Redfall for Xbox Series S and pc Reviews

Abomination is the best way to describe Arkin Studio’s new creation. For a product that is not even produced at the most extensive and expensive scale of the computer game industry (AAA scale), a thousand lies are lined up to market it and finally sell it. For the price of 70 dollars, there is no better word than this.
Do you remember that Redfall was initially introduced as an utterly story-oriented work with the legacy of Arkin Studio’s previous works, such as Dishonored and Prey? At the beginning of the review, Redfall is a work in the Luther-Shooter genre. The advertisements around its focus on story aspects and the “immersive-sim” genre were a series of empty advertising promises. Redfall narrates the story of an island that, following the greed and passion of some of the doctors present to reach a unique formula to find a cure for all diseases and cases of this kind, has now fallen into the hands of a handful of vampires. In fact, by conducting a series of unsuccessful experiments on themselves and other humans, these doctors prepare the conditions for the evolution of humans and their transformation into vampires. Now, it’s up to you to save Redfall by destroying the leader of the vampires called the Vampire Gods.
This is the story’s main plot; without exaggeration, Redfall’s story has no unique complexity. If you have experienced Luther-Shooter games, storytelling in this style of games is never the main focus, and Redfall is precisely the same. Of course, you probably thought about how products such as Destiny and The Division series, which are shooters, tell good stories and have correct world-building. First, yes, you are right. These products tell stories very well in the same Luther-shooter and cutscene/text-oriented framework, and they have masterfully laid the background and richness of their stories. Do you know what the issue is? The problem is that Redfall needs to learn his duty. It never knows if it is an entirely single-player game or a looter-shooter. This has resulted in a wholly sloppy and sloppy narrative. Redfall is not and will not be the first uncertain product in recent years.

Why is Redfall’s storytelling disappointing? This is because the mentioned work was introduced to the players as a game on the scale of products such as Disenred, Deathloop, and Prey, which centered on basic storytelling. Redfall, however, can only meet these expectations if its storytelling is limited to playing a series of cutscenes and some simple writing. If we had known since the introduction of Redfall that we would encounter a Luther-Shooter product, we would have lowered our expectations and been more satisfied.
There are no specific principles for telling the story in Redfall, no unique twist or payoff to the characters, and no robust world-building is involved. The world of Redfall, like its other parts, had a very high potential to become a gothic atmosphere. Unfortunately, this potential has never been fully and correctly used. The efforts of the creators to create a comprehensive story richness (Lore) in Redfall, such as placing sound and text files in the corners of the map, have never been enough to remain fruitless. The game introduces different characters to the player. Still, like most online shooters, these characters stay as a Quest Giver and only explain the missions to you.

After Gotham Nights, the “live-service” cancer has now taken over.

Is Suicide Squad the next victim of this disease?

It might be interesting to know that the game’s main characters (Jacob, Leila, Davinder, and Remi) have much better writing and dialogue than all the characters in the story. Overall, the dialogue writing in the game is well done. They are very superficial characters that even the player does not remember their names. As we mentioned earlier, Redfall tries to tell a story by relying on the same cutscenes and written explanations for each stage, but also for players to have an excuse to be active in the world of the work. Do you know where the painful part is? Scenes like the stage of infiltrating Edison’s building are so interesting from the point of view of the story and the design of the stage, and it cleanly implements the form of the narrative of Arkin Studio that your expectations of the game will rise, but in the later stages, again day after day. It’s the same undecided product. Is the production team lazy? Has the intervention of the publisher led to such a result? We will never get the answer to this question. Ah, what potentials Redfall has lost. Can we consider such a work a legacy of Arkin’s previous works?

Redfall is an open-world looter-shooter that aims to be an “immersive-sim” style of stage design. In Immersive-sim games, the player is never limited in facing challenges such as opening a door, breaking into a particular place, eliminating enemies, and more. It is his creativity that paves the way to reach his goal. For example, in Prey, you can enter a locked room with several options. You can pull the door, bypass it, and if you have upgraded your strength and arm, you can enter the desired area by removing the large boxes blocking the side paths and hacking the door. , you can enter that environment from the jetpack and through the hole in the roof, you can break the window and enter, you can make a ladder for yourself with a glue gun and in advanced ways and thousands of other ways. Enter the desired environment. All-in-one sim games like Prey, Discord series, Deus X series, etc., whose gameplay and scene design are all done by Harvey Smith (creative director of Redfall) and his team, are products whose system-oriented gameplay is in the hands of the player. Their creativity allowed them to go as they wished. Because of this, the experience of a top-notch immersive sim game is genuinely delicious.

As we mentioned in the Redfall preview, this work was created by Harvey Smith and his team. As a result, it was naturally expected that Redfall’s scene design would be as deep and enjoyable as his previous creations, leading to the creation of the Immersive-sim genre (Smith and Warren Spector created this style with products like Deux X). Unfortunately, the gameplay base of Redfall lacks the creative and deep structure of Arkin’s previous products. It breaks all the rules and frameworks of this team’s game design. Before discussing Redfall’s gameplay, consider Arkin Studio’s principles in designing an immersive sim. These principles formed the framework of the previous games of this team.

• The existence of multiple paths: sandbox spaces with various entrances in vertical and horizontal positions and crawling areas.
• Existence of intriguing puzzles: possible challenges that can be solved; Not one of these single-solution challenges about opening locked doors and finding a specific key.
• Say yes to the player: If the player has an exciting solution they find fun, let them pursue it.
• Biological interaction and ecology: AI/enemies must interact with each other so that the player can discover the secrets of these interactions and use them to his advantage.
• Dynamic Environmental Hazards: Players and enemies must adapt to environmental changes—the increasing population of enemies, cosmic rays, zero gravity, and more.
• Simulated worlds: The game world and the creatures inside it individually follow the systems and rules that have been built for them, and according to these rules, they form specific behaviors. The methods that the player can take advantage of.
• Space Black Hole: Players must survive a confined and dangerous space.
• Dramatic Storytelling: The narrative framework of missions, story twists, characters, and all story consequences should have a dramatic feel. 
• The purposefulness of details: providing the player with information about various situations and allowing the audience to plan how to solve the puzzles/challenges.
• Believability while presenting a science fiction story: Futuristic environments must be convincing and coherent, with A thoughtful, believable, and surprising balance.
• Clarity: The game world should be transparent so the audience can navigate it easily.
• Curse the ladders (!): If you try to jump down from somewhere, you will be killed first and last. So, never mind the ladders. 
• Spending initiative: Players like to be innovative. Let them try different paths and create solutions by relying on the existing systems in the game.
• Consequences: Players make significant decisions, Decisions that will have their own emotional or mechanism-based (gameplay) consequences. 
• Environmental Storytelling: By relying on ecological components, invite the player to participate in the narration of a story while being a spectator. 
• Density and interactivity of objects: This makes the world of the work convey the feeling of being interactive and full of details to the player. 
• Kill Patterns: Players love to be surprised. Avoid repetition in the design of events and story components. 
• Mood: All the details of the game must convey a particular emotional attitude to the audience. 
• Environment Evolution: Allow the player to return to previous environments. Environments that have become more complete and changed over time.
• Specialization: No character should be great at everything.

Thanks to the atmospherics and map design, exploring Redfall looks attractive.

There are four different characters in Redfall, each with unique abilities. Jacob can become invisible and mark enemies with the help of his crow, Davinder can dry vampires with the help of an x-ray device and emit UV rays, Leila can use magical powers, and Remy fights vampires with the help of his robot. Thanks to the variety of skills of each character, you can advance the fight in Redfall from different paths. The characters’ power only leaves the player’s hands open in battles. Because it is possible to go in the primary and secondary stages only from the main path that the manufacturer intended, the repetitive structure of Redfall’s side missions will tire you sooner than you think. The game has different areas; in each room, you must free a safe house from vampires and human forces that worship vampires. Each of these houses has two specific side missions. Activities such as attacking a human base and killing a certain number of vampires form the basis of Redfall’s side missions. By copying and pasting various components of side missions, the game accelerates the process of their repetition. For example, sometimes two different [example] side missions are placed in front of you in precisely the exact duplicate location and with the same task descriptions (copied/pasted).
If you are satisfied with the repetition of side missions, let me tell you that the game forces you to complete side missions and get a series of unique items to advance the main tasks and face its bosses. Otherwise, the game will not let you meet the vampire gods and move the story. We’ve seen something like this before in Gotham Knights, which made obtaining certain items conditional on completing its tedious side missions. Boss fights are also exciting in their own way. There is no particular challenge when facing them. The bosses are a series of sponges you need to empty a handful of bullets into to make them disappear. The use of copy/paste of various components of side missions and pouring a large number of different vampires on the player during boss fights shows not only the lack of creativity and laziness of the production team but also their efforts to prolong these battles only to bore the player and get bored. It leads to his becoming. Unfortunately, there is nothing to entertain the player in Redfall.

Speaking of boss fights, you might be interested to know that fighting normal vampires is much more challenging than fighting bosses. Battles with vampires form the most exciting part of the combat in Redfall. These creatures have a good variety and follow different fighting patterns. Enemies are generally divided into two types: vampires and humans. Humans are not exceptionally diverse, but vampires are divided into categories such as normal vampires, Angler-type vampires, Siphon-type vampires, and more, each with its fighting pattern. Since the vampires do not hide behind the trenches during the fight, artificial intelligence is not defined for them, and if there is no particular technical bug, the battle with them is entirely normal and attractive. On the other hand, we have the human type that is positively influenced by the feeble artificial intelligence of the game and shows strange behaviors. 

You can experience Redfall online with several other people. The Redfall experience online could be fun. The experience of all the games in the world, online and with friends, definitely has its entertainment. Still, Redfall is also unsuccessful in this sector. During the Redfall online experience, the game’s story goes forward only for the host and is saved. The people who are added to the game to accompany that person must go through all the stages that accompany him because the progress in the game is written only in the host’s name. Redfall must use a proper framework for saving player progress, even in single-player mode. The save mechanism of the gamer’s progress, or Save, is activated only after completing a quest. If you are killed in the middle of experiencing a stage, the game will return you to the game from the nearest Safe House because, in the game, something called Checkpoint is defined. It has yet to be. That is, how incomplete and unthought-out a product should be offered to be useless even from a simple checkpoint system?

Redfall will become a regular looter-shooter game if the technical issues are ironed out.

From the point of view of sound, music, and visual effects, we are dealing with a strange product. First, let’s talk about the artistic aspects of the work. Fortunately, Redfall’s voice acting and music are first-class and attractive. The thing about Redfall is that this product’s art and technical departments were located on two completely different planets and worked on this work. As much as the game is high-quality and sound from an artistic point of view, from a technical point of view, it’s like we are dealing with that premature baby of the PT game that was born so early that it resembled a disgusting monster. Jongnic Bontemps has prepared the soundtrack of Redfall as a composer. The combination of gothic and atmospheric sounds with musical effects and hip-hop beats has created an extraordinary and attractive output, directly influencing the formation of the remarkable atmosphere of Redfall Island. 

In terms of artwork, Redfall has all the DNA of Steve Arkin’s previous works, from the painted cutscenes that have precisely the mood of the painted cutscenes of Deathloop and Disorder 2 to the cartoon/gothic characters that, combined with the music, created an exceptional mood for Redfall. Even the user interface of Redfall has precisely the same beautiful and colorful image of this studio’s works from an artistic point of view. These things, along with the attractive gunplay of the game, will make exploring the island attractive to you. Still, unfortunately, the game can only attract you so far. It will respond to your enthusiasm with technical and content problems.
But let’s get to the technical part. From a technical point of view, Redfall is not a perfect product. Redfall has never been fully developed, and currently, we cannot call it a “game.” Textures not loading, wrong shaders, completely ineffective artificial intelligence, strange user interface bugs, multiple crashes, lack of a framework for the save system, eccentric frame drops, and thousands of other things that make the Redfall experience. I Never recommend it to anyone. Although the game was surprisingly made available to players with a frame rate of 30, the frame rate is usually lower than 30.