Redfall hands-on: Baking and staking in Massachusetts
March 22, 2023Like all Arkane Studios games that came before it, Redfall’s creative use of game mechanics, environmental storytelling, and stylized art is also home to a narrative designed to be compelling and ripe for analysis.
Where Dishonored examines class division, Deathloop weighs the nature of time, Prey is about choice and consciousness, and Redfall is a horror romp meant to mask a timely metaphor.
At a recent hands-on preview for the upcoming vampire-hunting, open-world first-person shooter, Redfall creative director Harvey Smith noted that horror, in general, can be driven by the frightening social changes of the time.
“We’ve just been through a period of time where a tiny percentage of people are making record, historic profits, even while rivers are drying up, California is burning and flooding, and there are places in small towns across the U.S. where you can’t drink the water anymore,” he said. “And it’s like, when would this tiny percentage of people that own private jets and islands stop? Because clearly, they’re drinking the lifeblood of a mass of people, right?”
Smith’s answer to his question essentially plays out in Redfall: They wouldn’t.
To read the rest of this story, which first ran on March 22, 2023, visit the Epic Games Store.
