While Bethesda may have hit a slam dunk withStarfield, the same can hardly be said about Arkane Studios’Redfall. Having launched just a few months prior toStarfield,Redfallwas met with a wall of well-warranted critique. Yet, according to Bethesda’s head of publishing, the book hasn’t yet closed onRedfall.
While many might’ve expected to see Bethesda and Microsoft dropRedfalllike a hot potato and never talk about it again, Bethesda’s Pete Hines says to expect the opposite. In arecent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Hines said that Bethesda will keep working onRedfall. This comes after the Xbox Head of Gaming, Phil Spencer,voiced his disappointmentin the negative reaction toRedfall.
“We are always in a process of learning, so that’s not new for us,” Hines said. “We don’t like failing to meet our players’ expectations. At the same time, we are the same company that has had launches that didn’t go the way we wanted, and we don’t quit or abandon stuff just because it didn’t start right.”
“We’re going to get it to be a good game because we know, as a first-party studio, Game Pass lives forever,” Hines said. “There will be people ten years from now who are going to join Game Pass, andRedfallwill be there.”
Bethesda aims to pickRedfallback up
Redfall‘s pedigree—Prey,Dishonored, andDeathloop—was undeniable. Yet rather than a full-fledged cooperative immersive sim, it was a neither-here-nor-thereBorderlandstype of thing instead.
These issues did not come about for no reason, of course.Redfall, for one, is eerily similar toFallout 76andWolfenstein: Youngblood; two classic single-player franchises converted into quasi-live-service multiplayer offerings. A sign, perhaps, of Bethesda and its parent company, ZeniMax Media, trying to branch its IPs and dev studios in a different direction. Theorycrafting aside,Redfallalso reportedly dealt with unclear directionand other developmental issues, meaning it might’ve never had a chance to truly shine.
Many will remember thatFallout 76did, indeed, face similar critiques from day one onwards. Yet,with Season 13 well underway, the game has turned things around and persevered. Microsoft’sSea of Thieveshas done very wellfor itself over the years, too. In other words, the precedent certainly exists. The only question that remains, then, is whether Arkane will have what it takes to pullRedfallout of the gutter as Bethesda’s higher-ups believe could happen.
