Redfall Devs Say Their Co-Op Shooter Is "More Like Loading Into Far Cry" And Doesn't Play Like Left 4 Dead

The highly-anticipated co-op vampire shooter by Arkane Studios, Redfall, has often seen comparisons to the Left 4 Deads of the gaming world. It's obvious to think so, judging from how the game follows four playable characters tackling waves of undead, but recently Arkane unveiled that playing Redfall "is more like loading into Far Cry."

Arkane Studios' Studio Director Harvey Smith and Creative Director Ricardo Bare spoke at length about Redfall's open world, combat, Xbox Game Pass, and more in an interview with GamesRadar+. The biggest curveball out of the talk was how Redfall diverges from its horde shooter comparisons, departing from linear missions with friends taking on swarming enemies for a broader objective of picking and choosing your fights.

In Bare's words, "You're in a big-ass open world," with NPCs that have quests yet also allow players to "just head outside; pick a direction, start hauling ass, and run into the living-world stuff that [Redfall] have going on."

Bare continues: "Redfall is an on-foot game - the scale and the pace is a little slowed down in that respect...we want you creeping through a cornfield at night in the fog, hearing vampires whisper in the dark. Maybe you'll spot a farmhouse in the distance and sneak over to it, only to find that it's full of cultists and a few trapped survivors who you can save. That's the kind of vibe that Redfall has."

Considering the Far Cry scale of the game, Arkane has admitted feeling a lot of pressure because Redfall will release on Xbox Game Pass:

"The pool that Game Pass offers is huge for us. It's kind of shocking, and scary in a way. Like, how many people are going to play Redfall in the first week?" said Smith. For Arkane, Redfall is their "pandemic game" - a project that much of their team worked on through COVID-19 remotely, accompanied by the worries of real life knocking on their door. It was a difficult time.

Despite that, Arkane is excited to finally release Redfall (possibly in early May) and show people what they've been working on over the past few years. With the support of Zenimax, Bethesda, and Microsoft, all that's left is to ship the title.