But it’s only the basic groundwork that needs to be preserved to make Redfall great in the same way as previous ventures. It may sound lazy for Arkane to repeat the design of its past games in Redfall, as other developers are often criticized for carrying over too much between titles. Hopefully, Redfall manages to maintain that across an open world. Linear gameplay allows a similarly linear discovery path, with these features appearing as their relevance arises in the main story. It helps sell the immersion of these fantastical worlds. While its past games have great surface-level stories, these narratives are made richer by environmental design elements that allow players to infer the things not said out loud. That allows for the other great feature of Arkane’s design philosophy: its environmental storytelling. If Redfall wants to maintain this, it may be best for it to keep its world small, or at least have missions play out in more dense environments. Here, it’s interactions with geometry and static environments in problem-solving rather than manipulating moving objects that make Arkane’s level design so memorable. While games like Breath of the Wild show how abilities can still make for great interactivity in open worlds, this isn’t the kind of interactivity that makes Arkane titles unique. Whether it’s transitioning from ground to rooftop with Dishonored’s Blink or Deathloop‘s Shift, or scaling walls with Prey‘s GLOO Cannon, interaction with the environment is what makes the studio’s output so engaging and satisfying.
That might not be great for the way iconic abilities and equipment from Arkane’s games interact with their setting. Open-world games tend to have missions play out in more open spaces than settings like the streets of Dishonored’s Dunwall City.
While this has worked in Arkane’s linear games, Redfall‘s open world risks sacrificing part of that appeal. Taking notes from immersive sims like BioShock and System Shock, gameplay revolves around planning and taking calculated approaches to the task at hand by combining equipment and abilities. When looking at Arkane’s biggest titles, it’s clear there is DNA that ties them together at a core level.
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