Oh boy, here we go. Bloomberg's Jason Schreier has just dropped a report on the inner workings of Redfall, detailing multiple aspects of development that seemed to go south at Arkane Austin - the team behind Bethesda's new Xbox exclusive IP.
Neither Xbox nor Bethesda provided comment for the report, but Schreier spoke to multiple developers at Arkane Austin who provided some interesting anonymous comments about how the whole thing shook out.
Apparently, internal testers at the studio were 'shocked' to see how little the game changed over time, namely between 2021 and its eventual release in May 2023. Here's a chunk of the report that touched on these details:
"In the end, Redfall never coalesced. Several people who played the game in 2021 were shocked to see how little ultimately changed. The final glitchy product felt to some critics like a poor compromise between single-player and multiplayer ideas that failed to please fans of either type of game."
Elsewhere, the report indicates that there were some major staffing issues at Arkane during the development of Redfall - so much so that "by the end of Redfall’s development, roughly 70% of the Austin staff who had worked on Prey would no longer be at the company".
It's said that these sorts of problems in retaining employees were down to the game's lack of direction. Basically, the balance between classic Arkane single-player and the push for multiplayer was never truly figured out, it seems.
"Since Redfall wasn’t yet announced, the studio couldn’t describe its details to prospective employees — a predicament that exacerbated the staffing issues, sources familiar with the process said. Arkane wanted to hire recruits with experience on multiplayer shooters, but the people who applied were by and large looking to work on single-player immersive sims."
Even Microsoft's acquisition mid-development reportedly didn't help proceedings. Bloomberg says that internally, some employees "hoped that Microsoft might cancel Redfall or, better yet, let them reboot it as a single-player game". Ultimately, neither happened - and Redfall shipped the way it did in May 2023.
The full report is well worth a read if you want to check it out, even if it paints a pretty bleak picture for the Xbox title. It remains to be seen how much Redfall will change in the coming weeks and months - all we know for now is that a 60FPS update is planned for sometime in the future.
What do you make of all this? Let us know your thoughts on this report down below.
[source bloomberg.com]
Comments 34
And thats why xbox decided to release it, because their is no time enough to fix the game
In the future i hooe Microsoft will forget about coop shooters, i dont know a AAA coop FPS game thats having success after L4D!!! So why even trying!! i would play with my friend multiplayer games (cod-fifa-rocket league...) because you can just get a lobby and play your friend can easily join your oarty and lobbies and you have your own progress
So whooo the F thoought itss a good idea to make a coop game in 2023 with progression and leveling is only happening for the host!!! And how to play with strangers and have actual fun???
If xbox doesn't have a single person who's flexible and have actual gaming knowledge and the vision to what can work and what wont, i will do it for them for 10$
Redfall isnt going to change in the coming weeks and months. If you watched the Phil Spencer interview after it released, he was pretty candid. You need to be able to read between the lines, but only a little bit. The game wasnt delayed because they feel the game itself sucks. Theyre not going to dedicate a lot of time and resources to it now, they pushed it out the door so they could move on to something else.
Same can be applied to the last of us fiction ! A studio specialized in single player sandbox games making a multiplayer game probably open world, and its multiplayer with zombies and enemies will mostly be other players and NPCs on 3rd person
Beleive me it will fail not instantly but if naughty dog did it right it will have players for 2 months for normal players and 4 for sony diehard fans trying to buff the game and dies after which is sony nightmare... I can just smell those things, why those poeple can't seem to smell a fail
People blame Xbox for releasing such a broken game. But I've been saying it from the beginning it was Arkane Austin who shot themselves in the foot with this game as it lacked any direction whatsoever. It was Xbox who decided not to release a year ago cause it was not even half baked. They gave it time but still no progress was being made. SO there was no point of keeping it any longer as it was a failed project. Sadly it had to be released. Such a shame for a prominent studio to release something lackluster. But I hope under Xbox they find a better solution to which project to undertake and which not to. It's a slap in the face of the community and those who worked hard for a doomed project. Hope Xbox learns from this.
So, like I said post release... This game should have been canceled. People at Arkane have now said as much. Redfall is about as appetizing as a hotdog smoothie.
After 3 hours I had seen enough to come to the conclusion that it should have been canceled. The faster they can move on from it, the better. It's up to Xbox to deliver at showcase and change the narrative.
Man, Bethesda was really messed up at the end...
Obviously it's arkanes fault but Microsoft should never have let them release it full stop it's about quality control it's time move in now with the showcase next week
I bet the employees hoping Microsoft would just cancel the game were just ecstatic to see Redfall close out one of Microsoft's showcases. 🤣
The time developers wanted Microsoft to cancel their game it doesn't happen. Funny how that works.
Nothing in the article surprised me in the least. I just hope this can be a lesson for the Xbox team going forward. If they learn from it, it may turn out to be a positive further down the road.
@TakeItEasy It's ironic that Sony is pivoting away from single player, just as Xbox look set to go all in. Live services & single player games - I know which one I'd rather play.
I've been playing this for 20 hours or so. It is an ok game although it has many glitches. However I do see the huge potential for single player. This game could of been awesome but its probably too late. It doesn't need patches , it needs a complete overhaul.
The leveling up and menu system is a mess for example, they couldn't get the basics right. There are lots of good ideas in this game they need to learn from their mistakes, take the positives and move on to the next project while I wonder what could of been.
The wake up call for Xbox needs to be that they need far better internal quality control checks during game studios’ development and set expectations for what needs to be done for a game to ultimately be released. This game needed to be canceled or refocused/delayed.
Wow it's really disappointing to see that 70% of the minds that made Prey is no longer there and I don't think this bodes well for the studio moving forward.
Overall there are huge lessons that need to be learned and learned quickly by both Bethesda and Xbox.
1. Chasing trends like multiplayer and live service needs to stop especially when it's forcing teams who make Singleplayer games to do it. Bethesda has had 3 go-s at this and all 3 have failed miserably. Fallout 76, Wolfenstein:Youngblood and now Redfall. I even expect many of Sony's live service games to fail (we've already kind of seen the first casualty there).
2. This 100% hands off approach from Microsoft will simply not work.
I think what leaves such a bitter taste in the mouth is that Xbox knew the state of the game after the takeover, knew the state of the studio with the mass-exodus and not only did they choose to release the game but charge you that premium price of 70$/80€ for it. Knowing this now, I think consumers and fans have a right to doubt the platform moving forward. Also worrying on what adding more studios through the ABK acquisition is going to mean for Xbox management.
@NeutronBomb yes exactly Sony are making a big mistake there with live service crap I woudnt play any of then if you paid me the day the gaming industry go full on with that is the day I call it a day with gaming comptly
@BRT15 I generally agree with your post but I wouldn't be surprised if Fallout 76 has done better than people think, even if critically and in terms of mindshare/fan reception it got panned.
On Steam it has around 5.5k avg concurrent players and a peak of 10k in the last month. That's double Halo Infinite and consistently within the top 200 most played games on Steam.
On new larger content drops those figures spike to nearer 8-9k concurrent and 15k+ peak player counts putting it in nearer the top 100.
While that isn't the massive Win they hoped for it's also not bad for an almost 5 year old "unsuccessful" live service and will surely turn them a fair profit.
Considering MS only took over in March 2021 and this game was already 'deep' in development with internal play testing taking place that year too and was expected to release in 2022 until it was 'delayed' until 2023.
To me, that says the game was probably too far along to really come in and make radical changes. Even changing to a Single Player game would necessitate a LOT of work as the entire 'story' would need to be 'restructured'. For a game that was 'supposed' to be 'nearly' ready to release, I can understand why MS were hands-off. They didn't green light the project, weren't going to come in and be all authoritarian on the Studio(s) etc and as Arkane are a 'successful' Studio, perhaps expected them to deliver and/or 'ask for help, support' etc if required but the Studio maybe didn't know who to ask.
All you can hope is that people learn from this so that this doesn't happen again. My take is that Redfall isn't 'worse' than other UE4 open world games at launch and has the same technical issues as many but we expected more from 1st party studios so it 'hurt' more...
When Phil said Redfall reviewed internally "double-digits" higher (so a 60 average on release, while expecting 70s) I figure improvements were promised to the reviewers. So the people playing encountered issues, and were reassured that those issues would be addressed prior to launch.
There is also the claim coming from some sites and YouTubers who were invited to play. The version they played appeared to be a separate branch of the PC version, cleaned up and presented as indicative or the final console version.
@NeutronBomb It's all down to Microsoft's acquisitions. Sony are going all in on live service games of their own because Microsoft are acquiring the big 3rd party multiplatform ones. You can't trust Microsoft to keep releasing games on Playstation beyond anything legally forced and day 1 Game Pass will skew players of those games more towards Xbox.
@Grumblevolcano The reason isnt important though - just the end result. Sony are gambling that their loyalist will all enjoy a few new live services, instead of their traditional diet of SP games. Look at their financials, budgetary emphasis is shifting over there, away from SP.
They'll be alright this gen, is my prediction, and remain market leader. If they haven't got back to SP by the time ps6 comes around, they may struggle with that launch.
The biggest question I have is why they decided to split the map in two separate zones that cannot be revisited. The 2nd map was much better but I feel like hardly anyone got there (achievement stats say 10% got there).
I feel like they could have condensed each map to make them feel less empty but also combine them into one.
Second question is why market it so heavily if it was known to be sub par?
Overall I thought it was a 7ish game and don't get why it's treated like a brand destroying disaster instead of just another below average game.
@themightyant yeah I agree with you mate. I think they are doing better than what people think but I wouldn't call it a success.
And if you remember the state in launched in, it was both a creatively and technically bankrupt game. Not to forget that it was also full priced.
I went back and watched the some reviews of that game after Redfall launched and it was a shameful exercise in marketing when you hear how noncommittal Bethesda was to what the game actually is.
Would personally be overjoyed if all these live service games that have no other goal than monetisation, to die a violent death.
Better as single player.
Even more galling knowing Nintendo delayed the release of Zelda for a year to polish it to perfection.
I agree the love service angle needs to stop. It didn't work for Halo and I find it nauseous in Forza Horizon.
So long as Microsoft keep delivering good games people will keep their game pass sub. They don't want to pay just to play the same 3 games over and over.
This really bums me out just for the fact that 70% of the people that made Prey are gone. Its basically a new studio employee wise. Hopefully they replaced that talent with people equally talented. I have my doubts...
Both Redfall and Halo took significant hits due to trying to do too much with multi-player. MS should stick with single player games from its single player studios. Its that simple. There, I fixed the problem MS. I'll bill you...
So i beat Redfall and at times i seen what they were going for and of course the execution was awful. But i know this will upset the haters but it’s not a bad game foundation wise. It’s not a 85-90 meta game foundation wise as these games don’t typically score well even when polished. But it’s a solid 75-80 meta game if they took more time with it. There where moments were I was like this isn’t so bad, then 15 mins later i was like WTH is this? 60fps is this games least worries. With all that is wrong with it and some that is decent, i came to a 4/10. Could have been a 7/10 i think if better worked and executed.
My hope is Xbox doesn't announce 60fps patch for this mess at the show but I swear it wouldn't shock me either 🤣
@NeutronBomb each one is looking for whats missing, Micrksoft is so successful in games as service (sea of thieves, minecraft, minecraft legends, grounded, halo infinite, forza horizon) sk they want to straighten there SP and sony is strong in SP so they looking to strengthen there MP
It's tough to read, and this whole debacle goes to show why pre-ordering a game, even if it's from a proven dev and looks good in previews, is pointless in this era of instant digital delivery.
Even if a developer is good that doesn't make them immune from being dictated stupid trend following mandates from up high. EA destroyed Bioware, and now I think Arkane is gone too.
The more I hear about this game, the more it becomes obvious how it should have been cancelled.
Hopefully this teaches Xbox to be more involved in the process of creating the games that represent their platform from now on.
I’m glad Sony brought in Bungie to help with the live service games. The Naughty Dog news makes it sound like they’re doing their job, and preventing additional wasted efforts. Hopefully they look at the two shown at the PlayStation Showcase and make similar assessments once actual gameplay exists.
Luckily, Sony has large enough teams across the majority of their studios to split the work between live service and single player games at the same time.
Sackboy (by Sumo), Demon’s Souls, Miles Morales, Ragnarok, GT7, Astrobot, Horizon, Returnal, Ratchet & Clank, and the incoming Spider-man 2, plus the remasters, haven’t been a bad 31 months.
Redfall isn’t the best game I’ve ever played but I’ve definitely been enjoying it, despite the rather shaky “stealth” bits (that aren’t stealthy at all).
It gets points from me just for trying something mildly different. Too many games lately have been the same old third person adventure.
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