Arkane’s latest immersive sim takes the form of a Vampire slaying co-op shooter named Redfall. Personally, I was really excited about the possibility of a co-op game from the Dishonored devs as those titles have been stellar (despite performance and port issues). From the first reveal trailer, the interesting character designs and the premise of taking what looked like the Left 4 Dead formula and adding in Vampires drew me in completely.
However, After about 15 hours with Redfall over the weekend, I’m left scratching my head, wondering how that premise could feel so mediocre in practice.
Welcome To The Apocalypse
Redfall takes place in the eponymous Massachusetts town of, well, Redfall. The town itself is the victim of a science experiment gone awry, and now Vampires, cultitsts, and paramilitary troops storm the streets, looking to prey upon any of the town’s survivors.
Taking the role of one of four characters, each with their own unique set of powers, you set out on the quest to figure out what caused the Vampire apocalypse and, if possible, put a stop to it. Each character is offers a unique set of skills, from Jacob’s stealthy approach to combat to Devinder’s best Dishonored Blink impression.
Personally, I’ve been a fan of Layla’s character design ever since the first trailer conjured the phantom umbrella she uses to absorb bullets and bounce them back at enemies. But I do appreciate that there is more than just one way to play, in keeping with Arkane’s history of allowing for myriad approaches and experimentation to a situation.
Redfall is an open-world city that is still steeped in the design philosophy Arkane brings to every game. Each encounter allows you to approach it however you like, whether it’s going in guns blazing through the front door, or using stealth to sneak in through a rooftop. It’s also designed to make use of all of the various character abilities, meaning that while you can play Redfall solo, co-op really is the way to go.
I really like the coastal Massachusetts town as the setting too. It gives off a Salem/old-world vibe that really fits the paranormal setup quite well. The town itself too is laid out well, making it easy to navigate as well as spy alternative ways to get the drop on enemies and take them out.
Littering the world are environmental hazards and traps that can be used as well, from destroying power generators to electrocute anything in its wake to oil slicks that can be set alight by a flare gun. These hazards help to make encounters interesting, though more often than not I found myself going in guns blazing, phantom umbrella doing work for me.
Unfortunately, when I stepped into Redfall proper, it felt like I was going back in time a bit. Environments, character designs, animations - it all felt ripped from a 2014-2015-era game. The world lighting is flat, while the texture work leaves much to be desired amongst the mix of high-quality and muddled textures. Distant models and shadows are drawn in insanely close, though some item models such as lampposts or stools look like they never quite switched in their high-quality model when you get close enough to them.
Shadows also dance and flicker across a scene, making them outrageously distracting at every moment. Nothing here looks like I would expect a triple-A title to look like, unfortunately. While Arkane has a style all its own, it’s let down by the overall visual presentation. Redfall announced it will have ray tracing support, but like the 60-FPS option on Xbox Series X, this is coming in a post-launch patch.
Given that Redfall has some seriously demanding PC requirements (where my gameplay has been), the visual return never quite lives up to the demands. Why this game is requiring a beefy rig to run at the recommended requirements is beyond me, and even on my Intel i9-13900K and RTX 4090 powered machine, it never felt like it was taking full advantage of my hardware.
Character models also look flat and uninspired, almost plasticky in spots. And they just feel lifeless in motion. One scene where a nurse is helping to deliver a baby was so dull and lifeless it just ruined any sense of tension or enjoyment in the moment. The scene itself made me question whether I was watching a poorly choreographed animatronic from a local pizza parlor or a video game made in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-three.
It’s not helped by cutscenes that, while I understand are going for more of a storyboard style of presentation, feel unfinished and dull. Some cutscenes have no backing music or sound effects, just the voice-over.
Moving my camera when there is haze results in...well...this. On an RTX 4090.
The biggest culprit visually apart from muddled and low-quality texture work in many spots, has to do with the lighting and volumetrics. Everything is so low resolution it actually becomes distracting. Seeing a trail of boxy pixels follow the movement of my gun in a light shaft or watching cascading macroblocking of low-resolution light wash over the environment in front of me really pulls me out of the illusion that Redfall is trying to sell me. Given that this is a title built for PC and current-generation consoles only, the lack of a visually stunning game that screams "next-gen" is concerning.
And it’s a shame too as the setting itself is intriguing. I simply loved that first impression of stepping out of a ferry only to see the ocean parted and frozen in the air, caging everyone in the island town. Vampire models are some of the best parts of Redfall, both visually and from a gameplay standpoint. While the common footsoldiers themselves all feel like generic grunts, the Vampires are the real stars here. Various types, from the shield-deploying Siphons to the gargoyle-esque Watchers all require different tactics and approaches to deal with, and it keeps things interesting among the deluge of Bellwether mercenaries or crazy cultists out there.
Dealing With Vamps
From a gameplay perspective, there’s nothing really new going on here. It’s a looter shooter, though a serviceable one at that. Arkane’s last offering, Deathloop, excelled at mixing a shooter with the studio’s unique blend of traversal and show-stopping powers that made the Dishonored franchise such a joy to play. Some of that is on display here, too, such as Devinder’s Translocator acting as a Blink for the character, or Layla’s ghost elevator which can propel her and allies - as well as enemies - up in the air to get to hard-to-reach spots.
There is fun to be had here, too. It’s not bad - it’s satisfying to get the jump on a group of cultists and ruin their day, the thunk of buckshot from a shotgun sending a body flying. Using Layla’s elevator to immobilize a group of enemies while reloading is fun, though sometimes the skill wouldn’t deploy with no visual indicator as to why exactly. There also seems to be a universal cooldown on skills where after deploying my umbrella my ghost elevator skill was unusable right after - though there was no UI element telling me otherwise.
Not all skills are created equal, either. While each character has a large skill tree that augments abilities, affects ammo carrying capacity and more, nothing really felt impactful when slotting a skill. Additionally, while the different heroes have different skill sets, some feel more impactful than others. While Layla’s umbrella can knock enemies back, its utility is dwarfed by Jaob’s ability to just go invisible and have the enemy AI forget he ever existed. And Layla’s ultimate skill, Vampire Ex-Boyfriend, might summon her, well, Vampire ex to fight for her, it never felt impactful enough to sit through the agonizingly long animation to pull it off, especially when Devinder can just petrify Vampires around him with his ultimate ability to deal with them easily.
That said, it’s fun to find different ways to fight enemies, such as maneuvering myself during a vampire fight to put a UV lamp in the way, petrifying the vampire instantly. Launching stakes at Vampires is satisfying as well, especially if I’m not close enough to make the kill before they regenerate. These different ways to deal with enemies outside of simply gunning them down make encounters fresh and interesting, keeping with what I expect from Arkane.
However, while Arkane’s DNA is all over Redfall, I can’t help but feel the overall design is outdated and in spots, unfinished. Baffling design choices, such as the inability to unequip weapons, the lack of player-usable grenades to help stave off swarms and deal with large groups, or the inability to apparently hold my breath while lining up a sniper shot, frustrated me throughout. Stakes are one of the few ways to kill a Vampire, so it makes me wonder why people aren’t just walking around using them as their main melee weapon.
Like seriously, Arkane, why am I punching a Vampire?
Killing a Vamp with a stake is contextual and only happens when a Vampire has low enough health. It’s a satisfying shower of sparks that flutter around the screen, turning to ash when it happens, but it’s just baffling that we can get entire guns that launch stakes at an enemy, but no one thought to just pick one up and use it themselves. It also takes away what could be a satisfying way to kill a Vampire through stealth - sneaking up behind them is about as rewarding as punching a Vampire in the back - which is to say not really at all.
It’s also baffling to me that the only way to cycle through all the weapons you own is through the main menu. This feels like the perfect spot for a radial menu, as much as I hate them. Instead of devoting three equip spots to chosen weapons, why not have them take up a weapon type? This way you could cycle between pistols, rifles, and special weapons on the fly, allowing a player to adapt to a situation.
It’s cumbersome to have to go into my menu to pull out my UV gun to deal with a mist spewer, only to need that spot moments later for a stake launcher to deal with a powerful Vampire enemy. Having to jump into my menu during gameplay, hit the loadout screen, cycle through the list of weapons I own, and then equip it takes time that could be better served exploring the world. Part of this is solved in a co-op setting as each player could feasibly carry different weapons to round out the group. But as a solo player, it’s infuriating.
Speaking of co-op, a major barrier to the experience is the fact that in a co-op game, only the host progresses their character. With save games tied to a character, meaning you’ll be playing through Redfall from the beginning if you decide to play all four of the heroes, it feels almost like a waste of time for anyone other than the host in a co-op title. One of my biggest pet peeves in games is when they don’t seemingly respect the time players are putting into it - and the utter lack of shared progression in a co-op shooter is right up there for me when it comes to disrespecting player time.
I’m not sure if it’s a technical limitation since co-op allows for untethered traversal of the whole game world, or the expectation is that players will play through Redfall multiple times for it to not matter for some, but for me personally, it doesn’t make me want to hop in a friends co-op session knowing that I’m going to have to do everything all over again on my own later.
This is compounded later in Redfall when leaving the first island and moving to another part of the map. Taking the quest warns you that you won’t be able to return to Redfall Commons - which it never really explains why in-game - meaning that if there are still safehouses to liberate, story quests to continue and more, you’re effectively faced with the choice of pushing off the story till those are completed or just losing access to them altogether. It makes no sense to me, either, and I really hope the whole world map opens up to me once I finish the story itself.
So, what is there to do in Redfall?
There are quite a few things to do when you're running around Redfall, from the main story missions that start to unravel the tale of the various Vampire Gods rampaging around the island town to the mini quests that aim to unlock the backstories of the citizens of Redfall. Additionally, throughout the world are unlockables to uncover, such as Grave Lockets which you can collect that peel back layers of the story.
Safehouses also need to be liberated and can act as respawn points when you die or places to fast travel to, though the map feels rather small at first. The second map, which gets unlocked about ten hours into the experience, is much larger. These safehouses have missions that need to be completed such as stopping a radio broadcast nearby to dealing with a deluge of cultists trying to spawn a special Vampire variant.
Each neighborhood needs to be secured from a Vampire underboss as well, a special named Vampire that is more powerful than the normal Vampires that prowl Redfall. Once defeated, these bosses drop Skulls which are used to unlock the final Vampire God boss of the area.
In addition to these activities, there are also Vampire nests to deal with, which reward you with a ton of incredible loot upon completion. These pockets of psychic reality provide a formidable challenge, and each one has been rather fun to seek out and destroy. While these seem meant to be procedural, I've uncovered a few linear vampire nests that ended up being almost identical in their layout, kind of ruining the illusion a bit.
However, Vampires are more powerful here and they keep the pressure on me as I waded through them. Death is a certainty, though Redfall's death penalties are rather minor in that you only lose a bit of the curency you collect through your travels. Otherwise enemies still have the damage you've dealt to them in place, making each successive encounter easier after a while.
We’ve still got some story to finish up in our review before we render a final verdict on this one. However, after fifteen hours in Redfall, if one word could sum up my experience, it all feels a bit unfinished. From lackluster cutscenes, characters that don’t feel like they have a ton of depth, to game mechanics that just feel like they are missing crucial elements, Redfall probably could have used more time to incubate.
We’ll have our full review later this week.
Full Disclosure: A copy of this title was provided by PR for the purposes of this review. Reviewed on PC.
