Yes, really everything. The developers complain that even their colleagues rudely ridicule them. Now the passions for Redfall have already subsided, Microsoft itself does not mention the game, online it tends to zero, and after the release of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum (which we will also talk about later), it has ceased to be the worst game of the year. It’s time to take stock – to figure out if everything is so bad with Redfall, and why everyone took up arms against her.
Yes, Redfall is absolutely terrible in almost every way.
The game is so bad that there is nothing to disassemble in it. I originally wanted to write lyrics in the “how to enjoy it” kind of thing, like I once did with Marvel’s Avengers. But I really don’t know how. I made my way through the game.
What is done well in Redfall? It has a couple of nice locations and some nice looking guns. Sometimes, for a moment, the atmosphere of the creepy-cozy American wilderness suddenly intensifies, reminiscent of Alan Wake and Stephen King. That’s all.
What’s wrong with Redfall? All the rest. From the monstrously poor art design, which seemed to be done by a neural network, to the basic gameplay. The problem is not at all that Arkane, famous for its immersive sims, suddenly decided to make a service looter shooter. The trouble is that it turned out to be a very bad looter shooter, in which it is not fun even in the company of friends – and this is an achievement. In Redfall, there is useless shooting, boring identical enemies, not inspiring to grind loot, empty sides and lots and lots of stupid running around and looking for needles in haystacks.
The Redfall level is, at best, the most unfortunate pass-through expansions for Far Cry. Yes, and there was more fantasy. At the same time, the game pushes and puffs, trying to seem story-driven and immersive, which creates a very pathetic picture.
So the first reason why Redfall is criticized so fiercely and dirty is that it really is that bad. Redfall is like Gojira putting out an album of Bee Gees covers. But not in my own style, but in the style of the Bee Gees, but with a couple of sudden solos somewhere in Stayin’ Alive. At the same time, the disc would have been released without mixing, on absolutely serious cabbage soup, and the musicians would have played all the instruments with their feet. Drunk and blindfolded.
Redfall is unfinished and feels like an alpha version
The game runs on Xbox Series X (we’re not talking about S at all) only at 30 FPS, which does not prevent it from bugging, slowing down, loading textures for several minutes and constantly slowing down, as if the engine hiccups. On PC, it has obscenely high system requirements and still the same problems, but at least it looks better there. Although in general it looks like something from the PS3 era anyway.
The artificial intelligence in Redfall is completely broken: the enemies either run under the bullets like a train, or they don’t notice the hero (if they don’t get stuck in the fence again at all). In addition to this, there are a lot of very funny jambs, like random objects sticking out of each other. Usually this is a trifle, but not in the case of Redfall, where this catches the eye every ten minutes from the very beginning of the game, as if the locations were collected just for fuck off.
There is a minimum of content in Redfall, and what is there is an insipid repetition of the same elementary ideas. It’s not even Ubisoft level. Bring this, bring that, clear the cave. And run-run-run across the map. You can go on and on about it, but the bottom line is that right now the game looks more like an alpha version, if not a prototype with stubs at all. “Proof of concept”, and that one is so-so. We always condemn such things, but now, when the problems with unfinished games are especially acute, we especially condemn them. And not only us – this is also an important reason for the “harassment” of Redfall. But the game was postponed for almost a year. What was there in 2022 when it was supposed to come out?
Redfall is not an indie, but a AAA game from a respected experienced studio
In 2021, Biomutant was released – a complex, fairly expected and overly ambitious game. It turned out deliciously bad, but there was no powerful wave of hate, because we are talking about five minutes of indie. Ten people tried to make AAA open world, well, it happens. The studio did not have such a noticeable backing, everything is natural.
With Arkane, the situation is different. The studio is ancient, the studio is eminent and experienced. Their games have never been commercial hits, but in narrow circles they are cult. The studio set the bar for quality a long time ago and methodically strengthened it. Even the dubious (but come to us) Deathloop didn’t particularly shake the credibility of Arkane among fans and just anglers. And here comes Redfall, made at the level of the Polish shooter of the mid-noughties.
Since, for example, Dishonored 2 or Prey, there has obviously been some kind of turnover in Arkane. But we did not see a massive outflow of personnel, as a result of which, under the old signboard, a new studio would actually be formed, assembled from newcomers, we did not see. The departure of Arkane co-founder Rafael Calantonio could not but affect the studio at all, but the creative director of Redfall was actually no less cool Harvey Smith, whom we know from working on the same Dishonored and Prey. And even Deus Ex! What excuses could there be?
The game was promoted in a very strange way
Firstly, we were directly lied to that despite the co-op and looter mechanics, this is still “the same Arkane game”. By “thus” is meant immersiveness, a deep study of the history and world of the game. The developers talked about this, as trailers tried to highlight the game, journalists repeated this idea in preview materials.
In fact, we got a template crumpled story without any memorable characters, filed by crooked static “comics” on the engine. Something of the level of mobile phones “with a claim.” Well, there are tons of notes from immersive sims and the need to probe huge locations over and over again in search of items needed for further advancement. However, formally, if the quest led to the building, then it will certainly be possible to get into it in several ways. If that’s enough to call it an immersive sim, then Redfall is an immersive sim.
The second deception: the developers claimed that the game is comfortable to play alone, co-op is optional. In fact, you can go through the game solo, but its entire balance is sharpened only for co-op. This also applies to the complexity and abilities of the characters, which are not disclosed separately at all. But no one bothers to read the notes.
As a result, few people believed that Redfall would have something from the previous Arkane. There is nothing. But it’s still kind of embarrassing. If the positioning of the game was clearer and more straightforward from the very beginning, enough for the developers of the eggs to say: “Yeah, this time, fuck immersive sims, we want to make a co-op wanker”, the degree of hate, at least a bit, would decrease.
Redfall is unfortunate enough to become a symbol of player frustration in Xbox politics
We all remember what a gun the Xbox 360 was. And we all remember what a misunderstanding the Xbox “TV Sports Call of Duty” One was under Don Mattrick, almost burying the entire brand. But then Phil Spencer, who fucked everything up, came along, made the Xbox great again, piled on the game pass and backwards compatibility. Under him, Microsoft again began to buy studios and develop big games. But where are these games?
While Sony and Nintendo bombard their followers with top-notch exclusives, Microsoft is just pushing. But she already has a million studios under her wing, and the purchase of the entire Bethesda (which includes Arkane) for $ 7.5 billion in 2021 is not bullshit. But noticeable exhaust is still zero. 2022 has been so empty of games for Microsoft that it’s become a meme. In 2023, it is also completely calm, and only the messiah-Starfield looms somewhere on the horizon, but so far too far. And for her, as from Redfall, Bethesda is responsible.
In the gap between the maximum annoyance of the audience due to the lack of big releases on Xbox and the release of Starfield, Redfall pleased. And naturally she thwarted the reaction in the spirit of “And this is what we were waiting for? And this is the greatness of the Xbox? It’s simple: if the stream of hits from Microsoft was stable, no one would pay so much attention to one failure. Let it happen at such a respected studio. The excuses of Phil Spencer, who said that he was upset by the failure of Redfall and took the blame, added fuel to the fire, overlooked, did not help, but the studio had complete creative control over the game – they did what they wanted. And in general, on the test runs, Redfall was generally praised, that’s the trouble. With Starfield, this, by the way, will definitely not happen!
Questions from the audience arose to the management of Microsoft, and personally to Phil Spencer, and to the leaders of Bethesda, and to the developers from Arkane. There were tests, there were transfers, everyone saw what was happening, but they continued to do it and even released it. How is this possible? And how could the platform be so launched? How could it be possible to release such a bad game on the most important dates for the image of the console, and even position it as luhari-AAA for 70 euros? The questions are still rhetorical, if we find out about the inside of this story, it will not be soon, but the whole point is precisely in it. But these questions were able to warm up the audience, and the rage just spilled over into the game.
There is no moral to this story, it hasn’t even ended yet. I will only note that it is still too early to give up on Arkane – even cool studios sometimes release shit, let’s be direct. A crisis of ideas, leadership, money, burnout or a sudden snowfall in Texas – the reasons are not so important. It is important that judging by one failure is not very reasonable.
Redfall deservedly stammered. But in her case, all the stars just aligned. In another situation, it would burn far less brightly and would be forgotten faster. But the history of the gaming industry Redfall will definitely remember.
Loading bodies. How Arkane Studios developed immersive sim
