Redfall - Arkane, Summer 2022

[Mr. Gerbik]

My hope is that playing solo will feel like playing Far Cry 2 with Vampires and trademark Arkane emergent goodness. Though the comparisons to Destiny and The Division make me fear the worst.

 

At least it's free so I'll find out for myself.

[Mr. Gerbik]

But what a weird and just outright bad marketing push for this game. For the longest time all the footage and talk made it sound like Left 4 Dead Vampire Edition with an annoying Overwatch type attitude. And now apparently it's not that all??? But we are still not 100% sure what it's like exactly?

[thesnwmn]

I guess that's the power of a successful studio plus MS backing mean they might not feel the need to worry so much about selling the game in advance.

 

Their fans will try it. People who have a passing interest can try it. And if it picks up buzz from those who dive in day one then more and more can test the waters.

 

The only danger I guess is for something multiplayer or live-service-y that it fails to reach that critical mass of players or discussion to keep the ball rolling and feels a bit dead too soon. See Halo Infinite. A muddy start and slow updates killed that game in the minds of most people. Sure it's still going because it has to be and I'm sure it's great but it's basically a whiff in publicity terms.

 

But either way, a strange choice to be so vague or struggle so hard to describe what you're building. It leads me only to wonder if it's more live service than they think their fans would accept without being able to play it.

[PeteJ]

Yeah indeed, and they even acknowledge their games are hard to define...but are they, really? Perhaps Pray was massively misunderstood prior to launch but that had a poor marketing push as well.

 

What's strange here is that there's nothing on display but immediately shouts it's an arkane title. That unique flare that holds their games a level above most. Does that make sense? Redfall could be made from anywhere, even a cookie cutter Ubisoft open world. It doesn't look bad at all, but I can't see what makes it stand out.  This is what I'm not getting - what makes this an arkane title?

 

The Division might be a better fit than Destiny, yes. I've not played either at length by the way, so I could be well off the mark!

 

 

[Pob]

I dunno, I feel like I've struggled to understand exactly what experience I'd get with Dishonored, Prey and Deathloop prior to release. I remember the Edge Dishonored feature and I couldn't understand how all these superpowers could make for a fun and balanced game. A lot of the Prey chat was about mimics disguising themselves as any object, and the player also being able to mimic mugs and stuff, and wondering how that'd work in practice. Deathloop had the looping concept but it wasn't realtime and actually you could take as long as you liked etc etc. They tend to break out of genre conventions, which does make it hard to imagine how they'll play.

 

I'm not into the vampire aesthetic of Redfall at all, but Arkane do some of the best first-person action in the business. Just seeing what they can do with a contiguous yet tightly designed open world is exciting.

[Mallet]

Arkane reminds me a lot of Looking Glass Studios, the makers of Thief and Deus Ex, in that they make brilliant games that hardly anyone buys. Then years later every one recognises them as the classics they are. 

 

 

[thesnwmn]

17 minutes ago, PeteJ said:

What's strange here is that there's nothing on display but immediately shouts it's an arkane title. That unique flare that holds their games a level above most. Does that make sense? Redfall could be made from anywhere, even a cookie cutter Ubisoft open world. It doesn't look bad at all, but I can't see what makes it stand out.  This is what I'm not getting - what makes this an arkane title?

 

I think it looks like an Arkane game immediately. The chunky character design. Not poor quality at all but there's something very low detail about their game's look I think. Their humans look a certain way.

[PeteJ]

7 minutes ago, Mallet said:

Arkane reminds me a lot of Looking Glass Studios, the makers of Thief and Deus Ex, in that they make brilliant games that hardly anyone buys. Then years later every one recognises them as the classics they are. 

 

 

Yeah quite, they have legacy going back to Looking Glass. Harvey Smith made his name at Ion Storm, who pulled a lot of staff over from Looking Glass when they closed. That's my interest here, that connection back to the immersive sim they've delivered so well over the years. 

As was said earlier in the thread, maybe I want the game to be something it doesn't want to be! 

[K]

There’s a bit on this in the new Edge where they really stress that the game is designed to accommodate both co-op play, and the solo experience where you painstakingly and silently explore some lovingly crafted setting. Reconciling those two things seems like quite a tall order, so I’ll guess we’ll see how successful they are come May, but it does feel like they trying to cater for the antisocial Dishonored fans like me. 

[Mr. Gerbik]

One key bit of information that stood out for me from the Xbox presentation is that they emphasised that the open world is entirely *hand crafted*. Imho that's essential to the kind of games Arkane makes, their immersive gameplay just wouldn't work the same way in a superficial feeling standard sandbox full of randomly generated elements. If the single player does indeed end up feeling like a proper single player Arkane experience, this will be one of the things that makes or breaks it.

 

[Hamus]

A random search for this game for more footage and...

 

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/redfall-and-hogwarts-legacy-co-developer-studio-gobo-is-now-working-on-sonys-horizon/

 

Seems that the Studio Gobo worked on Redfall and Hogwarts Legacy!

 

Who's boycotting Redfall now? 😆

[Lying Cat]

13 minutes ago, Hamus said:

Who's boycotting Redfall now? 😆

 

Are Redfall's sales going to Rowling in part? Will she view the royalties from it as public support for her views?

 

It feels like in your rush to gotcha, you've revealed you have no grasp of this at all.

[Gabe]

People talk about Prey as an immersive sim and I don't really understand what is meant by that. I've played a few hours and, to me, it just feels like, I don't know, Bioshock or Half Life 2 - not a twitch-FPS. I don't see why people would find it hard to describe what type of game it is?

 

What am I missing? (I do like it, by the way, I need to go back to it - I just don't see why it isn't just called an FPS.) 

[Mr. Gerbik]

43 minutes ago, Gabe said:

People talk about Prey as an immersive sim and I don't really understand what is meant by that. I've played a few hours and, to me, it just feels like, I don't know, Bioshock or Half Life 2 - not a twitch-FPS. I don't see why people would find it hard to describe what type of game it is?

 

What am I missing? (I do like it, by the way, I need to go back to it - I just don't see why it isn't just called an FPS.) 

It's simply the genre name which was coined in the 90s when PC games like Deus Ex 1 and System Shock 2 were light years ahead of what other games did and what was possible on consoles: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersive_sim

 

BioShock is very much inspired by System Shock but I'd say is more like a streamlined version of a "proper" immersive sim, immersive sim-lite of you will. It leaned more towards a full on shooter (especially 3) to make it more palatable for a wider audience.

 

Prey and Dishonored 1 and 2 are arguably the best examples of the genre in modern times.

[Majora]

Half-Life 2 doesn't really play anything like Prey. Games like Prey are all about building the character you want to and then using the powers you've chosen to invest in in order to carve your own path through the world and concoct your own solutions to the obstacles you face.

 

I loved Half-Life 2 but even though it's not a twitch FPS it's still for the most part very much a linear FPS.

[stir fry]

Immersive sim is just a very airy term in general, and I can see how HL2 gets described as being a bit immersim adjacent cause of the centrality of physics to its gameplay. I'm playing through Prey right now actually and I think the idea is the way the different environmental interactions and RPG systems interact brings out the emergent gameplay possibilities, which is key to what makes it part of this type of game. 

 

It's having a broadness of tools to solve a problem in myriad ways, but implementing the different obstacles such that the developer doesn't force a specific approach, and sometimes you can completely sideline needing to get a key by interacting with physics objects in weird ways. Like instead of hacking a door, maybe you turn into a crayon and roll through a gap instead. There's also an aspect to their games where consequences in the story can flow organically out of player actions which determine decisions that the player may not know that they had made, although tbh not every game in the genre really does this.

 

So it's hard to define tbh, and is more of an 'idea' than a genre I think

[footle]

And it’s usually perfectly possible to play them as a shooter. You’re just not exploring the full possibility space if you do so.

[Stanley]

Seen quite a lot of advertising for Redfall already, nice to see MS getting fully behind it. 

[Gabe]

On 27/01/2023 at 13:06, stir fry said:

Immersive sim is just a very airy term in general, and I can see how HL2 gets described as being a bit immersim adjacent cause of the centrality of physics to its gameplay. I'm playing through Prey right now actually and I think the idea is the way the different environmental interactions and RPG systems interact brings out the emergent gameplay possibilities, which is key to what makes it part of this type of game. 

 

It's having a broadness of tools to solve a problem in myriad ways, but implementing the different obstacles such that the developer doesn't force a specific approach, and sometimes you can completely sideline needing to get a key by interacting with physics objects in weird ways. Like instead of hacking a door, maybe you turn into a crayon and roll through a gap instead. There's also an aspect to their games where consequences in the story can flow organically out of player actions which determine decisions that the player may not know that they had made, although tbh not every game in the genre really does this.

 

So it's hard to define tbh, and is more of an 'idea' than a genre I think

Thanks, this is helpful and makes it a bit clearer.

[drkbfhmmr]

For anyone interested, I believe it was Warren Spector who coined the term "immersive sim" when describing Deus Ex a couple of months after the game's release: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/postmortem-ion-storm-s-i-deus-ex-i-

 

Quote

Conceptually, Deus Ex is a genre-busting game (which really endeared us to the marketing guys) -- part immersive simulation, part role-playing game, part first-person shooter, part adventure game.

 

It's an immersive simulation game in that you are made to feel you're actually in the game world with as little as possible getting in the way of the experience of "being there." Ideally, nothing reminds you that you're just playing a game -- not interface, not your character's back-story or capabilities, not game systems, nothing. It's all about how you interact with a relatively complex environment in ways that you find interesting (rather than in ways the developers think are interesting), and in ways that move you closer to accomplishing your goals (not the developers' goals).

 

[MidWalian]

This will require an online connection even in single player.

 

Quote

Will playing Redfall require an online connection for single player as well as co-op? A persistent online connection is required for single player and co-op.

 

https://bethesda.net/en/game/redfall-faq

 

Still going to give this a shot as I really like Arkane and I have game pass but a bit concerned.

[Gabe]

Isn't being concerned about online connections for single-player games all a bit 2010? (I'm just picking that year out as one that's a fair while ago).

 

What is your concern, exactly?

[Stanley]

6 minutes ago, Gabe said:

Isn't being concerned about online connections for single-player games all a bit 2010? (I'm just picking that year out as one that's a fair while ago).

 

What is your concern, exactly?

The concern is that it will have ‘events’ and such like which even if you ignore them require an internet connection. 
 

Doesn’t bother me at all if it’s something I can choose not to do, but the real concern is that, as such, should you choose to ignore them, you’re missing out on part of the game which is clearly designed around multiplayer functionality and will take away from the more immersive single player experience.

[Mr. Gerbik]

25 minutes ago, Gabe said:

Isn't being concerned about online connections for single-player games all a bit 2010? (I'm just picking that year out as one that's a fair while ago).

 

What is your concern, exactly?

My concern is that it will feel like playing a live or multiplayer game solo, instead of like playing an immersive single player game.

[HarryBizzle]

I have to be online all the time anyway so I can share my Game Pass subscription which I paid 2p a year for until 2078, so I’m not too bothered by this revelation. 

[Mr. Gerbik]

It's not about the money for me. I have game pass too. I just want a good game, one that's of a similar level of quality as the previous games Arkane has made. Tidbits like always being online are therefore worrisome.

[dreamylittledream]

57 minutes ago, MidWalian said:

This will require an online connection even in single player.

 

 

https://bethesda.net/en/game/redfall-faq

 

Still going to give this a shot as I really like Arkane and I have game pass but a bit concerned.

 

26 minutes ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

My concern is that it will feel like playing a live or multiplayer game solo, instead of like playing an immersive single player game.

 

From what they showed it looks like its going to be Destiny/FPS The Division with vampires so was always going to need an online connection.

 

Both of those games are great to play as a single player too so doesn't necessarily make this a problem

[Mr. Gerbik]

5 minutes ago, dreamylittledream said:

 

 

From what they showed it looks like its going to be Destiny/FPS The Division with vampires so was always going to need an online connection.

 

Both of those games are great to play as a single player too so doesn't necessarily make this a problem

Well, YMMV on that. I have played both of those games solo and they feel exactly like what I said above; live multiplayer games that you happen to play solo. They have none of the immersion of a proper single playee game for me. So if Redfall solo feels like Destiny or the Division solo, then it won't be for me. That would make me sad because I love Arkane's output.

 

[dreamylittledream]

2 minutes ago, Mr. Gerbik said:

Well, YMMV on that. I have played both of those games solo and they feel exactly like what I said above; live multiplayer games that you happen to play solo. They have none of the immersion of a proper single playee game for me. So if Redfall solo feels like Destiny or the Division solo, then it won't be for me. That would make me sad because I love Arkane's output.

 

 

Fair enough - I played both The Division games entirely solo as caught up with them late so there was no-one doing the campaign and really enjoyed both of them.

 

Destiny I prefer to play the campaigns and special missions solo and only team up to do the end game stuff - I find the game straddles both types of play so don't really feel I'm missing anything when I'm playing solo but also fun to experience content with others.

 

But then again I'm a bit of a Destiny nut who also enjoys Arkane's work so this all sounds ideal for me...

[footle]

Have they at any point even suggested that there is the likes of The Division or Destiny’s shared world? Or just traditional co-op?

 

I swear that people seem to be continuously making this game into something they’ve never said it is. Then complaining about it.