During QuakeCon 2022, Arkane Studios took to the stage to present a deep dive into their upcoming title,
Redfall. They discussed the game’s development cycle, art direction, and gameplay during this panel. Unfortunately, to anyone who couldn’t attend the event, the panel was never released online – until now.
As of this morning, the whole panel has been released for the entire internet to view and honestly, it’s pretty damn great. The panel comprises a chat between Harvey Smith, the Studio Director, Creative Director Ricardo Bare, Karen Segars, the Art Director and Aaron Carter, Lead Producer.
According to the team, Redfall is the biggest game out of Arkane Studios yet.
“Redfall is our effort to take what Arkane does well – hybrid of first-person games and RPGs – and stretch ourselves a little bit, does this work in the open world? Does it work both solo, and with co-op players? Can we take all our narrative layers and our improvisational mechanics, and our style, and spread that out across an open world?” – Harvey Smith
During the panel, they also dove into some of the game’s core combat mechanics. They described a new multi-layered fight system that allows combat to be approached from different angles. According to the team, it does matter what your preferred playstyle is; whether you like to be stealthy or come into a room like an exploding bomb, the game will cater to your style.
There will also be a difference between combat in the daytime and night time with players needing to adjust to changes as they play and explore. The world will also look different and boast different features depending on time or day and weather cycles.
Another topic that got explored in the deep dive is character progression. As of now, each of the four characters will have their very own skill trees with unique abilities to choose from for each character and a personal collection of weapons.
“We’ve come up with a suite of really cool abilities and powers for players to choose from, just like we did in Prey and Dishonored. My Jacob might not be the same as your Jacob because I may choose to really drill down into the raven skill-tree and max that out.” – Ricardo Bare
Redfall isn’t just going to be ambitious in terms of gameplay. According to the team, just one section of Redfall’s map is bigger than the entirety of Talos I, the space station setting of Prey. According to Karen Segars:
“The Talos in Prey was five football fields. The size of Redfall is kinda ‘hold my beer’ on that one.”
While Redfall is set to be the largest world Arkane has ever created, they did note that you won’t be travelling this open world with a vehicle. Rather your time in the game will be spent travelling by foot.
“You can traverse the place, go into mom ‘n’ pop grocery stores, apartments, get on the roof of buildings, and we try to put in as many environmental storytelling scenes around as we possibly can, and so it just feels very lived in.” – Harvey Smith
One of the last aspects the team went into was weapons. Redfall will feature a wide array of firearms, ranging from standard FPS guns like assault rifles and shotguns to weapons like flare pistols. However, one of the most exciting weapons is the stake gun. Essentially a “found ammo” weapon, the stake gun gets filled with broken pool cues and snapped mop handles. The stake gun shows how interacting with your environment will be more than just a way to progress the storytelling; but will be a way to aid in combat as well.
These are just a few highlights from the deep dive, and we’ve linked the full video above. If you’re interested in Redfall, I suggest watching it because it does a great job of fleshing out what Redfall will be like and how ambitious the entire project is.
Are you excited about Redfall? And will you be going in alone or with some friends in coop mode? Let us know in the comments.