Arkane’s games offer a special kind of tactical agency, and with Redfall, Arkane Austin’s Studio Director and Redfall Co-Creative Director Harvey Smith says that'll remain true. "Solo is very much a classic Arkane experience," he promised – but so is its four-player co-op multiplayer mode, which is faster paced and offers a different kind of challenge as the dangers escalate.
Redfall follows four characters as they fight for their lives after an experiment gone wrong results in a swarm of vampires in the eponymous Massachusetts town. The sun is blocked out and a water wall surrounds the island, seemingly preventing anyone from leaving. Of course, knowing the story is just the beginning. From confirming Redfall will only have one ending to detailing some important customization mechanics and its plan for a lasting endgame, Smith shared plenty of new information about Arkane's 2023 vampire game. You can also watch a select portion of this interview in the video below.
Shining a Light On Big Details
Does the story change based on who you play?
No, but the dialogue does. Ricardo Bare and the writing team, the narrative design team, have put a lot of work into dynamic systems. And I should give the programmers credit there since they wrote those systems. Ricardo and Andrew Brown, our lead programmer, have worked a lot on dynamic VO systems. They worked on Prey together. A lot of work has been put into the narrative layer, the readables, the briefings, the dynamic conversations, the AI barks, all of that stuff that you'd expect in an Arkane game. We've gone a little deeper on a couple of them, but the characters, they talk a lot alone to comment on the world or with each other, depending on who you're playing. [For example] if you and I are playing Devinder and Layla, they have a different relationship than, say, Remi and Jacob would.
We'll be talking more about those dynamic narrative systems later. One thing I do want to say is there was just an overwhelmingly positive response to the announcement trailer that we released a year ago – the cinematic. Then today, the response to the gameplay trailer has been very positive. In those comments, once in a while, I see somebody like, "I hope they don't talk this much during the game. They're very chatty." And that is true, they don't. For marketing purposes, we just double down on the amount of dialogue that's in that trailer otherwise there's long moments of silence.
Arkane games are usually big on player choice and consequences. In Redfall's announcement, it was said that our actions change Redfall's setting. Are there many branching paths or major choices with consequences?
Multiple endings and stuff like branching missions are less important to Redfall. Although in truth, I think we have more elective missions, actually. There is the campaign, but there are also some side mission spurs that you can do or not do in the campaign. What it really influences is how a certain character's outcome happens or how they feel about you. Then we have the Nest, and we have the Safe House missions, and then we just have the random exploration of the world and the spawns and vignettes out there. But the overall plot itself, we don't do a lot of branching stuff with that.
Are there multiple endings in Redfall?
No.
How will we get to learn more about each of the characters? Are there specific character missions, or do we learn about them primarily through banter and cutscenes?
It's mostly through the banter and through the cinematics – they're all character-based. So if I have a briefing for this one mission and I'm playing Layla, I get Layla's perspective on that mission. But if I play again through that same mission and I'm playing Jacob, I get his perspective on it and then all of his banter. If we're playing together and I'm playing Layla, you're playing Jacob, they have their own unique banter back and forth as two characters that get to know each other.
A big question: can we change characters after we've started the game?
No, you cannot. You start the campaign with Layla, for instance, you're bound to Layla through the campaign mission, side missions, the whole flow of the game, to the endgame. And then after that, you can play again with Layla and keep advancing her or you can start a new character, but you can't switch characters mid-track. Currently, we have no plans to re-spec either. You can start a new playthrough and try a different set of powers, a different set of weapons, et cetera, but currently, when you start the campaign with a character, you're committed all the way through.
How will progression work? Do I have to level each character individually, or will there be an overall account level with some resources allotted to use across characters?
[It's] all per-character. So as you level up your Layla – you might have three Laylas going because maybe you just love Layla or you love Devinder. You might have one Layla you play alone and one you play with some other friends because they're all level 20. Then you have a Jacob you play with somebody else. Early on, we had the decision to make like, "Can I play in one party, if the three of us or the four of us are playing, can we all be Devinder? Can we all be Remi?" At first, we were like, "No, let's lock out the roles so that there's always a Devinder, always a Layla, if you have four people."
Ultimately, we decided not to do that. If you really want to play Remi and I really want to play Remi, then we should both be able to play Remi. We have character costumes that change, so you can be Remi in her rescue outfit or her hiking and camping outfit or her default outfit. I can be in a black ops Remi version. And then the way you build out your skills, the way I build out my skills, which weapons you have, which weapons I have, which Remnants you found, which Remnants I've found, it will feel different even if we're both playing Remi.
How flexible are the character builds, speaking of not being able to re-spec? Is there a specific class type per character? The gameplay segment during the 2022 Xbox Showcase showed a weapon that mentioned "support value." What does that mean and how does that impact how we play?
Our characters are very baked in terms of their personalities and their voices. What you're talking about is a shot, which we knew people would stop, where as Devinder, you have his power tree up – it's an early alpha version of it. Every hero is made up of a bunch of choices you can make through the trees. They all have three primary active powers that you can upgrade in a bunch of different ways. Then they have some passive powers. And then there is a set of skills that are kind of common across all the characters. Like, can I carry more medical resources or more lock picks?
In Devinder's case, he has a power called Black Light which you saw, where he held it up and the UV light petrified all the vampires around, which is temporary. They start to thaw out, basically, but you can stake them while they're petrified. There are hazards in the world like where somebody sets up a tripod with some UV light and if a vampire moves through it dynamically, they get petrified. You can sneak up and turn it off. Let's say an enemy faction is walking around those petrified vampires – you can use that to your advantage. But he has a power actively where he goes, "You shall not pass." He flashes [the UV light] and they petrify. You can upgrade that in different ways; bigger radius, longer effect, etcetera.
No actual class types, then? It's just more so you choose how you want to play, build it, then you can run with it regardless of whether you're playing solo or with others?
Devinder has a set of skills, active and passive, and some that are kind of common with everybody. And then also the weapons you choose because you're constantly leveling and so your weapons are leveled, so you need a higher-level weapon. Then the weapons come with rarities, so they have all these different traits on them that affect gameplay. And then on top of that, you have a few other equipment items that affect gameplay.
We have the concept of these things called Remnants, which are like objects the vampires were around. When one of them becomes a vampire and the world warps around them psychically, it will imbue something, like the rabbit's foot on their keychain or some object they're carrying can be a Remnant, now psychically charged. You can find those and carry them and they modify gameplay in some way. They're basically magic items.
Can you tell us more about the Ward Remnants, the Blood Remnants, and the Soul Remnants shown briefly on the trailer's weapon screen?