REDFALL
05/02/23 – Prologue: The Fallout of Redfall
I was beyond excited to load up Redfall after I got back from my most recent Wedding vacation. It was the first of the big big AAA Xbox Exclusives in this forever delayed block of games worth “waiting” for.
I bought my Xbox Series X for High On Life, Scorn, Redfall, and Starfield.
Scorn was a flop.
High On Life is a great experience so far but not exactly what you’d buy a $500 box for.
With Redfall getting subpar-to-bad reviews, it’s easy to doubt why I scooped up my Series X exclusive-wise.
(Which is reductive since I’ve been playing far more Series X than PS5, due to the Quick Resume feature and the extra horsepower to run last-gen games like Assassin’s Creed Origins and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. I’m continuing to get great quality of life from my Series X, and I’m sure it’ll continue to pay dividends further into the gen.)
The existentialism of this initial entry shows just how weird the Xbox ecosystem is right now. The unpredictability in terms of quality, polish, and even gameplay style is almost strictly an Xbox problem. You know what you’re getting from a first party Switch game or a Sony Studios exclusive. But with Scorn and Redfall being a bit murky in terms of marketing vs. reality, it adds more tension to what Starfield will be, and if it’s Fallout, Skyrim in space, or No Man’s Sky.
That being said, I made note that I was going heads down on any further Redfall criticism until I can experience it for myself. Honestly, part of me was relieved knowing that it’s not a super-critical story or as immersive and heavy-hitting as I expected. I love a good story game, but I’m always in the market for a solid podcast-game or mindless checkbox game, and this feels like a bit more of a captivating and timely option than starting FarCry 3 up again. Plus, it justifies my GamePass subscription, which is always a nice feeling. I’m sure the 60fps update will be great, but I see it as a cherry on top rather than a reason to wait and kill all momentum and excitement. My slamming halt playing Dead Island was a huge bummer and I don’t think it being 30fps or 60fps was gonna make it any better. I don’t want the hope of smoother shooting mechanics to inflate my expectations of the game any further.
Essentially, I’m still excited to try it out, though I’ll likely prioritize beating Ravenlok over Redfall prior to Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, since that’s next weekend.
05/03/23 – First (And Second) Impressions
The first hour/mission of the game is truly a tale of two playthroughs for me.
My first attempt at the intro of Redfall was very tentative, tense, and slightly frustrating. After agonizing over the Character select screen, knowing that I’d have to start over to switch Heroes, I eventually went with Layla the Telekinetic in Student Debt. I hoped that she would be the most captivating personality, and I loved her color scheme and style. Even the aesthetics of her hand jewelry and the psychic umbrella felt like an awesome and unique approach to any FPS, especially juxtaposed with the gray, black, and red of the rest of the world.
I crept through the beginning stage in crouch mode, sneaking through and peeking around every corner. I carefully read each and every note on the ground, expecting something profound each time. Other than a bit of clumsy world-building and environmental storytelling, I had one cool encounter of reading about a survivor leaving instructions on finding their gun in the trunk of their car on the ferry, and later popping the trunk of the first car I found and looting some ammunition. This felt like awesome storytelling until I found ammo in the next three car trunks, and just had to tell myself that Redfall must be one of the rare coastal Republican communities in Massachusetts.
I tried creeping and sneaking around the cultists throughout my first few encounters, but ultimately felt slow and weak.
Also, the dialogue, or technically monologue, from Layla, was disappointingly Forespoken-esque. It was very fish-out-of-water “I cAn’T BeLiEvE tHiS, oF cOuRsE tHiS wOuLd HaPpEn To mEeEeEe!!!” to the Nth degree. I hope that I’m wrong, but I know that I was pretty much done as soon as the Mission Table was introduced. I knew this was the point of no return, so I ripped the bandaid off and started over during my next play session.
After a bit of breathing room, I started over with the Deadeye Jacob Boyer, which is who I wanted to play as from the start but felt too basic. He’s very much giving part Soldier 76, part McCree, but that’s apparently ultimately more of my go-to.
Layla wasn’t actually the dream of Mass Effect Vanguard class with part Assault Rifle and part Telekenetic push and pull powers. She was more of the full telekinetic or full biotic moveset with limited power. This was so disappointing because I wanted to push through with the most interesting character design and personality on paper. But there’s enough of that style of writing in my future between Forespoken and Hi-Fi Rush, so I had to tap out instead of blaming the game for my bad times.
Unfortunately for my fear of basicness, my gut instinct was validated upon my second playthrough. It was like night and day: my confidence to be able to actually gun down the cultists and navigate the environments. The narrative sense of an enhanced shooter character vs. a scared grad student getting her first gun and wiping out 15 heavily armed guards without a sweat. It may be complete placebo effect (or me just getting used to the controls) but I swear that Jacob was controlling faster and had better accuracy. While that’s unlikely, I can’t deny I had a much better time controlling him and hearing his dark gritty southern drawl compared to the young millennial Marvel-isms as I moved from location to location.
The combat (the second time around) felt so visceral and satisfying as I crouch slid past enemies and popped headshots left and right. I embraced the sprint speed and evaded enemy fire. I climbed around the boats and rocks with a more aggressive style that led to less damage, more effective kills, and much more fun. None of this was Layla’s fault, but I think a state change was crucial for me to actually “get” this game can be more like a creepy fast paced run ‘n’ gun rather than hoping for this beautifully crafted horror and suspense experience.
This time ’round, I didn’t expect much of the conversations with the NPC’s, especially compared to the absolutely masterful writing and programming I experienced in my first experience with Dishonored, where NPC’s had rich, compelling, dynamic dialogue for minutes at a time if you kept prompting them. Once I made peace with the fact that most of them were just going to grunt at me or say something stupid and cartoonish, I got back to the action as quickly as possible.
While my play through ended with me rage quitting after the latest death in a series of frustrating encounters got me sent all the way back across the map to the Firehouse, I experienced a lot of fun in this first hour or so of exploration. I saw quite a few dynamic encounters between cultists and vampires alike. I fought groups of bickering cultists, crashed a party at an abandoned mansion with a group led by a single vampire. I stumbled into a parking lot in which 5 vampires suddenly appeared and chased me to my death a half a mile down the road.
Outside of some overzealous mistake-ridden gameplay by yours truly, and some incredibly frustrating freezing and performance issues from the game, the action held a combination of suspense and excitement. I felt empowered after a few perfect encounters with cultists, but immediately felt the fear and the instinct to flee when I’d run into a surprise vampire or two during my haste. The stake launcher felt overpowered in my first use, as it was calmly deployed with patience and measure. But when it failed me during a hasty backpeddle, I truly felt the power and speed of the vampires, and knew that I was still outclassed during any rushed encounter.
Even though I HATE the idea of getting booted back to the firehouse upon death, and I think a checkpointing system on the standard difficulty would’ve been far better, I’ll accept this bullshit limitation of an online-focused shooter and embrace it in the same way I embraced Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. The difficulty and the wrist-whacking that occurred whenever I got too aggressive or impatient in Fallen Order made me completely change my approach and play style, and as a result it became one of my favorite, most rewarding game experiences in recent years. I don’t think that the thresholds for quality are the same in these two titles, but any game that makes me slow down and respect the hierarchy the designers set up will always get an eyebrow raise and honest try out of me moving forward.
Instead of dropping down the difficulty, I’m going to take a more Division/Rainbow Six approach to scanning and clearing rooms, and I’m going to focus my next play though on being able to stick and move, funneling my enemies into a position where I can refocus and take more precise aim since John Wick gun-fu doesn’t seem to be in the cards with my current melee power. (I’m realllllly hoping that the two upgrades for your melee strength is going to be substantial, because a 3-5 hit gun-fu attack on a human cultists would feel so satisfying with these mechanics). I’m also hoping that a dodge mechanic other than the crouch slide pops up, but that will take practice as well regardless.
After some thought, I am actually very excited for my next play session of Redfall, and I’m going to continue to adapt and embrace what the game actually is, rather than hoping it becomes a Dead Space or Doom 3 or Dishonored clone (since I haven’t actually beaten any of those games and I can play them if I want that so badly.)
My goal is to complete three straight missions without dying once, and I think I can accomplish that with my new mindset and proposed play style. When in doubt, run and regroup. Stick and move. Use the scan to my full potential. Play like a soldier and a soon-to-be sniper. And find an assault rifle.
