There’s Jacob Boyer, a sniper type who showed up in Redfall on a contract with the private military corporation that employs him Remi de la Rosa, a Coast Guard officer and engineer-controller type whose gadgets buff the team and shape the battlefield to their advantage Devinder Crousley, a cryptozoologist who packs a powerful offensive toolkit with attendant tradeoffs and Layla Ellison, “the telekinetic threat in student debt,” an all-rounder who adds psionic capabilities to her athleticism and firearm skill. Redfall’s four heroes were introduced when the game’s original announcement trailer capped off 2021’s Xbox and Bethesda show. Image: Arkane Studios Austin/Bethesda Softworks And it’s just meant to be fun in that sense.” But it’s also a party game because, as soon as you add another character, those two characters are talking to each other. If I was a player, the first time I played, that’s the way I would do it from beginning to end. “Of all the games Arkane’s made, it may be true to say that Redfall is the most …” Smith began, searching for the words, “it’s the party game, right? You can creep along, and stealth, and play at your own pace, and absorb all the environmental storytelling and all the readables.

That also is an Arkane first, where titles like Deathloop and Prey were led by a single player-character. There are also the multiple protagonists that players will level up across their playthroughs. So we were excited about that risk, we’re excited about the creative strengths that an open world offers.” A game where there’s only really one big mission, in one big space, like Prey, that’s also a strong approach. “Missions that are very bespoke, with wide linear paths to a location are obviously very strong, and that’s what we did with the Dishonored games. “We’ve always tried to be fairly non-judgmental about the different approaches,” Smith said.

Redfall is the studio’s first open-world game that’s where the Austin developers are stretching their legs, seeing if they can present Arkane’s distinctive visual style in a more open-ended format. It’s probably better to talk about Redfall, in which players will fight to save a New England town overrun by vampires, in the context of other Arkane games.

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