QuakeCon 2022: "Bringing Redfall To Life" Dev Video Explores Arkane Austin's Vision And Details For Their Upcoming Vampire World

Developed by Arkane Studios Austin and published under Bethesda Softworks, Redfall turned heads at the Xbox and Bethesda 2022 showcase in June as an upcoming shooter providing a seamless single and multiplayer experience. Thanks to today's insider look from the developers at QuakeCon, we also learned more about their vision for the title and details about its world, enemies, characters, and more.

The "Bringing Redfall to Life" video brings Studio Director Harvey Smith, Creative Director Ricardo Bare, Art Director Karen Segars, and Lead Producer Aaron Carter together to discuss various elements of the title. Smith begins by saying Arkane is well-known for developing "a hybrid of first-person games and RPGs" well, but for Redfall they wanted to stretch themselves.

By applying their style and improvisational mechanics to an open-world environment, solo and co-op experience, and introducing narrative layers, Arkane would still deliver an immersive experience, but on a much larger scale.

In the case of the game's story, a wealthy group of biotech entrepreneurs came to Redfall to research longevity experiments and (predictably) that soon went south. An incident occurs, changing those affected into vampires, but the devs mentioned it's more of a "metamorphosis" rather than a viral disease that we often see in other media. Their vampires wanted to live as creatures of the night at the expense of others so they could live forever.

And speaking of others, the cast of characters players will get familiar with was flung into the whole mess. They come from distinct backgrounds and have different playstyles. Out of the four heroes revealed, there will be natives of Redfall among their number as well as outsiders to the location. For example, Layla was a college student living on the island that developed weird telekinetic powers after interning at a research facility.

Another cool thing about characters is the skill trees players can optimize to make particular builds prominent. As the devs explained, one player's skillset can be totally different from another player who mains the same character. Additionally, if you're playing with friends, they can benefit from particular skills depending on their level, such as sharpshooter Jacob's cloak ability allowing other players to use it.

The video does a great job of showing the mindset of the developers and really sets the bar for this ambitious project. Whether solo or with other players, it seems optimized for any player and offers quite a bit of customization. Do you think you'll give it a shot?