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Redfall review: an open world FPS drained of Arkane’s magicIt’s hollow, man
It’s hollow, man
The setup is simple. Vampires have blocked out the sun above the titular town, and they’re feeding on residents to fuel their evil plans - so it’s up to you to choose your hero and put a stop to the bloodsuckers. You’ve got a choice between four characters: Jacob, Layla, Devinder, and Remi, all of whom come with their own abilities and skill trees. I went with Jacob, a spectral sniper capable of hitting some high numbers, and whose ghostly raven can pinpoint baddies. I’d hoped my decision would feed into a stealthy playstyle that would take advantage of Arkane’s excellent level design. Ha.
Redfall Is UnderwhelmingLiam chatted to Ed about Redfall, which they agreed is a rare stumble for developer Arkane.Watch on YouTube
Redfall Is Underwhelming
Early on,Redfallpresents itself as an immersive sim set in an open world. “You can tackle this place in all manner of ways!”, a pop-up says, implying that Redfall is a pliable town you’re able to shape and poke holes in over the course of its story. And yes, there are often multiple routes you can take into spooky churches and tattered houses, but it soon becomes clear that you have limited options to manipulate anything once you’re inside. If you either gun everything down, or sneak past theextremelystupid AI, then you’ve exhausted both of the game’s options.
The dead ends keep coming as you return to base, a repurposed fire station and home to the game’s tired commitment to its open world. A mission table leads you to what seems at first glance like a choose-your-own-adventure, but is really just a linear sequence of missions you’ve sort of got to do anyway. Various vendors stand around, where you can purchase health kits or some new weapons using the supplies you’ve earned from the bog roll and jewelled eggs you popped into your pocket grinder. The idea, I think, is that as you liberate Redfall, the base is meant to fill with more folks and their personal stories. Spoiler: this doesn’t happen.
Or it seems like youweremeant to get to know some of the NPCs better, but their stories are cut short so abruptly, you can basically feel the marker pen slide across the whiteboard and through their planned plotlines. The line between main mission and side mission couldn’t be more blurred if I necked 20 paracetemols, had a 50°C bath, booted up Redfall on my Steam Deck, and sprinted down the street with it sliding to and fro in my sweaty palms. Unlockable safehouses scattered across the map suggest further abandoned ambitions, as they pretend to be mini versions of your firehouse, but end up being another set of convenient fast travels points with the odd extra - and no less tedious - mission or two.
Sometimes, the story focuses on the human side of the vampire menace with strong voice-acting and a sincere effort to infuse the bleak world with some emotion. It’s hard to get too invested, though, when the vast majority of your missions are tedious fetch quests that feed into an uninspired live-service machine. Each character comes outfitted with the usual suspects - an EXP bar, a skill tree, an inventory filled with rainbow-coloured loot - except that they’re all really dull! As Jacob, I found it more exciting to spend my skill points on larger ammo reserves than my ghostly raven, and it won’t take you long to realise that most weapons of a certain type are largely the same, except one generates more numbers than the other.
Vampire nests spring up across Redfall as zones of influence that are meant to expand and become… a nuisance? Anyway, they’re randomly generated portals that lead to an instanced activity akin to a dungeon. Successfully survive one and the idea is that you’ll earn strong loot. They seem better suited to a persistent live-service game with a thriving economy, meta, and a cycle of endgame raids a la Destiny. Here, you might get some better guns to, errr… finish the story with. |Image credit:Microsoft
Honestly, I opt for the guns that kill the vampires the fastest. They look the part, but man, my heart sinks whenever I’ve got to fight one. Not only are they bullet sponges, but they flit everywhere, which makes actually hitting them with said bullets a colossal headache. I would rather a hippopotamus pop my skull like a melon than have to engage with another bloodsucker. Then you’ve got the cultists, who are so clueless you’ll stop seeking out interesting optional routes; just take the front door, they won’t notice. Come to think of it, I could probably tuck my legs into the hippopotamus' mouth, too.
While the guns might have some heft to them and some character abilities are useful, none of it seems to mesh with the whole vampiric theme. I roped poor vidbud Liam and hardware editor James into a co-op session, and we barely ever used our abilities. Combat rarely ever calls for anything other than a few shotgun shells, and even with pals, I wouldn’t say the experience was elevated at all. It remained markedly similar to playing it on our lonesomes, just with added sighing.
Imagine Julianna from Deathloop, the assassin who invades your world and tries to murder you occasionally. Now imagine Julianna but she’s a jpeg of the ‘video settings’ screen, she’s t-posing, and she follows you around and kicks dropped loot under floorboards so you can’t reach them.
Normally I’m not one to care too much for PC performance. If it runs smoothly and looks vaguely good, then you’re in the clear with me. Redfall is the first game in quite a while that couldn’t be less in the clear; in fact, it’s washed out and shuddery and I can’t seem to flick the settings into any combination that’ll calm it down. I mean, I’m running the game on an RTX 2070 at 1080p, and yet my frame rate wades through glue if I enter any slightly busy spot. It’s not even that the game runs poorly, it’s clear there’s even more under the hood that’s struggling, too. Character models fall through floors and action buttons might not work. I’ve heard that Liam has to enter his inventory to end his character’s ability, because otherwise it won’t close and prevents him from doing anything else. The list goes on.
