The bugs are generally a chest I can’t open, and this one might not be a bug, an area that seems to have a story (world icon) that doesn’t. That latter one, I think it’s just the way the game is made that notable places have unique icons and I was expecting something beyond. The failed chests, I’ve run into two of them in 14~ hours.
Silver lining thoughts, it could just be that I’m discovering areas that are significant but I haven’t unlocked the mission that properly triggers them.
I’m still trying my best to like it, but the Arkane morsels I need are too small and too rare.
I (location spoiler?)
reached the second area, Burial Point. Tbh I did not even expect it to be there from the way the game played so far. That’s neat! But, not that I could bring myself to try and collect all the grave lockets, but not being able to travel back to the other map seems like a very odd choice to me
I’ll try to wrap it up before Zelda hits on friday, I think
e: oh I hit my first annoying technical issue (one or two vampires froze before, I don’t mind that): Bribón disappeared :(
Fast travel didn’t spawn him, quitting and reloading didn’t. It took me backing out to the main menu, switching heroes, hitting all of his (Jacob) skills for good measure, backing back out, switching back to Remi to get Bribón back. No idea which part of that sequence did it, but I was relieved, because I would have definitely stopped playing otherwise. I like how he goes beep beep boop
I’m sure y’all are probably discussing this elsewhere, but I haven’t been following any videogaming news, so I was surprised to see a Microsoft “mea culpa” on the main page of the Washington Post. (<— gift link)
During a podcast appearance, the Microsoft guy running their Xbox brand, Phil Spencer, unceremoniously threw Redfall under a bus by saying “well, uh, it was a mess when we found it”.
I’ve uninstalled this after plinking away at the first town. If this were the work of some overambitious indie studio, I might be inclined to stick with it, much like the Homefront sequel. But as an Arkane game, as a creation of the folks with their bona fides, I find it utterly baffling. And now that Microsoft is all but disowning it, and reading some of your issues deeper in the game than I got, I can’t help but think this is simply what might happen when Microsoft acquires something.
I’m finishing it, two boss fights to go. If I had to guess, Arkane had this half finished and the acquisition somehow forced it out the door. There are plenty of touches that are AAA, the finished quests, the boss fights, the physical detail of the world, all of those are fine. There’s just clearly 1/2 or 1/3 the content that was meant to be.
For instance, second town there an abandoned amusement park. There’s a gorgeous ferris wheel, and I mean it’s fantastic. Hundreds of lights on this, it glows on the horizon. A bunch of midway shops, a very large restaurant, dozens of little flavor letters, paintings, books, etc.
And there’s nothing to do there. Nothing at all. No missions that go there, no enemies, no loot. If this was Fallout, the area would be hours of content but . . . nothing. Like I said before, it’s very clear the world team did their job and the content team quit or was cut or whatever.
It’s a shame, there’s an incredible skeleton here, but after pushing this out, asking 70$ for it, and now pretty clearly disowning it there’s no chance they’ll keep working on it and finishing it.
One other obvious oddness, it has run perfectly on my PC, and I don’t doubt the console version is as buggy as reviewed. Again, clearly one team finished and another was forced to drop.
One weird thing is the $70 asking price, if you’re not on Gamepass. If they’d asked $20 seems like it might have garnered a bit more sympathy.
I started a thread about the interview. People didn’t really engage because I don’t think a lot of people on this forum want to have that discussion about Microsoft first party games and how often they fail to impress.
Given that it’s been a topic of discussion for over a decade now, I suspect we might all be tapped out. : )
Sixteen responses is more than a lot of threads about actual games get, let alone threads about single video interviews!
That seems like a pretty uncharitable reading. He didn’t throw the Arkane team under the bus, but repeatedly made it clear the fault was with their central organization. And he only threw the game under the bus in that he didn’t insist that the critics and fans were wrong. (Even if apparently their mock reviews had been substantially more favorable than the real ones.)
Yeah that assumption was going around - that MS would issue a statement like that - it’s the easiest thing to blame it on the previous owners.
Granted, those owners obv issued the order of “make a game like THIS, people love it!” to the studio that should do something else, but still.
Then again, I have no idea how they could have turned around what seemed to be misguided from the beginning.
RE: Your last statement, their internal evaluation of the game was higher than actual critical reception according to Phil so I guess they thought it wasn’t misguided from the start?
That said, I get the impression that Microsoft bought Zenimax and figured they have all this stuff figured out already and stayed super hands off. That can be good or bad depending on how the people they acquire handle that change. In some cases, you buy a company and people are happy their autonomy is retained and do great things. In others, you inherit poor upper level decision making and top that with a sense of “We got paid!” that leads to bad output. From what I’ve heard, it sounds like the latter is what happened with Zenimax and this game specifically.
Hopefully with time, Microsoft will figure out how to guide their studios to better success, starting with Starfield. On the other hand, Bethesda games have been so clunky at release that it seems like a total longshot that this will end up solid and spectacular at launch. Time will tell.
I’m enjoying it too. XSX, still on the first town.
Vampires>zombies.
To be fair, empty areas in games doesn’t bother me at all as long as they remain interesting to explore. Actually I want it to some extent.
To wit, I was actually super annoyed playing Fallout 3 way back then at how frequently they spawned enemy shit for me to fight. Seriously kindly fuck off!
STALKER did it better before.
The right balance of empty to full is crucial. I want enough space (lack of enemies) to be able to explore, but enough chance of an enemy encounter to keep the experience tense.
Finished! It was pretty darned good, especially by the end when the danger level was appropriate. Some other quibbles got addressed, for 0$ on Gamepass I’d heartily recommend this. Now I’m going to go back and watch the reviews trashing it and see if I agree with their points.
I started playing last night and it’s ok…good concept, ok gun play. I’m easy to please though.
Do they have any plans to fix the whole multiplayer campaign progress being tied only to the host, or is that just how it’s always going to be? I could probably talk some friends into playing otherwise but that’s probably a deal breaker.
Arkane has publicly committed to fixing two core issues:
They’ve never said anything about improving the host-only progression issue. It’s probably so deeply ingrained into the core game engine and multiplayer infra at this point that it’s not something they could reasonably improve.
It seems like that would require a pretty major overhaul, to change how it manages progression.