“ Redfall isn’t a bad game or a failure, it’s an insult for the whole industry,” read another. “This is shockingly bad,” read one post with nearly 1,000 upvotes on the game’s subreddit. Instead, the game launched to brutal reviews and a backlash among hyped fans. A sleek cinematic trailer was bursting with style and personality, and a big pre-release marketing push promoted the always-online multiplayer game as Xbox’s first blockbuster exclusive of 2023 after a dearth of games the previous year. Microsoft revealed Redfall with a big splash at E3 2021 after closing its acquisition of the game’s publisher, Bethesda Software. You play as one of a varied cast of hunters with paranormal abilities tasked with unravelling the mystery of what happened and why, all while shooting and looting a large open map with small flourishes of the curated worldbuilding Arkane became known for from Prey and its work on the Dishonored games. Mostly though, Redfall feels forgotten.”Īrkane Austin’s live-service shooter revolves around a New England town isolated from the rest of the world after a science experiment gone wrong unleashes gangs of vampires on the streets and the armed cultists who worship them. Outside of that, though, most are dismissive and respond with a snort or a huff of disappointment.

“Those that played it are finding the fun quite well as there IS something there. “It’s very mixed,” said Luke Lohr, host of the Xbox Expansion Pass podcast. Most fans are used to hearing pushback from naysayers when they talk like this, even within their Redfall play groups.

And in fairness that part of Redfall’s loop is solid.” “You don’t care about the story beats so much, just there to grind enemies, gain levels and unlock new gear. “ Redfall reminds me a lot of playing New Game+ on, say, Borderlands or similar,” eh_stev3 said. It wasn’t until they returned a week later via Game Pass that they started actually enjoying it. Eh_stev3 bought the $US100 ($139) Bite Back edition of Redfall on release day, played it for an hour on Steam, and then refunded it. They said they played Deathloop, made by sister-studio Arkane Lyon, to death, even joining other players in hunting down glitches and secrets like a Vampire trinket that requires shooting clones in cutscenes to unlock. “I was excited for Redfall like most people,” a Reddit user called eh_stev3 told Kotaku.

Redfall logo