Redfall is Arkane Studios’ take on an open world, with an ensemble cast

polygon.com:

If there’s one thing Harvey Smith wants you to take away from Redfall’s gameplay trailer shown at Sunday’s Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase, it’s that Arkane Studios Austin’s next game is not a Left 4 Dead-like.

“It should, unless I’m mistaken, it should put all the Left for Dead comparisons to rest,” Smith, the studio’s director, said in an interview on Monday.

Redfall looks more like Borderlands than any of the asymmetrical or PvE cooperative multiplayer games that have made a revival of Left 4 Dead’s gameplay loop over the past two years. This is mainly because it’s an open-world title (although, to a certain degree, so are L4D-likes such as Second Extinction). More importantly, the campaign is a completely solo-able experience, and no, you can’t bring along bot teammates, another important distinction.

It’s probably better to talk about Redfall, in which players will fight to save a New England town overrun by vampires, in the context of other Arkane games. Redfall is the studio’s first open-world game; that’s where the Austin developers are stretching their legs, seeing if they can present Arkane’s distinctive visual style in a more open-ended format.

“We’ve always tried to be fairly non-judgmental about the different approaches,” Smith said. “Missions that are very bespoke, with wide linear paths to a location are obviously very strong, and that’s what we did with the Dishonored games. A game where there’s only really one big mission, in one big space, like Prey, that’s also a strong approach. The open world gives you new strengths. So we were excited about that risk, we’re excited about the creative strengths that an open world offers.”

There are also the multiple protagonists that players will level up across