Redfall Is Arkane's Dying Light, Not Its Left 4 Dead
When Redfall was revealed at E3 2021, my heart sank a little. As a fervent Prey defender and diehard Immersive Sim fan, I was worried that Arkane Studios had abandoned the genre it made its name with. I love that Deathloop brought new players into Immersive Sims by offering greater direction and approachability, but I never want to see Arkane give up what makes its games so special in pursuit of broader mainstream success. Redfall, a co-op open-world shooter, initially sounded like my worst fears come to life. Now that we’ve seen some gameplay and heard from director Harvey Smith at Summer Game Fest, it’s clear that Arkane isn’t cashing out. Redfall looks like all the things that Arkane excels at, applied to the open-world RPG genre. It’s not Left 4 Dead, but it might be an Im Sim Dying Light.
When people hear co-op shooter, a lot of them immediately think of Left 4 Dead. With the series on freeze and lots of games trying to pick up the torch, including Back 4 Blood, World War Z, and the upcoming Darktide, it’s no surprise that a lot of people took one look at Redfall’s colorful cast of character and four-player co-op and assumed it was yet another L4D-like. Of course, that isn’t the kind of game that Arkane makes, and Smith has been trying to correct that narrative throughout the Summer Game Fest season. “We love Left 4 Dead, but [Redfall] is not Left 4 Dead in any way,” he told GameSpot last weekend. Redfall doesn’t have individual missions or a requirement to play with a full party, even if that means running with bots. It has a full, linear campaign in an open-world with characters that you level up and unlock abilities for through skill trees. GameSpot’s interviewer Jordan Ramée is reminded of Borderlands, but
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