3/11/26
Redfall was an attempt at an Live Service game by Arkane Austin, and failed horribly.
In 2022, Arkane Austin was mandated by Zenamax to develop an Live Service game to dabble into the market, failed miserbly due to a troubled development cycle marked by a lack of clear direction and terrible mismanagement, severe understaffing (Less then 100 people worked on this game, AND many old devs left!), and enforced an live service direction, which did NOT work with the devs who mainly worked on linear, singleplayer games. The game launched, and it was a disaster. It launched broken, unfinished with tons of bugs, and gameplay issues and online-only connection which was very unstable. It was so much of a disaster, it caused Microsoft to close Arkane Austin in 2024, and caused all future content for the game + live service integration, PREY 2, Dishonered 3 and many other projects to get canned.

Story : This games story is actually not that bad honestly, but it's an basically has the Arkane sterotypes.
You got your supernatural elements, and some weird psychic stuff.

The game follows in Redfall, Massachusetts, an island off the coast as it gets invaded by infection that turned people into Psychic Vampires and causes an massive solar shift, trapping the island in itself, and turning inhabitants into either cultists that worship the Vampire Overlords or demons of the night, with Survivors that stay off the streets. Meanwhile, a PMC Called BellWeather is making it's way onto the island, raising even more questions about involvement.

You start out in Redfall Commons, an fishing town, and your objective is to help the survivors stuck in the city, and kill the Hollow Man who is terrorizing the commons. Once you do that, you make your way to Burial Point, help the survivors go against new bosses such Bloody Tom, and Miss Whisper before fighting the main honcho, The Black Sun.
You play as 4 characters, each with a sorta psychic ability.
Jacob - An former BellWeather Soldier turned PMC, and the events left him with a Vampiric Eye and an Loyal Crow. | Stealth based with an Crow UAV and Cloak, and a Energy Sniper

Devinder - A Cryptozoologist and aspiring inventor, and was on the island to document the Vampire Threat | Crowd Control, uses Electric powers, an Translocator and an portable UV Light.

Layla : College Student in engineering who volunteered for a medical trial where something went very wrong. | Jumpad, Mobile abilities and an Vampire Ex-BF she can summon to help in combat.

Remi - A Combat engineer who has spent her life on the frontlines and is determined to help rescue Redfall’s survivors. | Healing Abilities and an drone to summon in battle.
(There was ment to be 2 More survivors but they got scrapped when support dropped, that being a Forest Ranger with a Bow and a Prisoner character)

The story isn't really that interesting, but the themes are cool. The idea being that a Pharmacudical company was doing trials only to make a sorta weird hivemind infection, and just ended up causing the world to almost end.
It gets really uninsteresting though due to the lack of cutscenes. The game's narrative isn't animated, you got stillframe cutscenes with diolouge, as if they lost their budget halfway through and makes it seem cheap.
Also, the game ends after you kill the boss. You get an ending with a cliffhanger, No traveling back to Commons or postgame, just back to the menu and do a NG+.

Story gets and 6/10
I was invested, the game's story is pretty good but the game doesn't offer much replayablility unless your playing the other characters.

Gameplay : Ohhh boy...
On Launch, this game was a mess, AI was broken, gameplay was busted and was missing content. Also unstable servers.
The game was fixed up a lot since launch, they added tons of fixes and content, and also added Neighborhood Watch systems where you get overworld and player upgrades as you do side missions. And added an OFFLINE MODE to play the game! There is a nasty bug where it can't connect to it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥ servers and the menu is busted, (fixes in other reviews) so they added an Offline mode for people to play solo, so it's sorta just an Sandbox RPG.
However, the game still isn't in a good state. It's still filled with bugs, repetitive gameplay and same NPC types and I had 1 or 2 crashes in my 16 hours. The game suffers a lot of these problems, and I had one before where my HP was at 0 when an enemy executed me but it didn't kill me, so I was stuck floating in midair in a bridge while the vamps just jumped at me lol
It's basically a Pre-Alpha state, it's a full game but it just feels like a Proof of Concept, and the Live Service Elements were never implemented due to the shutdown so it's just kinda stuck in that limbo.

The game is an standard Arkane RPG, you got Psychic Abilities, an linear narrative and guns. lol
Basic Looter elements and exploration systems, with an small map to explore.
You got Human enemies where you can kill them with just normal guns, Demons (Watchers) who can be killed with guns or UVs and Vampires, who can be gunned down but require a takedown or UVs to finalize a kill.
It gets boring quick, as the game is very repetitive as you'll be fighting the same enemies over and over again, or variations of them. It's not as bad as KTJL levels but it kinda follows that.
I enjoyed the gameplay myself though, it's still a bit rough around the edges but I thought the exploration and gunplay was fun.

Sadly, no modding cause of a DRM and COOP doesn't function. So you'd be stuck by yourself,
5/10
It's still so damn buggy though. I can't give it a flawless score, as it was abandoned long ago. And it's said as an COOP RPG but literally none of the COOP Elements are even functional anymore, so it's mainly just a Singleplayer RPG. It sucks because I was hoping to play this mess with friends.
APPARENTLY, It still works with invites, like Peer to Peer but public lobbies are MIA. I never tested this though.

Graphics : It has that Arkane styling with it, simular to Dishonored. Where it's cartoony realistic styling.
The visuals are pretty good though, but the maps are a bit empty. The game's screenshots and videos don't lie, this game has some nice visuals.

7/10
It has some hiccups, and the environments are a bit empty sometimes but it does the job.

Verdict : 6/10
Now, what can I say about this...?
It's alright.
It's rough around the edges, suffers from some bugs still prevalent and has a few issues but I enjoyed this game. It had some love put into it, as it feels like it had some effort but it shows that enforcing a studio that is known for Singleplayer games for 10+ years to make a MULTIPLAYER LIVE SERVICE GAME does NOT work. It isn't gonna work at the first try, expecially if you just force them to do it or it's their ass, and that Mismanagement is what led to Zenamax being bought out.

If you want a time waster, are curious and are a fan of Arkane games, pick up a key for like, $10 or wait for a sale. If you want a COOP Game to play with friends or something you will spend hours on, go play something else.