Vampire shooter Redfall has become Arkane‘s worst project in terms of critics’ and players’ ratings. Journalist Jason Schreier talked to the developers from the studio and found out what went wrong.
▪️Redfall began to be developed in 2018. At that time, ZeniMax encouraged the creation of game services and urged studios to add microtransactions to projects (only in 2021, against the background of players’ dissatisfaction with microtransactions, Arkane was able to abandon such monetization).
After the failure of Prey, Arkane’s management decided to develop something more in demand and offered to make a multiplayer game about vampires. The management did not have a clear vision, and the studio staff had not worked on such projects before.
Arkane was constantly short of people — even with the support of ZeniMax studios and outsourcing teams. By the end of Redfall’s development, 70% of the developers involved in Prey had left Arkane. It was difficult to hire new people because many wanted to work on an immersive simulator, not a multi-player game.
Ordinary developers hoped that after the sale of ZeniMax to Microsoft, Redfall would be canceled or restarted as a single-player game. But Microsoft did not interfere with their work.
The Arkane management assured the developers that the “magic of Arkane” would manifest itself at the last minute, and everything that had been worked out would turn into a great game. That didn’t happen.