Arkane’s Redfall is a New Take on an Old Idea

Courtesy of its regular presence in Steam’s holiday sales, just about everybody has played zombie shooter Left 4 Dead by now. The co-op adventure, which got a sequel exactly one year after launch before promptly fading away again, tasks up to four players with surviving hordes of infected people. It managed to reign almost alone at the top of its genre for a long time before Sniper Elite’s Zombie Army started to cause trouble in 2013. 

Since then, the co-op shooter has become a bit more commonplace. Released in 2019, the game adaption of the World War Z movie used the same formula as Left 4 Dead before Zombie Army 4: Dead War appeared in 2020. A year later, Left 4 Dead’s spiritual successor Back 4 Blood came out too, borrowing some elements wholesale from its cousin, like the adaptive difficulty system known as the Game Director. 

Next, comes the Arkane Studios/Bethesda game Redfall. Instead of zombies, though, the game is giving vampires their time in the hated sun, with Gamespot providing all the details that are known so far.

Vampire: The Masquerade

A good decade after the vampire craze spawned by Twilight faded away, suddenly, the pallid killers are everywhere again. Marvel is about two years from releasing the fourth entry in the Blade franchise, which stars Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali, while more than five different vampire games are scheduled to release in 2023, including Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 and El Paso, Everywhere.

As with many such fads, lots of different parts of the entertainment industry are getting in on the fun. Among casino sites, Playstar’s New Jersey launch brought the Blood Suckers slot to screens in the US, a five-reel game that takes its cues from the more romantic depictions of vampires, complete with ruffled shirts. It offers Castlevania vibes without the torturous difficulty curve.

Redfall doesn’t seem to be reinventing too many wheels, other than the addition of a large open world, but the title is nevertheless a welcome entry in a genre niche that’s only just started to get going. It’s anybody’s guess why Left 4 Dead went without competition for such a long time, especially after Valve seemed to cease active development on the franchise, but there are now plenty of upstarts in its shadow.

Teamwork

Arkane’s Redfall takes place on an island in Massachusetts, where an unspecified scientific experiment has gone wild and released hordes of vampires, trapping everybody inside the town. Facing down both human and undead opponents are a cryptozoologist (Devinder), a military engineer (Remi), a telekinetic student (Layla), and a sharpshooter (Jacob). Like every other game in this genre, teamwork rules, and several players can take to the field at the same time.

The vampires somehow manage to block out the sun in the game’s plot, which could potentially offer some interesting gameplay mechanics, such as using light to your advantage. Promotional posters for Redfall also feature a small, walking robot. While it’s known that this diminutive bot belongs to combat engineer Remi, it’s not yet clear how this will influence Redfall’s gameplay just yet.

Redfall is also due out in 2023.

This is a paid guest post.