news culture Is Arkane in danger after Redfall’s critical failure? We have the answer
Redfall was released on May 2nd and didn’t get the expected response. Arkane’s title, a cooperative shooter set in an open world infested with vampires, fell short on many counts, including its game service approach. It was enough for the group to win the fans of the studio, which is not exactly flooded with commercial success anyway.
Redfall: a mayonnaise with an interesting flavor that’s hard to stomach
Arkane Studios consists of two units. Born in Lyon in 1999, the first is behind titles such as Arx Fatalis, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, Dishonored 1 & 2 and Deathloop. your thing is the immersive sim, a design philosophy The goal is to create environments that offer many possibilities and give players tools to experiment and make decisions. With the meaning of Deus Ex, Thief, System Shock 2 and Ultima UnderworldMany of these games are cult. Nevertheless, Rare are those that have had immense commercial success. The games are complex and difficult to present, and you have to be lend a hand often to see what they have to offer.
In the case of Arkane, we can say that Dishonored and Deathloop exceeded expectations. but the others remained quite “niches”. Obviously wanting to break their habits with Redfall, Arkane and Bethesda proposed an open world co-op shooter based on the game service model developed within the second unit, Arcane Austin (Prey). We feel the touch of the studio here and there, but the open world hard to convincethe behavior of the enemies is not very varied, the loot system and the progression are not very motivating and the technical aspect, frankly, leaves a lot to be desired.
Redfall is full of qualities, however it fails at a constant rateand leaves a funny controller in hand. We quickly learned that development would have been complicated a lack of clear creative direction and teams that didn’t seem to believe in it too much. Harvey Smith, who directed everything, was sure the pieces of the puzzle would fit, but they didn’t, resulting in a title only shows a meager 55 Metacritic, which surprises Microsoft whose internal tests were rather encouraging.
Arcane Austin in danger? Matt Booty offers a glimmer of hope
With this failure We wondered if Arkane’s future hadn’t darkened significantly. Phil Spencer acknowledged that Microsoft may not have done the Studio integration properly and it has been taking the past few days Matt Booty, who decides the fortunes of the Xbox studios, sheds light on the situation. During an interview with axios and Stephen Tolito had to answer Matt Booty’s question many players were asking: Will Arkane remain open despite Redfall’s failure? The latter hasn’t firmly secured the studio’s future, not to suffer a major backlash in the event of a policy change, but Nonetheless, he pointed out that “that was the plan for now“.
I feel responsible that we could have done a better job with Arkane. It was a failure, but how many failures? I want to support them so I can keep working to deliver the game they envisioned. (…) They are working hard on updates and the continuation of Redfall content.
Here we have the same speech as Phil Spencer, who took the game’s failure for himself, despite everything the clear desire not to interfere in the development. On the one hand, many players welcome Microsoft’s desire to let the creatives do their job, but others regret that the company that bought Zenimax outright does not intervene more in the production to ensure its quality and ensure a form editorial Line. Anyway, Arkane Austin doesn’t seem to be in any danger at the moment, and working on the various updates planned for Redfall. The game is quite popular in Game Pass, but turning this failed launch into a production not to be missed will take time and a lot of work.
