Redfall, the preview with all the information on the new Arkane game
Redfall
He wanted to be Microsoft's hunchback to close his already excellent conference, yet despite the commitment Redfall did not make us leave fully satisfied. The intent was to greet the fans with a new and unexpected surprise, but the surge of enthusiasm culminated in perhaps the weakest segment, like that dedicated to Halo Infinite, of an at times exciting conference.But it's too early to bandage your head: let's discover Redfall in our preview!
Pedigree
Redfall: have you already chosen who to choose to fight the game's vampires? We are still talking about the new game Arkane Studios, the same as Prey and the two extraordinary Dishonored. If these masterpieces have not reached their sales targets there must be a reason, in short, the blame cannot be totally discharged on the shoulders of the less receptive public to novelties. Let's start with the problems: after a full gameplay conference, it was not the best to go back to a video from which nothing shines through the game played.Let's talk about a nice long movie, and yet despite the abundant minutes, what did we understand about this Redfall? Rhetorical question, since we already have the answer: nothing. Another fluctuating aspect is in the design of the characters, a weak point that the software house has been carrying around for some time and that in Redfall seems only partially resolved, with only half the cast, between good and bad, able to really pierce the screen.
Mysterious origins
Redfall: friends, companions, survivors, hunters ... Little curiosity before returning to talk about the game Arkane: the name Redfall had already emerged two years ago, as copyright recorded by Bethesda. At the time, everyone thought that this would be the subtitle of the new Elder Scrolls, given the assonance with the redguards, warrior sailors originally from the Hammerfell desert and former protagonists of the 1998 spin-off of the same name, which among other things is also the first game Todd Howard edited as project leader.Today we finally discovered the truth, and there is nothing left to do but find out what game this Redfall will be, of which, as mentioned, very little was leaked through the conference but on which Microsoft has drawn up a document full of information .
The hunting season
Redfall: ready for the vampire hunt? Let's start from the basics: clearly Redfall is a first person shooter, therefore in the first person, focused on cooperation despite the fact that you can also play alone. We can only assume, as well as hope, the presence of a plot with a beginning, of course, and an end, which these days it is good not to take for granted. In short, it could really be a game up to Dishonored, in terms of content and progression, but also open to multiplayer. In addition to being the title of this new project, Redfall is also the name of the island, off the coast of Massachusetts, in which the game is set.Right here, a legion of cursed vampires has obscured the sun and, we copy and paste from the official documentation, "has cut off the lines of communication with the outside world". An excellent expedient to justify the situation in which the protagonists will find themselves, unable to ask for help outside the island, but ready for everyone to save the hostage population from the diabolical horde. Redfall Island was designed by the same people who designed Prey's amazing Talos 1 orbiting station, as well as Dishonored's Dunwall capital.
One stake for every two fangs
Redfall: vampires or experiments gone terribly wrong? Unlike the classic vampires seen and reviewed, read and reread, through hundreds of films and books, those of Redfall do not have a fictional origin, they are instead the result of a scientific experiment that went terribly wrong. This choice perhaps strips them in part of their indisputable charm, but it allows the developers to offer the gameplay different variations that would not make sense against the classic bloodsuckers.In Redfall we will therefore find creatures of different sizes capable of exploiting different abilities that usually we would not find in a similar context. However, players will also have to face humans, often armed, who have decided to marry the horrible cause of vampires.
A hero a day ...
Redfall: vampires, crazed humans and monstrous mutations ... it will be difficult to get bored! To win this battle, each user will have to choose his hero, which are four as the maximum number of players who can participate in a match at the same time, each with exclusive weapons, skills and equipment.There is Devinder Crousley, an investigator of the paranormal who uses only and exclusively weapons of his own invention; Layla Ellison, a biomedical engineer who gained telekinetic powers thanks to university experiments; then it is the turn of Remi De La Rosa, a female soldier used to fighting on the front line with the help of a robotic assistant called Bribon; finally here is Jacob Boyer, an army sharpshooter who, due to the vampiric invasion, has gained a magic eye and a ghostly crow that never leaves him.
If you notice, the union of the characteristics of all these characters leads straight to the protagonists of the past games of Arkane that in Redfall have been broken up in order to offer four distinct personalities, whose union will make the proverbial strength.
Little is known about the rest, that is if there will be other characters, how the levels are structured, if there will be a progression of skills or an asynchronous multiplayer, with some players playing vampires. In other words, understand if there are echoes of Left4Dead, CoD's Zombie mode or some other game on the market.
Or whether Arkane, once again, will choose a very personal and authorial approach to these games.
Xbox and Bethesda were certainly wrong to show it that way during the conference, but Redfall has a lot of potential. The game is expected in the summer of 2022 on Xbox Series X, Series S and of course on PC. It goes without saying that we will find it immediately available on Xbox GamePass as well.
