I figured I owed it to Redfall. I previously called it one of the worst AAA games I’d played in years after its disastrous launch back in May. And just this week I wondered if its promised future content would ever actually get made, given that its playercount on Steam routinely drops to…three players.
But, credit where it’s due. Five months later, Arkane did indeed deliver its promised 60fps update for Redfall, along with a lot of fixes and changes to try to make it play better. So, rather than just comment on that from afar, I actually updated the game and dove in to play to see the difference. I am going to try to shed the jokes and roasts this time and actually focus on what I experienced returning to the game.
The main draw here is the 60fps update, allowing you to turn on Performance Mode in the game. I’m playing on Xbox Series X and yeah, it’s very smooth, works great. FPS was never really on top of my complaint lists with the game, but they did indeed figure it out, and it’s one aspect of the game that feels noticeably improved.
Another change was supposed to be enemy density, putting more enemies around the map and different encounters. Density was increased in general, sure, though in a game with limited ammo, limited health packs and rather poor checkpointing, that’s not necessarily a plus. It does make the world feel less dead, but it may make you…actually dead, if you round a corner and burn all your ammo and health packs on a stray group of vampires when you were on your way to an actual mission. I guess it’s good the world is more populated, but it felt like I was draining my resources quickly and not getting anything like solid loot or XP as a reward.
Improvements to enemy density does not mean improvements to AI. We once again have battles between human enemies and vampires playing out rather badly. I watched one soldier attempt to shoot a perched vampire on a roof…with a shotgun…aiming about 10 feet under where the vampire actually was. Later, a group of human snipers pinged at a floating vampire for a few minutes who wasn’t reacting at all until it plopped over dead. In actual combat with you, the humans just sort of stand around in the open waiting to get mulched by your guns.
Vampires, meanwhile, continue to be the opposite, teleporting all around in unpredictable ways and slashing at you. But I just throw my electric shock thing in the ground which stun locks them, then I kill them. Though if that’s not up or I miss, I may be dead. I found myself wondering if this game would have been more fun if you were playing as an actual vampire, as they have better mobility and cooler powers.
There are also changes to the actual feel of combat, where Redfall took feedback about its floaty, slow, inaccurate shooting and tried to improve. I read the patch notes and took their advice of “high sensitivity” presets for players who prefer “fast-paced shooters.”
Is Redfall’s shooting better than it was? Sure, it’s a little less like fighting through molasses, certainly. Is it good? It’s not. It’s still just not very good. This has never been Arkane’s strength even in its more popular games, and I’m still not sure we’re even at Prey level here. Combat in this game continues to not feel great, even after these changes. You can also now sneak up on enemies to kill them, something the game weirdly didn’t have at the start, but it rarely feels like a good way to approach an encounter, particularly with so many enemies standing around in the open, and flying vampires often not really able to be snuck up on at all.
To fully experience the changes, I just went back to playing the game normally. I explored a bit, finished a few old sidequests, and then did a new main mission, one where I had to explore a mansion, find keys to open doors and collect dolls to trigger a flashback sequence about a relationship between a now-villain and his daughter. It was fine. The puzzling aspect here was actually okay. But it was definitely strange that I fought maybe 3 enemies and 2 vampires the entire time. I encountered like five times that on my way to even get to the mission in the first place.
Itemization and skill trees have not changed, from what I can see. Loot still seems like it has color rarities for its own sake. Both skills and skill trees are heavily geared toward co-op play, which A) is not going to happen with this low of a playercount, and B) there’s no matchmaking anyway, so you’d have to be playing with friends directly. The focus on co-op still feels like it was one of the game’s biggest mistakes.
I was reminded that the game still has those very awkward, frozen cutscenes rather than moving ones. Characters still look extremely rough, even if technical issues like texture pop-in have been fixed. The aesthetics here remain questionable. Arkane has pretty stylized games, but here, its art direction is a miss.
There’s a lot of talk about how this is the start of Redfall’s Cyberpunk redemption story. It finally did this update and is supposed to release two new characters (which people have already paid for) and other missions. It’s just hard to see that happening. Cyberpunk’s main issues were technical, or missing features. Night City was great, its characters and voice acting were great, its storylines ranged from good to great. So the “fixes” there were unearthing a fundamentally great game, which we’ve now seen with Phantom Liberty and Update 2.0.
Redfall is just not a very good game. I’m not saying that to be malicious, but it’s not. I do not think there is a way to redeem it. This update fixes some technical things and alters gameplay feel a bit, but the core of the game is the same, and it’s bad. I respect Arkane for continuing to work on it and deliver promised updates, but at this point, I would forgive them if they just issued DLC refunds and walked away. I’m sure they’ve learned a lot and their next project will be much better.
The update improves Redfall in small ways. Not in big ones. The game isn’t fixed, or much better than it was. Sorry to report that, but it’s just the way it is.
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