Arkane Austin and Redfall: what happened?

[80251]

Sad, I really liked the Dishonored series, prey 2017 not so much.

 

[Bomby569]

There's videos of all sorts of visual bugs, dumb AI, etc... already going around.

 

[64K]

Now PCGamer is kicking out some truth. In their review they rate Redfall a 44 out of 100.

From the review some observations:

"A lifeless multiplayer FPS that lacks any of Arkane's usual brilliance."

"a maddeningly incoherent and unfun shooter that looks bizarre next to the liveliness of 2017's Prey or the Dishonored games."

"Redfall's empty open world, flimsy shooting, and siloed systems make for a flat, dull experience."

Arkane might be able to patch the bugs but there is no patch for boring. The game is a turd and there is no
saving it.

 

[Sithaer]

Someone I watch on YT when it comes to looter shooters also put out a video talking about the game. 'I do trust his opinion when it comes to covering games in this genre even tho Redfall is hardly a looter shooter anyway'
He also had early access to the game + the devs personally invited him to a exclusive test ~1 month ago.

While he did like exploring the game's world and liked the different than usual design the overall game felt bland to him.
There is like no enemy variety other than a few types of vampires and basic human enemies, no gear variety just a very few different stats basically all you do is equip your higher level gear and call it a day.
No skill build variety cause the game forces you to take previous skills in the tree so basically everyone ends up using pretty much the same build.
No end game at all, after you beat the last boss in the story your playthrough ends right there, there is nothing to do after other than a new game+ difficulty playthrough which does not offer anything new. 'no new gear, nothing'

Really bad enemy AI and various bugs but those are the smaller issues with the game apparently.

Interesting part is that the exclusive timed demo the devs let him play 1+ month ago had more stuff and they even talked about an actual end game content.
Now for some reason those did not get into the relase version.

Anyway I've already deleted the game but after watching his vid I don't really feel that I'm missing out on much. 'I mean I was interested in the end game but since there is none..'

 

[vigor]

Ouch, so many negative reviews. People say it's an early access and a bad game not worth $40. End for Arkane studios?
For me it is a hard pass.

They shoud've made Dishonored open world just like 4A Games did with Metro Exodus.

 

[80251]

An open world Dishonored would've been interesting, I don't know if the engine they used could've handled that though.

 

[jext]

The game has been okay for me playing with my wife, although I had no expectations so I am probably an outlier. The enemy AI becomes confused intermittently, but that is my only complaint.

 

[cvaldes]

Things aren't looking good for this game. It has lost 95% of its players on Steam in just two weeks.

Redfall Lost 95% of Players on Steam; Not Doing Too Well in Game Pass Either

Redfall and its more than 95 percent drop in popularity on Steam is a real disaster. Arkane Studios has no reason to be happy, especially as the game's regression continues.

www.gamepressure.com

Once it leaves Game Pass almost no one will be playing it.

Assuming the game has no major turnaround, the servers may be shut down in a year. If that happens there's probably a good chance that the Arkane Austin operation will be disbanded and its employees reassigned elsewhere in the Bethesda mothership.

Redfall might be the last Arkane Austin title.

 

[Vayra86]

An open world Dishonored would've been interesting, I don't know if the engine they used could've handled that though.

I hear Bethesda has a pretty swanky ol' open world engine laying around

 

[Shelterdeck]

I hear Bethesda has a pretty swanky ol' open world engine laying around

I'm still on Point Lookout looking out for it.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I'm still on Point Lookout looking out for it.

Any luck over there? I haven't found it searching Appalachia. Only big mean radioactive bats that like to destroy my C.A.M.P.

Things aren't looking good for this game. It has lost 95% of its players on Steam in just two weeks.

Redfall Lost 95% of Players on Steam; Not Doing Too Well in Game Pass Either

Redfall and its more than 95 percent drop in popularity on Steam is a real disaster. Arkane Studios has no reason to be happy, especially as the game's regression continues.

www.gamepressure.com

Once it leaves Game Pass almost no one will be playing it.

Assuming the game has no major turnaround, the servers may be shut down in a year. If that happens there's probably a good chance that the Arkane Austin operation will be disbanded and its employees reassigned elsewhere in the Bethesda mothership.

Redfall might be the last Arkane Austin title.

I keep hearing this game is utterly terrible especially for the price they are charging, but it's likely never going to leave Game Pass, they just throw it in the backburner for content development for a while and leave it up on XGP indefinitely. I have reservations paying $100 for games that are mesmerizing and amazing, but I am definitely not paying 100 for a stinker.

 

[cvaldes]

I keep hearing this game is utterly terrible especially for the price they are charging, but it's likely never going to leave Game Pass, they just throw it in the backburner for content development for a while and leave it up on XGP indefinitely.

I disagree.

It is not in Microsoft's best interest to clutter up Xbox Game Pass with a bunch of stinkers. That just turns the service into a ghetto and really isn't the message Microsoft wants to convey. People pay money for the subscription, they should be getting a well-curated collection of entertaining titles, not trying to find a diamond in a steaming pile of dung.

Keeping a game with a shoddy reputation just makes XGP look bad. Should a restaurant keep an inedible dish on their menu "just because"? That makes no sense.

This is the kind of attitude which keeps the video game industry stupid and pathetic. Devs don't care enough. Publishers don't care enough. And most important the paying public doesn't care enough.

Gamers are idiots. They accept piss poor content year after year after year by shelling out hard earned money on crap. That would be like some pop artist putting out an album where a bunch of lyrics are wrong, the instruments are out of tune, microphone feedback, singer is off key, the liner notes misspell the musicians' names, et cetera ad nauseam.

If I shell out $18 for a Beethoven Symphony #9 CD from the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, should I accept mediocrity? Or attend a performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet and some of the cast members forgot to put on their costumes and forget some of their lines?

The video game industry needs to grow up and act like adults. Unfortunately they are catering to an audience that doesn't want to be treated like adults. Remember, the video game industry surpassed the film industry in revenue back in the Nineties. And for sure video games make more money than the traditional arts (classical music, opera, theater, ballet, etc.).

It's this kind of accepting attitude that ensures generous amounts of ongoing low quality in the video game industry decade after decade.

Sure, people make mistakes. We all do. If a plate is dropped in a restaurant, someone cleans it up. What is being suggested here is to just leave the mess on the floor.

Super classy and welcoming.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I disagree.

It is not in Microsoft's best interest to clutter up Xbox Game Pass with a bunch of stinkers. That just turns the service into a ghetto and really isn't the message Microsoft wants to convey. People pay money for the subscription, they should be getting a well-curated collection of entertaining titles, not trying to find a diamond in a steaming pile of dung.

Keeping a game with a shoddy reputation just makes XGP look bad. Should a restaurant keep an inedible dish on their menu "just because"? That makes no sense.

This is the kind of attitude which keeps the video game industry stupid and pathetic. Devs don't care enough. Publishers don't care enough. And most important the paying public doesn't care enough.

Gamers are idiots. They accept piss poor content year after year after year by shelling out hard earned money on crap. That would be like some pop artist putting out an album where a bunch of lyrics are wrong, the instruments are out of tune, microphone feedback, singer is off key, the liner notes misspell the musicians' names, et cetera ad nauseam.

If I shell out $18 for a Beethoven Symphony #9 CD from the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, should I accept mediocrity? Or attend a performance of Shakespeare's Hamlet and some of the cast members forgot to put on their costumes and forget some of their lines?

The video game industry needs to grow up and act like adults. Unfortunately they are catering to an audience that doesn't want to be treated like adults. Remember, the video game industry surpassed the film industry in revenue back in the Nineties. And for sure video games make more money than the traditional arts (classical music, opera, theater, ballet, etc.).

It's this kind of accepting attitude that ensures generous amounts of ongoing low quality in the video game industry decade after decade.

Sure, people make mistakes. We all do. If a plate is dropped in a restaurant, someone cleans it up. What is being suggested here is to just leave the mess on the floor.

Super classy and welcoming.

Well, if it isn't left on XGP, it's going to fade away into obscurity. Which perhaps is a more dignified fate, but since you can actually pay for DLC on Game Pass games, they might just leave it there.

Truth be told, the video game market needs another crash like the 1983 one. Console manufacturers gatekeep titles, stifle artistic freedom and limit audiences by treating games as toys and employing stupid bans on content they consider objectionable or aimed towards adults (such as the ESRB AO blanket ban). That alone should earn them wrath, yet a lot of people aren't even aware of things like this.

Low-effort releases are but a small part of the problem. It's corporate culture being forced where it does not belong.

 

[Space Lynx]

Now PCGamer is kicking out some truth. In their review they rate Redfall a 44 out of 100.

From the review some observations:

"A lifeless multiplayer FPS that lacks any of Arkane's usual brilliance."

"a maddeningly incoherent and unfun shooter that looks bizarre next to the liveliness of 2017's Prey or the Dishonored games."

"Redfall's empty open world, flimsy shooting, and siloed systems make for a flat, dull experience."

Arkane might be able to patch the bugs but there is no patch for boring. The game is a turd and there is no
saving it.

I know most people probably won't believe me, but Austin in Dishonored's time was a more down to earth city, and now its a full on major party city since so many billionaires and millionaires have moved there since 2019. I wouldn't be surprised if the Austin team just spent too much time partying, and stopped caring about work. Not saying thats what happened, but hey I have lived a mostly boring life my entire life, if I had some money in the bank and a happening city at my doorsteps, I'd probably pay less attention to work and have more fun too. It's just a theory.

 

[cvaldes]

As I predicted Arkane Austin (Prey, Redfall) has been shuttered:

Xbox shuts slew of Bethesda studios, including Redfall, Hi-Fi Rush developers

Xbox has today announced stunning cuts and studio closures affecting a slew of development houses under the Bethesda ba…

www.eurogamer.net

along with Tango Gameworks (The Evil Within) and Alpha Dog (Mighty Doom).

The Redfall Hero Pass has been cancelled and purchasers are being offered store credit instead:

Redfall Hero Pass cancelled following Arkane Austin closure

In the wake of devastating closures at Bethesda, Arkane Austin has confirmed the Hero Pass DLC for Redfall will no long…

www.eurogamer.net

I expect that the game will be renamed Redfail and the servers will be shut down in the not-too-distant future. No surprise there, frequently Redfall has zero viewers on Twitch. It has been like this for months.

As for Tango Gameworks, the writing was on the wall a year ago when founder Shinji Mikami announced his intent to leave the studio to branch out to different game types beyond the horror genre.

Best wishes to the employees affected by these closures.

 

[Dr. Dro]

As I predicted Arkane Austin (Prey, Redfall) has been shuttered:

Xbox shuts slew of Bethesda studios, including Redfall, Hi-Fi Rush developers

Xbox has today announced stunning cuts and studio closures affecting a slew of development houses under the Bethesda ba…

www.eurogamer.net

along with Tango Gameworks (The Evil Within) and Alpha Dog (Mighty Doom).

The Redfall Hero Pass has been cancelled and purchasers are being offered store credit instead:

Redfall Hero Pass cancelled following Arkane Austin closure

In the wake of devastating closures at Bethesda, Arkane Austin has confirmed the Hero Pass DLC for Redfall will no long…

www.eurogamer.net

I expect that the game will be renamed Redfail and the servers will be shut down in the not-too-distant future. No surprise there, frequently Redfall has zero viewers on Twitch. It has been like this for months.

As for Tango Gameworks, the writing was on the wall a year ago when founder Shinji Mikami announced his intent to leave the studio to branch out to different game types beyond the horror genre.

Best wishes to the employees affected by these closures.

Arkane Lyon boss leads widespread condemnation of Bethesda closures

Arkane Lyon boss Dinga Bakaba and others from across the industry have reacted to today's news of devastating closures …

www.eurogamer.net

Looks like someone is aware they're next, considered the tone of the thread there. I'm surprised it took this long for Microsoft to trim the fat, outside of Bethesda Game Studios, id Software and ZeniMax Online Studios the honest truth is that every other development studio in the Bethesda conglomerate is a B tier producer at best and most of their games sold that well largely due to the Bethesda name. They were never particularly interesting games to begin with but hey, it's my (pretty bad) opinion right?

 

[cvaldes]

Arkane Lyon boss leads widespread condemnation of Bethesda closures

Arkane Lyon boss Dinga Bakaba and others from across the industry have reacted to today's news of devastating closures …

www.eurogamer.net

Looks like someone is aware they're next, considered the tone of the thread there. I'm surprised it took this long for Microsoft to trim the fat, outside of Bethesda Game Studios, id Software and ZeniMax Online Studios the honest truth is that every other development studio in the Bethesda conglomerate is a B tier producer at best and most of their games sold that well largely due to the Bethesda name. They were never particularly interesting games to begin with but hey, it's my (pretty bad) opinion right?

The average gamer (which does not describe the regulars posting on TPU) can't distinguish the difference between a developer or a publisher. All they will remember is the retailer where they bought the game (Steam, Epic Game Store, Xbox Game Pass, etc.) and maybe one logo during the splashscreen sequence at the beginning.

Anyhow we all knew there would be more studio closures since Xbox proposed to acquire Zenimax. Consolidation in any industry (not just videogames) is generally a bad thing for quality, customers, innovation, employees, etc. The main benefit is cost cutting which is good for shareholders. Everyone else loses.

If bad games continue making money, the owners will let them live. The problem with Redfall was a massive dropoff in concurrent players. Like I stated, Redfall frequently has zero viewers on Twitch. That's bad, particularly for a live service game that has ongoing development costs and server infrastructure to maintain.

A tedious grindfest like Diablo IV will be fine. Not particularly interesting to me but repetitive gameplay is well liked by a substantial subset of today's gaming audience.

 

[dirtyferret]

A tedious grindfest like Diablo IV will be fine. Not particularly interesting to me but repetitive gameplay is well liked by a substantial subset of today's gaming audience.

I actually find most Diablo and clones to be boring after a few hours but I have enjoyed IV more than any of the others. At least the plot of the game is far more interesting this time around.

 

[Assimilator]

Microsoft bought ZeniMax for BethSoft. I don't understand how anyone could be surprised by this, especially all the other ZeniMax studios... and especially especially the studio responsible for the execrable Redfall.

 

[cvaldes]

Microsoft bought ZeniMax for BethSoft. I don't understand how anyone could be surprised by this, especially all the other ZeniMax studios... and especially especially the studio responsible for the execrable Redfall.

Surprised? No. Outraged? Some would say yes (including the Arkane Lyon studio head).

No one with more than five neurons should be surprised by Arkane Austin's shuttering. Redfall basically has no players in 2024. I don't know who liked this game when it came out but today apparently there are zero who stayed around.

Unless their devs turn it around, it looks like Starfield is shuffling toward the exit as well.

 

[Space Lynx]

no Helldivers community to give them hell and reverse course eh?

that's a shame.

hell fucking yeah divers, long live Super Earth!

 

[Chrispy_]

I'm starting to think that $70 is the price to avoid.

Everything that's launched at $70 recently seems to be a turd of a half-baked mess and the launch at a steep price is just a desperate cash grab to try and make the initial sales number look bigger before the studio gets its funding cancelled.

Some of the best PC games of 2023 were $60 or under, I'm trying to think if any of the $70 ones were worth bothering with.

$60 Baldur's Gate 3
$45 Street Fighter 6
$50 Alan Wake 2
$60 Lies of P
$60 CP2077 2.0 with Phantom Liberty
$60 Armored Core
$20 Dave the Diver
$35 Sea of Stars.

And all the $70 failures:

$70 Diablo IV
$70 Starfield
$70 Jedi Survivor (a decent game but half-baked, poorly-performing, crashy mess for 3+ months)
$70 Redfall

It's only a small dataset, but every one of those $70 titles had a rocky start and still isn't great.

 

[cvaldes]

Lol, if you're going to spend $70 on a videogame, give your money to Nintendo, not Microsoft or Sony.



And don't spend that much on a PC title, they always get discounted, sometimes very quickly. Pre-ordering a PC game at full retail is for imbeciles. But as P.T. Barnum said...

But let's remember that videogame prices are essentially way cheaper than what they were before when accounting for inflation.

Zelda Ocarina of Time was $60 retail in 1998. That's about $113-114 in current dollars (May 2024). So a videogame publisher asking $70 for a title in 2024 isn't out of line. Do you think a game developer's rent has stayed the same since 1998? The electricity powering Valve's servers? A cup of coffee?

The biggest problem is when a $70 game sucks ass. And there are plenty of $60 turds as well. That's happening more frequently these days. Pity.

 

[Space Lynx]

I'm starting to think that $70 is the price to avoid.

Everything that's launched at $70 recently seems to be a turd of a half-baked mess and the launch at a steep price is just a desperate cash grab to try and make the initial sales number look bigger before the studio gets its funding cancelled.

Some of the best PC games of 2023 were $60 or under, I'm trying to think if any of the $70 ones were worth bothering with.

$60 Baldur's Gate 3
$45 Street Fighter 6
$50 Alan Wake 2
$60 Lies of P
$60 CP2077 2.0 with Phantom Liberty
$60 Armored Core
$20 Dave the Diver
$35 Sea of Stars.

And all the $70 failures:

$70 Diablo IV
$70 Starfield
$70 Jedi Survivor (a decent game but half-baked, poorly-performing, crashy mess for 3+ months)
$70 Redfall

It's only a small dataset, but every one of those $70 titles had a rocky start and still isn't great.

Helldivers 2 was $39 and has the strongest community I have ever seen so your list lines up imo for sure.

 

[vigor]

Still $70 for Redfall on Steam!

Should be $7 if not less