Our first impression of redfall (opens in new tab)the next game from Dishonored studio Arkane, it was a Left 4 Dead style shooter (opens in new tab) who trades zombies for vampires. In a new interview with GamesRadar (opens in new tab)However, creative director Ricardo Bare and studio director Harvey Smith said this is really not an accurate assessment.
“It’s totally understandable for someone to come to that conclusion,” Bare said. “There are four playable characters, you can play together and you can take on the undead. But in terms of how you play and experience Redfall, it’s not like those games at all. Redfall is more like loading into Far Cry.”
At its core, Left 4 Dead and other similar games – Warhammer 40K: Darktide, Deep Rock Galactic and Turtle Rock Studios’ L4D spiritual successor Back 4 Blood – are a frantic race through a series of linear levels brimming with hordes of “infected” of various species. The only goal is survival, and speed and efficiency are paramount. Redfall, on the other hand, takes place in an open world and offers both story-driven missions and immersive sim-style exploration.
“You’re in a huge open world,” Bare said. “We have a home base where you can talk to NPCs and get side quests. You can go to the quest table and pick up story driven missions. Or you don’t care at all and just go out, pick a direction, start donkey hauling and run into the things of the living world that we are doing.
“Big-ass open world” is relative: Redfall will presumably be bigger than, say, Deathloop’s Blackreef or Prey’s Talos 1, but probably much smaller than those of Ubisoft’s Far Cry games. But the smaller scale will hopefully make for a denser and more interesting game world, offset somewhat by the fact that Redfall won’t have any vehicles.
“Redfall is a game on foot — the scale and pace have slowed down a bit in that regard,” said Bare. “We want you to crawl through a cornfield at night in the fog, hear vampires whispering in the dark. You might see a farmhouse in the distance and sneak over to it, only to discover it’s full of cult members and a few trapped survivors. who you can save. That’s the kind of vibe Redfall has.”
Honestly, I’m a little dubious about Redfall. Not because I don’t like shooters (although the Left 4 Dead series never got me much), but because Arkane is wasted on them. It should make new and better immersive sims (for heaven’s sake, I’ve waited long enough for Arx Fatalis 2), not try the magic of Turtle Rock (opens in new tab) or Ubisoft. This interview has made me a little more interested: I’m still not completely sold, but I’m open to being convinced.
“Redfall sometimes feels like what you’d get if you combined Arkane’s creative values with Far Cry 2 or Stalker,” said Smith. “That’s something we’ve wanted to do for a long time.”
Redfall still has no release date, but is currently expected to release sometime in the first half of 2023.