redfall is in. I’m not sure what went wrong, or why a call wasn’t made to delay this, but it’s a bad look for Microsoft. We live in a world where the sustainability of Game Pass is already in question. As such,  you would expect, especially after the troubled launch and subsequent months that followed Halo Infinite, that Microsoft would want to put its best foot forward. Instead, what we have is perhaps the worst optimized game I’ve ever played, and a title that makes me genuinely worried for what’s to come from future exclusives launching on Game Pass. Call me cynical, but Redfall feels like a product that was shoved out before it was ready in order to increase Game Pass engagement and drive subscriber numbers. I see no other logical reason as to why anybody would greenlight this shipping in the state that it’s in.

Conclusion

In all my years of gaming, I struggle to think of ever feeling a sense of disappointment as profound as I do when playing Redfall. Sure, you can increase the fun factor by adding a few buddies into the equation, the varied classes lending themselves well to group play, and there are glimpses of something great when you’re afforded the opportunity to slow down in one of the more tightly scripted missions, but these positives merely serve as momentary distractions from the multitude of issues that plague Arkane Austin’s latest effort.

Between the half-baked gameplay loops, repetitive open-world busy work, and shockingly poor optimization, Redfall feels like a title that’s still in alpha, never mind a product that’s supposed to represent a flagship release for Microsoft’s premium subscription service. Perhaps the most damning point of all is that I don’t even know if Redfall is redeemable at this point. It’s already suffered a blow by launching without its upcoming 60fps performance mode, so to couple that with it now launching as a package that feels as though it could use another 12 months in the oven, I find myself wondering whether Redfall even has the potential to find itself at the right end of a redemption arc. If you’re subscribed to Game Pass and have the chance to check this out with a few friends over a few nights for some low-effort vampire slaying, I would cautiously advise that there is some fun to be had. For anyone else who maybe intended on playing solo, or was going to pay the full price of admission, this is absolutely one to avoid for now until we assess what Arkane Austin’s response is to the launch woes.

Final Verdict: 2/5

Available On: Xbox Series X (reviewed), Xbox Series S, PC; Publisher: Bethesda Softworks; Developer: Arkane Austin; Released: 2 May, 2023; Players: 1-4; ESRB: M for Mature; MSRP: $69.99

Full Disclosure: A review code was provided by the publisher.