Redfall (Xbox, PC) should have been a hit with Xbox, Bethesda and developer Arkane. Instead, the new co-op game with vampires has started miserably and crashes completely on Xbox and Steam. Phil Spencer now speaks up and explains what happened there – and what’s next.
What kind of game is this? In Redfall you play one of four heroes and have to free the city of Redfall from vampires alone or in a team of up to 4 players. After an incident, everything is contaminated there, the sun is dark and many surviving humans are now cultists.
At its core, Redfall is a loot shooter where you find better and better gear. Your characters also have special abilities that allow them to fight vampires and explore the area.
In various missions and special activities you collect more loot, become stronger and discover more of the world and the story. In addition, powerful vampire bosses stand in your way, which you should flatten in epic battles.
How is Redfall received? Not good. The first reviews of Redfall are miserable, although the official reports paint the best picture here:
Technical problems are the biggest criticism. Low FPS, graphical glitches, and stuttering are among the most common complaints. However, some players also complain that the world is simply too empty and boring. There’s little to do, enemies aren’t a challenge, and the sense of a dangerous “vampire town” is completely absent.
The hefty price of €70 for the standard version is particularly painful. For many, this is simply too expensive for a game that doesn’t even seem to be finished, but has bugs.
Redfall – Official Launch Trailer
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Postponing it wouldn’t have helped
The boss says: In the Kinda Funny Xcast, the moderators invited Xbox boss Phil Spencer to the panel (via YouTube). There, Spencer talks at length about what went wrong with Redfall and what might have gone better.
He begins by saying that he himself is of course not satisfied. He hates disappointing the Xbox community, then he is dissatisfied with himself: “Nothing is harder for me than disappointing the Xbox community and seeing them lose confidence.” They promised 60 FPS and cannot deliver. Something like that doesn’t work at all.
The technical problems are being worked on and will be fixed soon. Sea of Thieves and Grounded have already proven that something like this is aspired to. But what a postponement wouldn’t have fixed was the idea of the game, which isn’t necessarily well received either:
What I won’t do is go against the creative drive of our teams. […] I’m a big supporter of Arkane Austin, their track record is great, I love a lot of their games. [Redfall] is one where they have not achieved their internal goals. It’s perhaps simplistic to say, “If you’d only postponed 3 months, the core idea of the game would have delivered something different than what it was.” […]
If we have more bugs than we should have, then we’re open to deferrals. But at some point we have to have the creative vision and get the game out there. Then reviewers and players tell us what they think.
Phil Spencer
What could have been done differently? Spencer says he wants to give teams the freedom to do what they want to do, even if it doesn’t turn out the games you’d expect from the studio. Redfall is one such example, as Arkane is best known for single-player story games like Prey and Dishonored.
Spencer later takes the blame for this on himself and Xbox in general: “We didn’t do a good job of interacting with Arkane Austin and helping them understand what it means to be a part of Xbox. We just let them work on the game.” But Spencer admits that you should have been there more for the team.
But none of this is an excuse for what happened in the past, just an explanation. Spencer himself seems pretty upset by the last few days and says himself that he can’t take a positive attitude right now. His head is too full for that.
You can read what MeinMMO editor Maik Schneider thinks of Redfall here:
Redfall alluded to: The new co-op shooter does so much right – but fails at the basics