Redfall stands within the towering, Depend Orlok-shaped shadow of greater than a century of common vampire fiction — particularly, due to its small-town setting, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and the closely King-indebted TV collection, Midnight Mass. It’s additionally the newest sport to return from Arkane Studios, a developer whose portfolio consists of the Dishonored collection, Prey, and Deathloop. It’s a storied lineage to reside as much as — one whose heights Redfall constantly fails to succeed in.
In Redfall, gamers work to take again an island overrun by vampires, driving bullets and stakes by means of the hearts of bloodthirsty monsters and their human worshipers whereas attempting to uncover how they rose to energy within the first place. The sport’s narrative is erratically delivered, offered principally by means of temporary, stilted, pre-mission cutscenes and bits of in-universe textual content that may be simply missed whereas chatting with a co-op companion or avoiding a cultist’s gunfire. Its roots in King’s novel, Arkane’s immersive sim philosophy, and vampire fiction generally are buried beneath layers of distraction, however they do exist. Sadly, the indicators of that inspiration don’t a lot rise dramatically from the bottom as wiggle a finger from the dust.
Like Dishonored, Redfall is about combating a scrappy sort of revolution, a handful of holdouts to totalitarian rule utilizing their guile to knock out the buildings supporting their oppression. As in Salem’s Lot, a small-town setting permits Redfall to create a microcosm of society — American society, in each circumstances — and place its vampires as a strong elite whose malignant affect takes maintain of a inhabitants too naïve or frightened to withstand.
In Dishonored — and, to a lesser extent, 2021’s Deathloop — assassins fought again in opposition to a fictional established order by means of sport design that prioritized intelligent pondering and subterfuge over brute power. (Even probably the most aggressive Dishonored participant has to slink again into the shadows and make plans to outwit a extra highly effective enemy power every now and then.) Redfall’s heroes are additionally battling overwhelming odds, however their supernatural powers, ever-growing arsenal of firearms, and the sport’s dimwitted enemies place the rebels much less as bedraggled freedom fighters than as a Crimson Daybreak-style militia hitting again with practically equal assets.
Regardless of this, Redfall clearly goals to evoke the identical feeling of underdog comeuppance as video games starring a solo murderer overthrowing a fantasy authorities. Or, to look again at King, a novel that includes a ragtag group of small-town residents thwarting the homicidal scheme of a strong vampire.
As described by director Harvey Smith in an interview with Eurogamer, Arkane’s intent with Redfall was to make literal the parasitic nature of the wealthiest members (and companies) of society. Just like the aristocrats of Dishonored, dwelling in luxurious whereas the decrease courses endure illness and crushing poverty, Redfall’s vampires are twisted mutations. They’re born from the exploitative objectives of a Theranos-style biotech start-up and the privileged few who see private alternative in its improvements. As one character places it when describing the sport’s vampires: “After they had all the things, they wished extra.”
Cults dedicated to the vampire’s worship function as foot troopers for his or her new rulers, policing the city of Redfall by capturing at those that, just like the participant, try to withstand their masters’ management. The beginning-up spreads by benefiting from the person foibles of key figures within the city, preying on their greed, concern, and selfishness till the avenues for healthcare and dependancy therapy have come beneath their management. The vampires — tall, spindly creatures who bodily resembled an insectile, invasive species of predators — goal the common particular person’s desperation to outlive the takeover. They accomplish that having already taken benefit of key group figures’ need for longer life, and the willingness to chase that longevity on the expense of others. As a way to obtain their objectives, they make victims of hapless, desperately in poor health sufferers or trusting relations and pals.
Redfall finds the core of its terrors, then, not merely within the bodily horrors of its otherworldly monsters, however within the all-too human evils they manipulate.
A wholesome suspicion of authority runs all through Arkane’s previous work, from the perverse spectacle of feasts laid upon gilded tables in Dishonored, to Deathloop’s filthy slums, to the executive trickery of Prey’s sci-fi horror setting. The identical suspicion of authority programs by means of Salem’s Lot, whose heroes bypass official channels to fight the vampire risk. It’s additionally obvious in Midnight Mass, through which a revered native church acts because the gateway for a monstrous contagion. Vampire fiction, generally, affords loads of dramatic alternatives to sentence buildings of energy.
In King’s novel, the vampires are memorably terrifying — an almost all-powerful risk. In Arkane’s previous video games, the enemy leaders had been typically equally harmful, made to look enormously highly effective by means of design that noticed them sheltered by ranks of clever guards and labyrinthine, ultra-secure headquarters. In each circumstances, those that fought in opposition to them needed to suppose and plan fastidiously. There was an emphasis on stealth gameplay in Arkane’s case, and an outline of grassroots rebel in Salem’s Lot that bolstered simply how badly the chances had been stacked in opposition to these out to topple authority. This isn’t the case in Redfall, and, because of this, its narrative’s intent is undermined. Its vampires are continuously current, solely barely tougher to dispatch with a shotgun blast than its clumsy human enemies. Horror media, and Arkane’s previous video games, each confirmed easy methods to convey a way of pervasive menace — however the studio was unable to emulate it this time round.
Redfall doesn’t do sufficient to heart its finest qualities, placing its plot too far within the background of a uninteresting open-world shooter. However it’s additionally not a failed deviation from the tenets of both the vampire tales that influenced it or the Arkane video games that preceded its launch. It’s higher to see its flaws as missteps in design — experimentations with a construction that doesn’t serve the strengths of its storytelling — than an entire departure from what labored in its prior video games, or what made some of popular culture’s finest recognized vampire fiction endure over time.