I remember the first time I tried cooking chicken on my own. Having watched an episode of Hell's Kitchen earlier that day, I received a spark of motivation to finally try my hand at making fried chicken. An excellent idea, I thought, as I was very hungry and we only really had chicken in the freezer. I scrambled together the finest ingredients - ingredients I saw my mother use frequently - and got to work. Despite not setting the temperature right and rushing the chicken off the stove well before it was ready to go, I ate. I was really hungry. That night I spent hours throwing up because I came to realise the chicken was very undercooked. It was miserable... Anyway, let's talk about Redfall.




Redfall is the latest open-world action game from Dishonored and Prey developer Arkane Studios. Set in a quaint little town of Redfall, blood-sucking vampires one day emerge to overtake the town and it's up to a group of gifted individuals to defeat the invading menace and reclaim the island. The fighters must take back Redfall piece by piece while defeating some "alpha" vampires along the way.

Conceptually, Redfall sounds bloody awesome. I've always been a big fan of vampires in cinema and gaming. I even slugged my way through the Twilight movies because I just wanted to soak up as much vampire pop culture as I could. When Arkane announced Redfall, I was ecstatic. The Dishonored games were fantastic and a vampire-themed game from the same developer had my imagination racing. That was until I played the game and my imagination hit a pothole.



Before we proceed any further, I just want to say that I don't think Redfall is a bad game. It's certainly not Balan Wonderworld bad and the concept/art direction team at Arkane did a lot of the heavy-lifting here. It's very atmospheric, the lore is intriguing (if poorly translated) and there are a few visually stunning attractions such as the tidal wave off the coast that was frozen in time. Taking it all in at first glance is breathtaking and there are definitely some inspired ideas here. Sadly, that surface-level magic runs out very quickly when you actually bite into the meat of the game.

This is textbook Arkane game design that should've worked far better than what we actually got.

At its core, Redfall is about exploring a desolate open-world and taking out vampires. There's an interesting vampire hierarchy that you have to work your way through as each region of the island is controlled by a kind of superior vampire. This is textbook Arkane game design that should've worked far better than what we actually got. In reality, the vampires pose little threat to you because they're so sparsely spread out on the map, you can literally run several blocks without encountering a single one. When you do encounter them, the "tense" fights turn into Benny Hill skits as you realise just how dumbfoundingly broken the AI is.



You can stand on top of an object like a car and the AI won't know what to do with itself, so it mindlessly wanders around and attacks air. This isn't helped by the various human enemies in Redfall either, who will casually walk into your range of fire despite just seeing a comrade dropped in front of them with a sniper. This made scoping out and stealthily taking zones laughably easy to the point where it just wasn't fun anymore.

There are four playable characters to choose from in Redfall: Jacob the deadeye, Dev the cryptid hunter, Layla the telekinetic, and Remi the engineer. Each character comes with a set of special abilities, usually supernatural in nature. I started the game with Layla and figured summoning my vampire ex-boyfriend would be a cool ability and fun companion, only to realise I was being shredded at close quarters. I then switched over to Jacob, the stealthy sniper guy and I ended up having a bit more fun but for all the wrong reasons.



Like I said before, it's really easy to pick off targets from a distance because of the braindead AI. Once you scale up your skills to maximise headshot damage, you can pretty much steamroll the game including "bosses" that hilariously go down in a few hits. Jacob also has a psychic raven that can highlight enemies in the environment which is very useful - not because you're afraid that the enemies might spot you, but because it's easier to locate and kill them when they get stuck behind geometry, which surprisingly happens a lot.

It's really easy to pick off targets from a distance because of the braindead AI.

The gear and upgrade system in Redfall is disappointing, to say the least. You can acquire new weapons with different degrees of rarity (you know, the common, uncommon, rare and legendary colour-coded fluff we've already seen too much of in gaming). Each character has a skill tree with various abilities to buff, but you can only spend points per level. This would be fine if leveling up in Redfall wasn't so damn slow, incentivising players to further grind out side missions in the game.



Speaking of missions, Redfall's objectives will give you a serious case of deja vu. Tasks will have you crossing the map to a location, finding keys or some item, returning to the starting point or being told to go to another location, listen/watch a holographic conversation or tape, find yet another item, rinse and repeat. Things at least get fun and interesting when you have run-ins with vampires while investigating an area, but it all eventually blends together and ultimately becomes so forgettable. Keep in mind, these are main missions. The awful side content adds nothing to the experience besides filling out your play time.

Redfall's strange and dated approach to storytelling isn't any more compelling. Instead of animated cutscenes, Arkane chose to tell the story through storyboarded still frames. This works for some games depending on the style, but in Redfall, it just feels unfinished like you're watching placeholders for where Arkane would've placed actual cutscenes. If you pay attention, you might find an engaging story somewhere in there, but I mentally checked out of following the narrative because, well, it's kinda boring. This is an action game about vampires and the story/cutscenes somehow completely fail to hold your attention.



If the tragic comparisons weren't already made, this is exactly how Fallout 76 chose to unravel its narrative as well. Redfall relies so much on static holograms and tedious tape recordings to do its world-building, it's a chore to have to sit through all of it or stand around and wait for information to be very slowly explained to you. Just when the story seems to ramp up in certain sections, that good momentum is quickly killed by another storyboarded "cutscene" or tape where a more exciting traditional cutscene might've sufficed.

Redfall relies so much on static holograms and tedious tape recordings to do its world-building, it's a chore to have to sit through all of it.

Going over the performance issues of Redfall is maybe the least frustrating part. I played it on PC and didn't get a chance to test out the almighty 30FPS on Xbox Series X/S. Despite PC being the platform that can actually play the game at 60FPS right now, it often struggled to hold a consistent framerate. Texture pop-ins were in abundance, though, as well as weird jittering during cluttered action on screen. I wouldn't go 20 minutes without an enemy T-posing (or A-posing) or just being frozen in place. One vampire decided to glide right past me while being stuck in a floating animation. There's a lot more I could list, but these can be remedied with some much-needed patchwork.



What can't be remedied is baked into the core of Redfall's undercooked story, characters, structure and combat. It's clear that Arkane had good intentions and tried something new for a change, but it missed the mark. Redfall feels like a mismanaged, market-tested product that tries to chase trends instead of setting them. We know Arkane is capable of so much more which is why this feels like such a disappointment and a step back for the studio. Some inspired ideas and a creative concept can't hold Redfall up from buckling under its own blood-drenched weight. On the bright side, it's on Game Pass.