Here we go, folks. The team at Digital Foundry has taken another look at Redfall after Arkane delivered its huge '2.0' update — the one that introduced 60FPS on Xbox Series X and S — earlier this month. The big takeaway here is that the new 60FPS mode, and other improvements, put Redfall in a much better place - but the patch certainly isn't perfect.
Here's what the outlet had to say on the game's new performance profile; as of Redfall Update 2:
"Performance in the updated version of Redfall is mostly quite good, with some caveats. The quality mode on both consoles now operates at a locked 30fps, with no frame-rate issues as far as I can tell. It's a big improvement from the launch release, which suffered from frame-time hiccups during open-world traversal, and could exhibit some issues with a screen full of alpha. Even though it might not seem impressive at first glance, Redfall has clearly seen some CPU optimisation work, which produces a very stable experience.
The performance modes actually manage to hit 60fps quite consistently. Most of the time, you're getting a flat 60fps readout, with no fluctuations at all. Traversal stutter does reappear, though in less pronounced form than on the launch release. Usually there's a short pocket containing some 33ms frames, and then the game returns to a flat frame-time line. I also noticed a couple of dips in combat during multiplayer play, though I suspect these may be CPU-related as well. It's not perfect, but clearly the game is much more friendly to the Xboxes' Zen 2 CPUs than it was at launch, and I think it's a satisfactory turnout on the whole."
So, yep, it sounds like Arkane has delivered very solid results in this department - players who were aggrieved with the game's performance back in May should be pretty happy with this new patch. However, not all of the game's issues have been fixed, and this analysis still takes issue with certain elements of Redfall post-patch.
Here's the outlet's overall take on the state of the game in October 2023:
"I played a fair amount of Redfall at launch and I do feel that the updated Xbox releases make for a substantially better game, as the basic gunplay is in a much better state at the higher frame-rate. Enemy AI seems to have been improved as well, and the game's analogue stick response is better by default. However, the mission design is still lackluster, and the world feels quite empty, even though the patch notes say the enemy density has been increased.
Assuming Arkane will continue development, clearly there are many areas for technical improvement, with some annoying visual glitches, oversights and outright bugs remaining in the updated code. I'm not sure that any amount of patching will make Redfall a truly good game, but Arkane has at least delivered the performance level it should have delivered at launch. And if this is the last hurrah for Redfall, at least the game is in much better form than it was five months ago."
Ultimately, opinions on Redfall are still likely to vary across the board - only you can decide if you think it's worth jumping back into after this new update. The added 60FPS mode sounds like a much-needed option though, and we're curious to see what you all make of the experience following this 2.0 update.