The sun is gone. Obliterated by the pantheon of vampire gods who, in their place of gleaming palaces and gothic castles, lay claim to a nondescript island town off the coast of mainland Massachusetts. UV lamps and muzzle flares from private military contractors and cultists provide low light; the body heat of locals huddled against each other brings a little warmth. If internet is available, your weather app will tell you that at best lukewarm temperatures can be expected.Maybe this explains why red drop Slightly under baked.
Over the years, from 2012’s Dishonored to 2021’s Deathloop, Arkane has delivered a string of brave and inspiring first-person action games. They were at times divisive, questioning many players and pushing them into unfamiliar playstyles, but even the studio’s detractors would admit that the games were beautifully designed and beautifully presented. You may not want to have a Faberge egg in your home, but you have to appreciate its artistry.
Redfall snapped that fiery streak. While it’s similar to its predecessors — oscillating between stealth and shoot-em-up, its home space filled with bits and pieces of stories that need to be pieced together — the result is wetter than usual. Don’t get me wrong: Redfall is an excellent open-world first-person shooter that you can play for dozens of hours with your friends. But it’s a marked drop from the highs held by the Corvo and Colt. This is the first missable Arkane game of an era.
The reason for this, I suspect, is embedded in the previous paragraph: “co-op” and “open world”. Redfall is the studio’s first attempt at persistent online multiplayer, and the first time it’s shed dense, individual levels to create one continuous, large-scale space. The developers don’t like to make you watch them sweat, but the pressure to learn something new here – to put together something refined and playable – is hardly hidden.
A typical Dishonored level is filled with potential paths to goals that can be resolved in any number of ways–backstabs, supernatural sword fights, or something more elaborate. Typical Redfall missions are much less malleable.
Indeed, Redfall’s central story missions tend to offer options you won’t find in places like Dead Island: climbing up movie theater roofs from alleyways combined with traversal abilities; divination of the location of an old smuggling tunnel that allows access to a farmhouse basement. Some offer moral dilemmas and hostage situations and consequences. But they are relatively rare. More often, you’ll be in direct conflict with mobs and mini-bosses in Borderlands mode.
Thankfully, filmed as thick and impactful as in Deathloop, Arkane turns its vampires into a fascinating problem to be solved in the midst of chaos—either by exposing them to ultraviolet light, then using a Break them with a punch, or have a sharp piece of wood by piercing their heart. The stake can be attached to certain types of guns as a bayonet, or advanced at high speed from a launcher, and can double as a suppressed weapon, taking out cultists in one hit. As the undead fly around – disappearing from between your crosshairs and reappearing somewhere over your shoulder – you never lose sight of the unique form of threat you face.
However, there is one crucial piece missing from Arkane’s combat puzzle: takedowns. While you can instantly kill enemies by hitting them on the back, the resulting thumping sound isn’t very satisfying–you don’t pounce on an unsuspecting guard from great heights, and you don’t drop the blade Throat staggered opponent. It’s a puzzling omission that strips stealth and gunplay of the punctuation you’ll find in Dishonored and Deathloop or Far Cry – one of Redfall’s main inspirations.
Far Cry might be a logical comparison to Arkane, but it might not be a favorable one. Yes, Redfall is built around hubs and safehouses from which you can take missions and plan your route on a map, do side activities and pick up patrols at any time. But there’s nothing quite like a Far Cry outpost tucked away between Redfall’s beach houses and cornfields, nor any of Ubisoft’s wildlife or road traffic. Perhaps, after eight iterations, the Redfall open world could be more alive; for now, the act of walking through town is more reminiscent of Outbreak, a free-roaming Call of Duty Zombies mode where, You and three friends turn houses upside down for loot, then converge on a battle objective. A perfect format, but not a convincing living world.
Of course, the place feels less empty in co-op, where your unusual traversal abilities and combat prowess combine in creative and unexpected ways. Playing Lila, “a telepathic menace in student debt,” I quickly fell in love with the ghostly elevator that threw her high into the air; meanwhile, a friend experimented with Devinder’s shifter, a A grenade that creates a teleportation exit. Before long, we discovered a way to combine the two, and with practice, could climb cliffs and water towers in an instant—a dual act that never goes out of style.
It’s fair to say that Redfall has gotten better over time. The second map introduces rival cult factions that keep the streets busy and lure you off rooftops for impromptu dogfights when they’re not locked in a loopy battle where neither side can hurt the other. The buildings themselves are given more meaning as you accumulate knowledge of the environment through the hundreds of notes you discover (journal entries, meal preparation timetables, surprisingly moving church sermons). Images emerge of the small town of Redfall: sleepy, unable to rouse itself against the elite who have come to drain it, but so deeply rooted that its community lives on underground – its priests and doctors hiding In the fire station and the Maritime Museum.
But this story delivery system is not suitable for multiplayer games. It takes real tenacity to read a note when a friend stumbles upon the Bellwether security patrol and calls for help. Paradoxically, you get some of Redfall’s best combat in co-op, but only get the most out of its writing.
You also need to be persistent and put up with technical issues. While the performance issues reported by Redfall didn’t materialize for me on a powerful PC, I’ve been plagued by bugs that got stuck in terrain or blocked my sniper scope view. A teammate found crouch ineffective multiple times and used it for invisibility. The only way to reset is usually to log out and start over from the nearest safe house.
All in all, co-op isn’t as convenient as it should be. Want to join a solo friend during a meeting? You can’t: they need to start from a different menu to be able to host. Need to leave school early? This will make you unpopular as the entire squad will be kicked out of the game. As for trying different characters in the middle of the event, forget it. You won’t be able to do it because of low level.
Worst of all, the progression of the story is only relevant to the owner–if they want to play solo, they’re doomed to do the same quest all over again. If you think of Redfall as a D&D campaign — meeting and playing with the same people at the same time every week, perhaps all of these limitations are fine. But I remember a time when co-op shooters were considered a low-commitment pastime.
Halfway through the first map of Redfall there is a Echo House, you’ll investigate the possessions of the vampire god and ex-Doctor Hollow Man. First, you’ll see the place as it was, haunted and run-down, then sneak into the doll’s house to see how it’s been restored.Dishonored 2 fans will immediately think cracks on the board, a beloved mission that allows you to travel back and forth between the estate’s past and present at will. It’s just that Hollow Man’s crib is far less vibrant, and less mature possibility.
It’s hard not to see the whole of Redfall through these lenses. As an echo of Arkane’s past glory – the studio’s distinctive sound can still be heard, but fainter than we expected.
red fall Reviewed on PC, code provided by Bethesda.