Redfall by Arkane Studios

MS have a lot more well reviewed games than not this gen. Also hold the record for highest review average in a single year.
I've enjoyed a lot of games with a lower MC score than this.




A change in engine was likely needed due to it being an open-world/multiplayer game.

In their previous game Prey, the main game was made with CryEngine but the Typhon Hunter DLC, which has multiplayer and VR functionality, switched to UE4.


UE4 has had a reputation hit in open-world games with recent games like Jedi Survivor and Gotham Knights.

Poor performance and visual issues.
Has some nice elements to the graphics:
Dynamic time of day with dynamic shadow maps
The volumetric cloud and mist system looks good.


Textures (mostly) look very detailed.
The not-so-good:
Severe and persistent texture streaming issues.

Especially with layered textures and decals. One example took 18 seconds to pop in. Problem is even present in cutscenes, likely an issue with the game rather than the hardware. "Worst pop-in since Rage".


Shadow quality has low res and artifacts. It is updated every frame but any close inspection looks "gnarly".
The lack of dynamic indirect lighting gives character models pretty jarring lighting.
AI often just breaks during gameplay. Enemies just stop fighting, can't see you, and even when there are no bugs the game struggles to balance stealth vs aggressive approach.


Just some random, weird bugs in how effects are set up that suggest they're unfinished.
Random glitches like graphic settings changing themselves, physics breaking, controls locking out and clipping through objects.


No Quick Resume because online lobby nature.


Arkane often has technical issues but this game was the worst by far.


Series X:
4Kwith TAA and no dynamic resolution scaling detected.


Very stable 30 fps with correct frame pacing.


Does have traversal stutter when traveling between sections of a map.


Significant dips when alpha effects fill screen (fire, red mist, etc).


Series S:
1440P with TAA and no dynamic resolution scaling detected
Very stable 30 fps with correct frame pacing.


Does have traversal stutter when traveling between sections of a map.
Has much better performance than Series X with alpha effects, could be due to lower resolution alpha effects.


No screen space reflections but there were a couple cutscenes that included it for some reason.
Lower-quality shadows.
Lower resolution textures....but they load in a bit faster than Series X.

John suggests this setting is just broken.


John is guessing the reason it doesn't have a 60 fps mode is due to poor threading/CPU utilization as seen on the PC version like other open-world UE4 games.


Default controller settings have huge dead zone and poorly adjusted aim acceleration. Can improve by setting "Input Response" to Low and adjusting the aim sensitivity to 2.5.


Gameplay-wise, most of the overworld is empty.

No enemies, missions, points of interest, etc. The primary missions are more traditional Arkane with dense environments and multiple paths.


This and other open-world UE4 games serve as a good advertisement for UE5.

This means there is a designer at Arkane who really likes how this feels. Harvey?!

There are two settings, the first of which I don’t even understand. It’s stupid. And the defaults are stupid.

We’re not talking about dialing something in that’s close. It’s just bad. Genuinely bad.

Not really analogous to mouse settings on a platform with five thousand different mice. It’s a fucking console. With a fucking joypad. It’s indefensibly bad.

Having poor feeling controls is inexcusable, especially in a fps. Every Arkane game has felt a bit shit on controller as well, it's something they should have learnt to fix by now.

It's weird reading this as I have the same complaints with every Arkane game I've played but it never seems to bother anyone else. Their games uniformly feel like shit to play.

I think your complaints were always valid to be fair. I think I've always noticed but it's never been an issue before due to the pace I always went at in their previous games. Dishonored 1, 2 & DotO, alongside Prey, Mooncrash and Deathloop. Each one I was stealthy stealthy. Taking it really slowly. This is a completely different style of game and from what I see it centres around gunplay, not stealth, so I can see why more people are noticing it and complaining about it now. Think I said earlier but the way their games control has always discouraged me from going full ham, but as I'm a stealth player first and foremost, and because the option was always there, I took that route.

I don't think it's console wars in the slightest (obviously not for everyone who isn't 10yrs old). It's a game from a renowned developer part of MS's big push of exclusives to get people onto Xbox and for all intents and purposes it's failed, miserably and more importantly it's MS's first 70 quid game so there's a clear expectation here of perceived quality. They've released games, some critically received well, but have any of them got people talking and saying I want to get an Xbox so I can play this game that I can't play on any other console? Take into account that Sony's last exclusive was GoW Ragnarok and Nintendo's next is Zelda you might start to realise why people are concerned, couple that with a 30% drop in hardware sales for consoles that are more readily available than PS5's in some areas I truly think it's symptomatic of something truly troubling at MS.

Maybe giving all of your exclusive games away for free wasn't such a great idea after all.

I more mean that not getting any money to put into their development is a bad thing.

Microsoft have a ton of cash to throw around though, and they're clearly happy to "give away" their games on Game Pass and treat it as a loss leader, just to get a strong foothold in the game subscription market.

Maybe I just hate the thought of a game subscription service in general. I like to own shit.

I used to but for me it was the amount of boxes I had plus how many publishers are moving to the disc/cart not having the full game on it which doesn't sit right with me but PC folk seem to get on fine without having physical games.

Exactly.

As much as I do like my Game Pass sub and feel it is good value for money (at least with the cheap ways of getting it), I have always felt it would need to change in order to exist long term. And I can only see two ways it can go.

1) make it very developer led. Let them do there own thing and put out shorter games made with smaller teams, creating a wide variety of content that people can dip in and out of, finish one thing off in a few evenings before moving to the next. This is the good path.

2) make everything a games as service game that keeps people playing forever and ever. Have lots of microtransactions in the games to get people spending more on top of their subscription. Ensure games are designed to keep people playing for long periods or getting them to keep coming back for events. There might be nods to smaller games, but the GaaS games make so much more money that all the effort will ultimately go to them. This is the hellscape path.

I would be very happy for Game Pass to go down the first route, but I can't see it taking any other path but the second one.