Redfall - Review
The sun is broken, vampires are everywhere, cultists are trying to kill you and secret mercenary agents are trying to cover it all up. Redfall sure is an exciting town.
Redfall is the newest game from the powerhouse developer Arkane. Coming off the heels of their incredibly successful Deathloop, Redfall has some very big shoes to fill. Taking a leap off the traditional direction of hyper unrealistic reality, Redfall goes right into the jaws of its underworld nastiness. Vampires are everywhere, the very ocean itself is frozen into an encapsulating wall, and there are whispers in your head at all times. The true question you might be asking is if Redfall does itself justice with this hyper-stylised co-op oriented FPS? The answer? Yes and no.
There are somethings that Redfall does well, and there is a lot of things it misses the mark on. Visual style, this is very Arkane. Hyper over saturated designs with an almost comic book feeling, without the over the top cell shading. The vampires are over-sized, with limbs far too long, and oddly proportioned. Fingers that turn into sharp pointy claws, features reminiscent of the featured Dracula, with a mouth full of razor blades for teeth. The design choice on the basic Vampires, and by extension the speciality vampires is stellar. This extends to the main characters who all have an incredibly unique style and look to them, and truly stand out as the JoJo-esque protagonists they are meant to be. Unfortunately, a game designed to be experienced in a day night cycle, with far longer periods of night, obscuring mist and enemies that will actually put you into a world of darkness, limits how much time you get to see the world around you. The world is designed beautifully, and accentuates the vampire aesthetic with harsh reds, purples and oranges. But lacks the oversight to make it visually distinct enough to have you wanting to see all of it. Redfall is unfortunately very samey looking, which is incredibly unfortunate with the direction they take in what the vampires are able to do with distorting reality.
Gameplay-wise, Redfall is your standard FPS colour-coded action shooter. You’ll scrounge the environment for upgrades to your weapons, toilet paper and whiskey that sells for money, pearl necklaces that are worth less than scented candles, you know all that jazz. There is an inherent scrounging aspect, that only feels totally necessary because of how often you’ll be needing to find fresh medical supplies, ammo, or scrounging money together because you’ve been molly whopped by a group of two vampires that turned into six or seven, too quickly. The game also has very much been scaled around the idea of playing with another friend or three. The ideal experience is supposedly with one other person, but as the co-op appeared to be invite only, I didn’t get to experience a lot of this aspect. Which would have gone a long way in making the game more enjoyable, as some of the encounters solo, on just the middle difficulty were absolutely brutal. Particularly the vampire nests, which are bit of a mess in and of themselves, where you’ll likely be confronted with upwards of eight or nine vampires at the same time. They can teleport behind you, do huge chunks of damage and require you to stake them to put them down permanently, the game is incredibly unforgiving for the solo player. Which is a shame, as the gameplay and story feel designed to be enjoyed at your own pace, by yourself. Yet the game itself does not lend to this.
The upside to playing with a friend, is you can drown out the repetitive nature of the character lines. In the twenty hours of cultist head popping, vampire staking and mercenary upsetting I played, I would say that my chosen hero, Layla, informed me that she got the vampire dust in her mouth, at least twenty times an hour. I understand restrictive nature of voice lines, and wanting the character to interact with you as you play. Yet there is a fine line to be walked. The characters talk too much, but they never have anything interesting to say. It was amusing the first handful of times, but twenty hours in, I would think Layla would have something more interesting to say that ‘I think I got their dust in my mouth’. This is highlighted further with the ambient conversations you can come across listening to people in the main mission hubs, or the safehouses. People have a wildly varied slew of conversation starters, ways of greeting, or topics to be discussed between each other. Yet the character you spend the most time listening to, has the least variety and nuance overall.
On the note of the heroes themselves, your four heroes, whilst interesting in theory and with different reactions and interactions with the world and the story are somewhat stopped at the knees. Each character has three abilities, two general and one ultimate ability. Of the four heroes Jacob, Layla, Devinder and Remi, three are designed for solo play, with Remi very much feeling like a co-op support character. Of the three remaining, only Layla really has a set of abilities that have any major impact. Devinder seems like he should have been designed as the ‘tank’ style character but has a kit around environmental hazards and teleporting. This leaves the selections as, Jacob being your scout, Layla as your psychic support type helping traverse and protect from bullets, with Devinder and Remi both being support types. Three support types and a scout isn’t the greatest distribution of roles, particularly when their abilities within themselves are lacklustre. Layla can summon a psychic umbrella that blocks and reflects bullets. A psychic lift that gives you a high jump, and her ultimate allows her to summon her Vampire Ex-Boyfriend to put out some major damage on the enemies. Unfortunately, even with an upgraded time ability for her ultimate, Jason the Vampire ex, will maybe get five or six hits in before leaving. If the ability is going to be so short-lived it should be far more impactful than it is. This extends to the other heroes as well, who also suffer from underwhelming abilities and ultimates that are far too short to be overly useful. There is this sole focus on collaborative play but forsakes those who enjoy playing by themselves for that.
Thankfully, the story in Redfall is quite solid. It’s nothing too out there but takes the traditional vampire tropes and twists them in an interesting way. There are vampire gods who are being worshiped by cultists. People who have influenced and caused Redfall to become the way it is, and in turn are responsible for the destruction and death that is happening. The sun itself has been eclipsed and even during the day, it appears to be broken. There is an overarching plot of medical malpractice, familial abuse and ignorance in the pursuit of ‘perfection’ and ‘ascension’. Personal gain above all else and at the expense of an entire town, and it up to you to try and fix things and put them right. There is a slew of side quests that all interweave with the main narrative perfectly. Connecting you to the other survivors in meaningful and human ways. A nurse who is afraid of dying, risking everything to go and save a woman who is about to give birth, without any fear. Betrayals of loved ones, in hopes of surviving the murderous rampage of the vampires. A deeper, hidden secret exposed by collectible audio files that reward you with benefits. There is a strong story here, that is unfortunately overshadowed by areas that needed a little more polish.
Redfall is a solid game, with a good idea of what it wants to achieve. The vampires and variety of them is solid, and their designs are wonderful. The world feels somewhat full, yet hollow at the same time, as a lot of things can be ignored in place of progressing the story. Co-op gameplay has been put at the fore-front without any thought given to those who would prefer to play by themselves, and in turn made sections of gameplay impossibly difficult. There is a solid foundation here, but there needs to be more work done to fix some glaring issues in how the game is played. Redfall has potential, but it is far too reliant on a story that could have been told in a style that Arkane has done in the past with much greater success.
The Score
6.5
Review code provided by Bethesda
The Pros
+Great designs for the bosses and vampires
+Gunplay feels good when you aren’t overwhelmed
+Story is enjoyable and the twists thought out
The Cons
-Single-player gameplay forgotten in place of co-op
-Tortorously difficult at times when playing solo
-Performance issues
-Underwhelming ability kits for the heroes
