Or, to look back at King, a novel featuring a ragtag group of small-town citizens thwarting the homicidal scheme of a powerful vampire.ġ1 thrilling Stephen King adaptations you can watch at homeĬults devoted to the vampire’s worship operate as foot soldiers for their new rulers, policing the town of Redfall by shooting at those who, like the player, attempt to resist their masters’ control. (Even the most aggressive Dishonored player has to slink back into the shadows and make plans to outwit a more powerful enemy force from time to time.) Redfall’s heroes are also battling overwhelming odds, but their supernatural powers, ever-growing arsenal of firearms, and the game’s dimwitted enemies position the rebels less as bedraggled freedom fighters than as a Red Dawn-style militia hitting back with nearly equal resources.ĭespite this, Redfall clearly aims to evoke the same feeling of underdog comeuppance as games starring a solo assassin overthrowing a fantasy government. In Dishonored - and, to a lesser extent, 2021’s Deathloop - assassins fought back against a fictional status quo through game design that prioritized clever thinking and subterfuge over brute force. Unfortunately, the signs of that inspiration don’t so much rise dramatically from the ground as wiggle a finger from the dirt.Ī healthy suspicion of authority runs throughout Arkane’s past work, from the perverse spectacle of feasts laid upon gilded tables in Dishonored, to Deathloop’s filthy slums
Its roots in King’s novel, Arkane’s immersive sim philosophy, and vampire fiction in general are buried beneath layers of distraction, but they do exist.
The game’s narrative is unevenly delivered, presented mostly through brief, stilted, pre-mission cutscenes and bits of in-universe text that can be easily missed while chatting with a co-op partner or avoiding a cultist’s gunfire. In Redfall, players work to take back an island overrun by vampires, driving bullets and stakes through the hearts of bloodthirsty monsters and their human worshipers while trying to uncover how they rose to power in the first place. It’s a storied lineage to live up to - one whose heights Redfall consistently fails to reach.
It’s also the most recent game to come from Arkane Studios, a developer whose portfolio includes the Dishonored series, Prey, and Deathloop. Redfall stands in the towering, Count Orlok-shaped shadow of more than a century of popular vampire fiction - especially, because of its small-town setting, Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and the heavily King-indebted TV series, Midnight Mass.
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