Arkane Studios, the team behind the critically acclaimed Prey and Dishonored franchise, may have bit off more than they could chew when they announced their upcoming vampire looter-shooter Redfall would require an always-online internet connection, even when playing solo. While this likely wouldn’t be a big deal to some, for others it was a deal breaker and Harvey Smith, the director of Redfall says that he and his team are working to find a solution.
Speaking with Eurogamer, Smith says that while he can’t make any promises, Arkane Studios is not without empathy and are looking to implement a fix that will potentially come in the future. In fact, Smith explains that they are already working on some of the back-end technical complexities and UI functionality that should support playing offline as a solo player. Here is the full quote from Redfall game director Harvey Smith:
“We do take it with a lot of empathy. We listen. And we have already started work to address this in the future. We have to do some things like encrypt your save games and do a bunch of UI work to support it. And so we are looking into – I’m not supposed to promise anything – but we’re looking into and working actively toward fixing that in the future.”
As Smith continued, he went into detail regarding the purpose of being always online and why they made this decision initially and it has nothing to do with a micro-transaction store- something that many had suspected was the reason. In fact, Smith outright says that there are no microtransactions nor in-game store in Redfall so players can rest easy on that front ahead of the game’s release. Instead, Smith says the reason for always being online is/was so that the development team could monitor how players interacted with the game and would allow them to monitor any game-breaking issues or bugs that could/would be immediately addressed.
“It allows us to do some accessibility stuff. It allows us for telemetry, like – if everybody’s falling off ladders and dying, holy shit that shows up. And so we can go and tweak the ladder code. There are reasons we set out to do that that are not insidious.”
But the good news doesn’t stop there. Hands-on previews of Redfall by some of the industries leading gaming outlets are giving some really strong praise for the game. Gunplay, combat, and the Redfall’s open-world experience are just a few topics coming up that Arkane has seemingly done quite well. Of course, that is just the beginning as both the single-player experience and fighting vampires are also receiving well-deserved acclaim, which puts pretty much any and all of our worries and skepticism to rest one and for all.
Redfall previews
• Gunplay / combat majorly improved from previous Arkane Games
• Fighting vampires is thrilling
• Single-Player feels great and is solo / doesn't have AI bots
• Despite open world / optional co-op still feels like an Arkane game with lots of world building pic.twitter.com/foruR6CMFx— Benji-Sales (@BenjiSales) March 22, 2023
As mentioned, media outlets like IGN are praising Arkane Studios for what they have done with Redfall- akin to how Arkane handled assassinations in Dishonored, the studio has brought the same enthusiasm and then some to driving a wooden stake into the heart of the vampires.
IGN’s Matt Purslow recently got to sit down and play an hour and a half of Redfall and walked away with a feeling that has us more excited than ever. This quote in particular from Purslow has us particularly hyped:
“[Redfall] gave me the first taste of something akin to a Far Cry game made by Stephen King. It’s an open-world shooter set in modern-day Massachusetts, filled with gothic small-town vibes, fanged horrors, and a buffet of activity types.”
Everything we have seen and heard sounds promising in Redfall and we can’t wait to sink our teeth into the game when it comes out. Now just under two months away from release, Redfall is shaping up to be a gruesome good time and we could not be more excited to explore the game’s open world and being able to add vampire slayer to our resumes.
Redfall comes out on May 2nd for Xbox and PC via Steam.
