Redfall (Xbox, PC) was supposed to be a hit for Xbox, Bethesda, and developer Arkane. Instead, the new co-op game with vampires has launched poorly and is crashing on Xbox and Steam. Phil Spencer has now spoken up to explain what went wrong – and what’s next.
What kind of game is this? In Redfall, you play as one of four heroes and must free the city of Redfall from vampires, either alone or with a team of up to 4 players. Following an incident, everything has become tainted, the sun is dark, and many surviving humans are now cultists.
At its core, Redfall is a loot shooter where you find progressively better gear. Your characters also have special abilities that allow them to fight vampires and explore the area.
In various missions and special activities, you collect more loot, become stronger, and discover more of the world and the story. You’ll also face powerful vampire bosses that you are supposed to take down in epic battles.
How is Redfall received? Not well. The initial reviews for Redfall are miserable, with official reports still painting the best picture:
- The Metascore for PC is 57, and for Xbox, it is 62
- User scores range between 1.9 and 2.6
- On Steam, the game is “mostly negative” with 30%
The biggest criticism consists of technical issues. Low FPS, graphical glitches, and stuttering are among the most common complaints. However, some players also criticize that the world is simply too empty and boring. There’s little to do, enemies lack challenge, and the sense of a dangerous “vampire city” is completely missing.
The high price of a whopping €70 for the standard version is particularly painful. That’s simply too expensive for a game that apparently isn’t even finished and has bugs.
A delay would not have helped
Here’s what the boss says: In the Kinda Funny Xcast, the moderators invited Xbox head Phil Spencer for a discussion (via YouTube). There, Spencer talks extensively about what went wrong with Redfall and what could have gone better.
He begins by stating that he is, of course, not satisfied. He hates disappointing the Xbox community, and he is unhappy with himself: “Nothing is harder for me than to disappoint the Xbox community and see them lose trust.” They promised 60 FPS and were unable to deliver. Such a thing is unacceptable.
They are working on the technical problems and want to fix them soon. They have already proven with Sea of Thieves and Grounded that such efforts are their aim. But what a delay would not have fixed is the idea of the game itself, which isn’t necessarily well-received either:
What I will not do is work against the creative ambitions of our teams. […] I am a huge supporter of Arkane Austin; their track record is excellent, and I love many of their games. [Redfall] is one where they did not meet their internal goals. It may be oversimplified to say: “If you had just delayed it by 3 months, the core idea of the game would have delivered something different than what it was.” […]
If we have more bugs than we should, we are open to delays. But at some point, we need to have a creative vision and release the game. Then reviewers and players tell us what they think.
Phil Spencer
What could have been done differently? Spencer says he wants to give teams the freedom to do what they want, even if the games that result are not what one would expect from this studio. Redfall is such an example, as Arkane is primarily known for single-player story games like Prey and Dishonored.
Later, Spencer takes the blame on himself and Xbox as a whole: “We did not do a good job of interacting with Arkane Austin and helping them understand what it means to be part of Xbox. We just let them work on the game.” However, Spencer admits they should have been more supportive of the team.
But all of this is no excuse for what happened earlier; it’s just an explanation. Spencer himself seems quite affected by the recent days and states that he can’t adopt a positive outlook right now. His mind is too full for that.
What MeinMMO editor Maik Schneider thinks of Redfall can be read here:
Redfall played: The new co-op shooter does so much right – but fails in the fundamentals
