The Doom team helped Arkane get Redfall’s FPS elements right

Aiming for pew pew perfection

Redfall, the open-world multiplayer game from Dishonored-maker Arkane, is the studio’s most ambitious game yet, and Arkane’s Harvey Smith and Ricardo Bare told GamesRadar they needed some help to get the FPS game parts of it right.

"There's a certain level of work you have to put into a shooter to just reach the minimum bar, because you'll inevitably get compared to all the other shooters out there if your guns don't feel good," Bare said in the interview.

To make sure the gunplay met and exceeded those expectations, the team brought in FPS experts from outside Arkane, including some of the development staff who work on DOOM. One feature Bare believes will help Redfall stand out is how weapons tie in with the cursed town Redfall takes place in.

Most of the guns you find have been modified in some way by the locals– sawed off and otherwise “jury-rigged” with random modifiers, Bare said. You can also outfit them with vampire-hunting tools. A rifle with a stake for a bayonet may be the only way to permanently end certain vampires. Some have stake launchers with improvised ammo such as fireplace pokers, while others come with mounted UV lights.

All of this ties into Arkane’s goal for the town of Redfall itself – making it feel like a dynamic horror playground where anything can happen and usually does, for better or worse. While some expected Redfall to be Left 4 Dead with vampires, Smith and Bare told GamesRadar it’s more like Far Cry, albeit without the overwhelming world and massive checklist of things to do.

The team is packing Redfall with the kind of immersive sim elements you’d expect from an Arkane game. Factions fight in the streets and ignore you. A lone survivor you set out to rescue might be dead by the time you reach the rundown shack that was their hiding place, and you arrive to find it full of vampire cultists instead.

While Arkane hasn’t announced an official Redfall release date yet, there’s some speculation we might be visiting the town of the undead sometime before spring 2023 is over. When it does launch, Redfall will be available for Xbox Series X|S and PC via Windows.