Redfall’s greatest failure wasn’t its rough launch, its empty open world, or its tacked-on loot/progression system – although those things certainly didn’t help – Redfall’s greatest failure was a failure of imagination. On a conceptual level, a mechanical level and a visual level, this is a game built piecemeal from borrowed materials, a hastily-assembled Jenga tower of tired FPS formulas poised to collapse at any moment. Contrary to what some reviewers have said, Redfall, even at launch, is a functional co-op shooter, but that’s all it is – functional. Its systems do not produce dynamic play, its characters do not produce dynamic drama, its location does not produce dynamic set pieces. It is the back-of-the-box bullet-list from a Far Cry game remodeled as The Next Arkane Experience; it’s the video game equivalent of Studio Ghibli making a sequel to Pixar’s Cars 3.
What makes it all so heartbreaking is that Redfall isn’t a terrible game; it’s a mess of systems failing to interact with one another. But outside of the loot system, every other design element has something there, something worth the effort. The combat, weapon design, enemy design and level design are vibrating with unfulfilled potential, begging to be expanded upon or placed in a different, better game. You can feel that while Redfall might lack imagination, it’s not because of a lack of talent on the developer’s part. Rather, you can viscerally feel the suppression of the developers’ talents and instincts, quest lines that, had the characters been granted the opportunity to grow and change in the way characters in Prey were able to grow and change, would’ve made an impact.
The good stuff is there, buried deep beneath the FPS market trends that dominate the game. Just look at the Redfall’s cast of playable characters and you’ll see what I mean. We’ve got three misses and one hit. In the misses category: a Call of Duty soldier with a knockoff R2-D2, a grimdark PMC sniper with a pet raven, a stereotypical engineer character – boring, boring, boring. But then, there’s Layla, the telekinetic wunderkind who can summon her vampiric ex-boyfriend in battle, and whose student loan woes simply do not stop, even during the vampire apocalypse.
You play as Layla and you think, ‘oh – here's what Redfall was supposed to be. There’s the Arkane magic.’ In another world, this whole game would’ve been Redfall: The Adventures of Layla. It would’ve been single-player, its narrative could unfold under the auspices of narrative structure rather than in fits and spurts following repeatable in-game junk missions, its world could’ve accommodated these things called ‘subtlety’ and ‘good pacing.’ And it would’ve kicked ass. Redfall isn’t that game, but like Layla, bits of that game shine through now and again.
What makes it all so heartbreaking is that Redfall isn’t a terrible game; it’s a mess of systems failing to interact with one another. But outside of the loot system, every other design element has something there, something worth the effort. The combat, weapon design, enemy design and level design are vibrating with unfulfilled potential, begging to be expanded upon or placed in a different, better game. You can feel that while Redfall might lack imagination, it’s not because of a lack of talent on the developer’s part. Rather, you can viscerally feel the suppression of the developers’ talents and instincts, quest lines that, had the characters been granted the opportunity to grow and change in the way characters in Prey were able to grow and change, would’ve made an impact.
The good stuff is there, buried deep beneath the FPS market trends that dominate the game. Just look at the Redfall’s cast of playable characters and you’ll see what I mean. We’ve got three misses and one hit. In the misses category: a Call of Duty soldier with a knockoff R2-D2, a grimdark PMC sniper with a pet raven, a stereotypical engineer character – boring, boring, boring. But then, there’s Layla, the telekinetic wunderkind who can summon her vampiric ex-boyfriend in battle, and whose student loan woes simply do not stop, even during the vampire apocalypse.
You play as Layla and you think, ‘oh – here's what Redfall was supposed to be. There’s the Arkane magic.’ In another world, this whole game would’ve been Redfall: The Adventures of Layla. It would’ve been single-player, its narrative could unfold under the auspices of narrative structure rather than in fits and spurts following repeatable in-game junk missions, its world could’ve accommodated these things called ‘subtlety’ and ‘good pacing.’ And it would’ve kicked ass. Redfall isn’t that game, but like Layla, bits of that game shine through now and again.