Gamesradar sat down with Arkane Studios’ Harvey Smith and Ricardo Bare to give gamers a deep dive into Redfall’s gameplay. The developers reveal during the interview what players can expect from the upcoming horror shooter. The game will be set in the small island town of Redfall, Massachusetts where players will be going up against a horde of vampires. The group of four vampire hunters is tasked with exterminating the masses of undead that have taken up residence in the sleepy town. While the premise seems to be similar to Left 4 Dead, it is not what the developers are aiming for with Redfall. “It’s totally understandable for somebody to come to that conclusion.,” Bare said of the comparison to Left 4 Dead. “There are four playable characters, you can play together cooperatively, and you’re going against the undead. But, in terms of the way that you play and experience Redfall, it’s not like those games at all. Redfall is more like loading into Far Cry.” When players imagine the Far Cry series, it will likely include scenes set in exotic locations and lush tropical jungles. It will be the total opposite of what Arkane calls the “crappy tourist town” of Redfall. However, the studio was aiming to create a location that is familiar to gamers. “When we started on Redfall, we wanted to tackle a familiar location for once,” Smith shares about the setting of Redfall. “We wanted to take a familiar setting and go deep on it. Redfall island should be a place where, after hours of exploration, you feel like you know it the way you know Talos or Dunwall. When I say we wanted to stretch, that’s what I mean: What if we took all of our experience – and our creative values – and put it into an open world?” Where Redfall separates itself from the likes of Left 4 Dead is the open-world environment. In traditional horde shooters, a group of players is dropped into a linear level to fight off infinite waves of undead. With Redfall, players explore the locality, take on quests, talk to NPCs, and have the occasional run-in with a horde of vampires. “You’re in a big-ass open world,” Bare reveals. “We have a home base where you can talk to NPCs and get side-quests. You can go to the mission table and pick up story-driven missions. Or you can not give a shit about any of that and just head outside; pick a direction, start hauling ass, and run into the living-world stuff that we have going on.” “In terms of freedom, there’s what you would expect from other open worlds, but Redfall is an on-foot game – the scale and the pace is a little slowed down in that respect,” Bare shared. “We want you creeping through a cornfield at night in the fog, hearing vampires whisper in the dark. Maybe you’ll spot a farmhouse in the distance and sneak over to it, only to find that it’s full of cultists and a few trapped survivors who you can save. That’s the kind of vibe that Redfall has.” Overall, Redfall is shaping up to be a very intriguing title. We are excited for the game to come to the Xbox Game Pass when it releases in May for PC and Xbox Series X/S.
