Redfall isn’t very good. Our worst fears were confirmed, and right from its reveal, many of us were mighty skeptical about the beloved 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Arkane Studios suddenly creating a loot shooter all about co-op gunplay and colour-coded guns instead of an immersive sim that took better advantage of its pedigree. Each new trailer teased hints of emergent level design and deep class-based mechanics, while hands-on previews praised an open world that maintained the complicated brilliance of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dishonored and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Deathloop while exploring an entirely new genre.
Like many, perhaps all, other outlets, we were only given the code three days before the embargo, which was midnight on release day - it will be out later this week, but please don’t get your hopes up. Word on the street is that Redfall is a shooter that feels out of time with repetitive encounters and bland storytelling that doesn’t work to any of Arkane’s strengths. When it does, its flaws only grow more prominent. It’s a sad state of affairs, especially for the studio’s first big exclusive under the ownership of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Microsoft. Deathloop was wrapped up in a PS5 exclusivity deal with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ghostwire: Tokyo, so I’m not going to count it here. Redfall could have been a st♊atement of intent, a shining example of what to expect✃ from Arkane going forward. It’s a failure.
After masterpieces like Prey, Dishonored 2, and Deathloop there was a faint hope that Xbox wasn’t piecing together a game intent on chasing outdated trends, but instead had the goal of subverting them and showcasing how live-serᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚvice shooters don’t have to all be the same.
We were wrong, a☂nd that apathy speaks volumes alongside damning online discourse and early review scores that paint a vivid picture we all feared.⛦ Redfall is bland and predictable in ways that a major delay wouldn’t have fixed, rotten to the core with cynical design practices and a fundamental misunderstanding of why Arkane became so revered in the first place. There are countless titles like this in the gaming world, and we didn’t need another from folks who would be better served creating something new, exciting, and ultimately unexpected. I don’t know where things go from here, but Redfall’s brutal reception cannot be ignored.
O🦹utside Arkane Studios, we also need to consider how a triple-A blockbuster like Redfall failing so immediately factors into the wider Xbox landscape. It’s a flagship exclusive with heavy marketing and a prominent pos🐼ition on Game Pass, but even with this existence as a glorified freebie, folks are still having trouble recommending it. In the worst case, this is going to translate to not only few copies sold at retail, but less engagement and retention in the live-service basket all of Microsoft’s eggs have been put. There is no winning this one.
Following the underwhelming performance of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Halo Infinite, niche audience of Grounded, and shadow drop of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hi-Fi Rush I've been having trouble thinking of the last major exclusive from this company that arrived on Game Pass without a weird catch. You can debate exclusives not being everything these days, but they continue to dominate conversation and remain the core reason why we pick up certain consoles and stick with them. Xbox lacks that, and we’ve reached the point where something needs to give or nothing is going to change. There have been too many failures for this trajectory to feel like a coincidence anymore, and Redfall isn’t a game we should expect from a studio like Arkane when the bar is set so much higher.
I can’t imagine a world where 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Starfield can possibly fail, given the continued popularity of games like Skyrim and Fallout. I said the exact same thing on Redfall before launch though, and look where we’ve ended up. After that we have 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Forza Motorsport, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hellblade 2, Unavowed, and whatever all the other studios Microsoft bought up are w🎃orking away on. This goal was to build up the value of Xbox Game Pass and stick it to PlayStation, but when so few of the games are worth paying attention to then the conversation will never stop being one-sided. Redfall is a sign that something needs to change💜 for Xbox, or we are going to keep having the same disappointment dawn on us over and over again.
