Set amidst the forests of a once sleepy island village, the idyllic setting of Redfall and its vampiric foes are far removed from the vast expanses of Starfield’s astral setting. With Arkane’s vampire FPS game launching ahead of Bethesda’s space epic, I asked Arkane Austin’s studio head Harvey Smith whether or not he was worried about Starfield gobbling up Redfall like the walking dead.
With a wry smile, Smith says, “I amar (the Starfield team) and how awesome they are, and they’ve made some of the most successful games in the world, but I’ve been with Arkane for fifteen.
” I crossed all about this project: a global pandemic, major social upheaval, a goddamn Trump, an insurrection, multiple ice storms shutting down city infrastructure, murder hornets, the death of our beloved president and founder Ron Altman, Microsoft’s takeover – I’ve been through all. When you look at what the Redfall team has been through, it’s amazing.”
“It’s been fifteen years, and you could say that all that time I’ve been in the shadow of (Bethesda Game Studios),” he told – Game News. “We released a great game like Dishonored, they released Skyrim, it’s the biggest thing ever. We released Dishonored 2, the best game I’ve ever made, and they’re doing a great thing on Fallout. We’re very proud of what we do and we’re very proud of the team; I love being in the same company with id Software, Shinji Mikami (Tango Gameworks) and Todd Howard, he’s solid in every way. sight and we learn from them.”
“Starfield is going to be a big thing and it’s going to keep people happy for many years to come, but it’s something very different (from Redfall). There’s some overlap between audiences, but not entirely, and we definitely have a different tone, but I love that (Bethesda Game Studios) exists and I’m going to play a lot of Starfield.”
Again with a smile, he concludes “(Starfield) is totally positive for me; It takes a lot of the pressure off, to be honest. Arkane is often the scrappy underdog; We are smaller than most teams. It would be terrible to feel bad about that, like ‘oh, I’m in a company with a bunch of other strong teams making different games. For us, that’s a strength.”
Starfield’s release date is set for September, while Redfall’s release date falls on May 1, although I’d probably wait until the vampires were gone before booking a ride. If you’re planning on doing it anyway, check out our Redfall gameplay preview for a look at Arkane’s new bloodstained world.