Call it a 100tyfik interest or an unprecedented act of documentation, but if you sneak into my house right now through the window, turn on my smart TV and log into my HBO Max account, you’ll see that the latest three titles of search history are as follows: Twilight, Twilight Saga: New Moon and Twilight Saga: Eclipse.
This past weekend I got between chest and back nearly 7 hours of footage that mirrors teenage inconsistencies and love stories that whitewash emotional abuse in a relationship. But the worst part is that I didn’t end up horrified at the end of watching the third film in the saga, but rather the two words that came out of my mouth when I saw its credits were none other than : ”you’re good”. Curious is what happened to me with Redfall.
Vampires freak me out: their lore, the true origin of the legend, the stories being created around their character, how he permeated the collective ideology with enough force that we all understand what it is by hearsay -say. Shit, Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro’s latest song with the same name got stuck in the walls of my skull. I knew that last one wasn’t that bad, but I couldn’t help but listen to it every time it came through Spotify’s radio mode. Curious, that the same thing also happened to me with Redfall.
What about putting out a thousand different vampire examples? Well, because Redfall is a game about that, although it’s also true that I have a lot more synonyms up my sleeve: leech, nosferatu, your ex-partner… but Redfall is something more that ; Redfall is definitely a video game in both good and bad senses.
Redfall’s Greatest Virtue: Following Arkane’s Creed
What does it mean for a video game to be realistic? Whether their graphics are sharp enough for your mom or dad to ask ”what movie is it” when he stares at the screen with the innocence of a boomer? That its mechanics unfold in a boring enough way that playing the game itself is just as tedious as performing the real-life action it’s trying to simulate? For me it’s a question of immersion.
However, Arkane’s effectiveness in developing the world in which his games take place lies in having understood the main thing is that it is about replacing ”the realist” For “what is believable”: If you have a building in front of you, you will be able to access it through different paths, which will be connected to various actions that can have their own branches of secondary lore.
Certainly, sometimes you get a bigger impact by imitating something than trying to imitate it: A game doesn’t have to try to plot reality, you just have to believe in it. And, in that sense, you believe Redfall when you walk through the streets of the city in which the game takes place; Your blood freezes when you hear the moans of a nearby vampire, and your hair stands on end when you see a trail of blood loom in front of you and pass under a locked door.
A good example of how overwhelming the world of Redfall can be. it appears immediately as soon as you choose your character, select the difficulty and start a game of the game for the first time: you start on a ship that has sunk amidst gigantic walls of water, frozen in time by forces you don’t know yet understand. When you manage to reach the city, the light that bathes its streets does not normally shine. That’s when you look up at the sky and realize that the sky has been permanently eclipsed by a powerful spell. Hell itself is unfolding before your eyes; The premise sounds incredible, but… That’s enough?
You will like Redfall yes…
- Do you like open world games?
- Looking for a shooter with good shooting feeling
- do you like games in which you have to grind weapons until you can equip yourself with the best
- To want have a good time with your friends thanks to its cooperative mode
Redfall’s Biggest Sin: Making a Pact with the Devil
When I say ”accept” i want to say the verb ”resign” and when i say ”with the devil”I mean ”create an open-world video game”. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate them, but I will never defend them. Creating an open-world game whose elements revolve around an original idea can lead to something amazing, but the opposite is true when the open-world design is the foundation and not the add-on; trying to build the house from the roof.
I feel like the latter is what happened with Redfall: it’s not an Arkane open-world game, but one that would lose a lot more interest than I’m willing to. admit if I didn’t know it was created by this particular workshop. . And if I say that, This is because the game has several issues at this level:
- Missions are somewhat repetitive and straightforward (except some main dishes)
- There are areas of the map that seem empty
- The level of interaction we have with what we see through the levels It is much less than in the other games of the studio
Redfall’s Second Biggest Sin: Making a Deal With the Devil (Again)
Today everything must be infinite in this medium; an incessant chain of experiences that never ends and between which there can be no rest. There is no time to have time between launches; there is no room for crying with the game you just played. There is a growing trend of relentless content consumption; there is a growing trend for all video games to be games as a service; more and more companies refuse to believe that it’s okay for a job to have a beginning and an end.
Redfall actually has itbut it shows that the game was built with the idea in mind that things won’t stay that way in the future (which was confirmed by Bethesda itself). In this sense, the mechanics that Redfall has oriented towards game-as-a-service (experience farming by performing non-substantial tasks, loot weapons in dungeons that are randomly generated to obtain one of a different colorinchi ) come into direct conflict with the world it offers. with this game. Redfall tries to convince you that it was designed from the start as the released game, but it is not able to hide that in reality it was born as a projection into the future.
You won’t like Redfall if…
- You don’t like looter shooters
- Are you one of those who think that sometimes less is more?
- You are overwhelmed with open world games
Conclusion: Is Redfall worth it?
Redfall is a game that generated mixed feelings in me, nostalgia for what could have been and hope for what could be in the future. Redfall is like a promise made with a small mouth; like a handshake from someone crossing their fingers behind their back without you seeing it. Redfall could have been a great game; a new proposal from Arkane that will break your head in many different ways, but in the end I think the game ended up being a shadow of an idea. I feel like even Arkane wasn’t very clear what he wanted to do with it.
Is the game worth it? Redfall gives me mixed vibes: I had a good time, but I expected more; their systems designed to be a game as a service make me a bit lazy, but I’ll be stuck there waiting for your first content update.
I would have liked to end this analysis by releasing this meme from “Hesitating Vampire” but with the feeling in my chest today, I feel it’s a bittersweet day for Arkane. Vampire Esiten, indeed, but not with the health of those who shine like Edward Cullen in the Twilight saga.