Redfall Hands-On Preview

ign.com:

In a game all about vampire slaying it’s pretty important that killing your blood-feasting foes feels like an event in and of itself. That’s exactly what Arkane Austin has done with Redfall; much like how assassination-sim Dishonored had gloriously bloody backstab animations, Redfall revels in the act of plunging a wooden stake through a vampire’s heart. There’s weight in the blow as you knock your foe backwards and slam them into the floor, pushing a boot into a jaw that quickly evaporates into fiery dust. Yeah, killing vampires in Redfall feels good.

At a recent hands-on event I played around 90 minutes of Redfall, which gave me the first taste of something akin to a Far Cry game made by Stephen King. It’s an open-world shooter set in modern day Massachusetts, filled with gothic small-town vibes, fanged horrors, and a buffet of activity types.

That means Prey and Dishonored developer Arkane Austin is operating in uncharted territory. Redfall is very different to the studio’s other games and initially feels a lot more conventional. A freely explored map with safehouses, enemy camps, side errands, and tier-graded loot? Check, check, check, and check. But the more I played, the more I saw of what I’d expect from the historically ambitious developer. The island town of Redfall has clever environment design that’s engineered to compliment your skills. The enemy AI is there to be toyed with, allowing you to bait your foes into traps. And every second room I entered felt staged to tell a story. Redfall definitely is an Arkane game, just not the one I expected.

The demo began mid-way through an investigation into Dr. Addison, a physician-turned-vampire god known as The Hollow Man. I was to search his mansion – a ransacked