Redfall - open world vampire slaying co-op FPS from Arkane Austin

[Aghoric Visions]

Nog shooting a bald white male on the ground in the head.

Yeah, fuck that BLM imagery.

 

[Rocket-Propelled Game]

Re: Redfalls team, in particular the world/level design team is interesting. It consists almost exclusively of "fresh blood", mostly brought in from other open world developers/projects. Going to their LinkedIn profile reveals that a lot of them were hired as late as early 2022... I get that they wanted experience where possible and/or wanted to quickly fill their roster. But it also seems that Redfall didn't fully take off until last year.

Lead Open World Designer:

Rachel Adams. Ex Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem. Rachel Adams video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Open World Design Team:

Jason Pane: Newbie. Ex Destiny. Jason Payne video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Morgan Gain: Newbie. Ex Mafia. Morgan Goin video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Lead Level Artist:
Michael Hutchison. Newbie. Ex Shroud Of the Avatar, Star Wars: The Old Republic, animation jobs for Sierra oldies.Michael Hutchison video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Level Architecture Team:

Jim Magill. Did stuff for Prey already. Jim Magill video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Freddie Lee. Newbie. Ex Mafia III. Freddie Lee video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Camden Beyer. Newbie. Ex Saints Row. Camden Bayer video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Lilian chow. Newbie. Ex Far Cry + Watch Dogs. Lilian Chow video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Elisabeth Kim. Newbie. Ex Watch Dogs. Elisabeth Kim video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Nicole Tan. Newbie. Ex Tomb Raider, Avengers, etc. Nicole Tan video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Alison Dela Cruz. Newbie. Allison Dela Cruz video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Dan Qinn. Newbie. Ex Days Gone. Dan Quinn video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Katherine Stull. Newbie. Katherine Stull - Level Architect - Arkane Studios | LinkedIn



Level Design:

Jeremy Catlin. Did some stuff for Prey already. Jeremy Catlin video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Kelly Mangerino Ferry. Newbie. Ex Mafia III. Kelly Mangerino Ferry video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Campaign Level Design Team:

Antony Huso. Arkane Veteran. Anthony Huso video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Steve Powers: Arkane-, Deus-Ex- and Origin-Veteran. Steve Powers video game credits and biography - MobyGames

George Royer: A couple years at Arkane already, seems to have been promoted though (was a playtester on Prey). George Royer video game credits and biography - MobyGames

Paris Stacy: Newbie. Paris Stacy - Level Designer - Arkane Studios | LinkedIn

Cory O'Brien: Newbie. Did writing before. Cory O'Brien video game credits and biography - MobyGames

>>>Ex-Shroud of the Avatar staff

Well there's our problem, one developer got dirt on their shoes and tracked the EEEEEEEEEEEVIL in with them.

 

[toughasnails]

Bought Weird West. Not sure if I'll ever actually play it but hopefully a small contribution increases however small the likelihood Raf makes something worth my time again.

Well IF you do play it I hope you'll at least have better time with it than I did. Maybe you'll even finish it! (I suspect that would place one in a rather small club indeed)

 

[pickmeister]

The only question remains for me is what happened to the Prey team. 50 people don't just go away because they were asked to make an co-op shooter. Were they laid off after Prey?

What would you do in this situation? You are a game developer for the last bastion of the Immersive Sim design philosophy (which inspired you to make games in the first place) in the whole industry. The studio's output is somewhat niche and poorly marketed, but still manages to garner praise from the reviewers and public alike, and most importantly, it always sells decently in a "long tail" basis. Then, one day, the higher-ups decide that's not enough. So your heavily specialized dev team has to scrap whatever the fuck you actually want to work on for a trend-seeker: how about an Always-Online Co-op Hero Shooter riddled with MicroTransactions™? Your Creative Director, who's also the studio founder and CEO, finds himself worned out and leaves. Then your fellow veteran devs follow suit. The studio higher-ups keep hiring the wrong people, for the wrong reasons, to try and fill the void.

What would you fucking do?

Follow the CEO, what else? Why is that even a question?

 

[Bad Sector]

Doom Eternal is unironically the best & most difficult FPS ever made, and it was made recently.

Harder than the Quake 2 expansions? People are bitching to this day about them.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

Bought Weird West. Not sure if I'll ever actually play it but hopefully a small contribution increases however small the likelihood Raf makes something worth my time again.

I enjoyed it. Some wasted opportunity (Pigman chapter without spoiling an early gameplay "twist" that should have persisted throughout) and quibbles. But it's a fun little game. I finished it a couple weeks after launch. It's seen patches and extra content since. Plus a first person mod.

WolfEye more recent have posted they are looking for new signings for their next game. If Raf Colantonio's Twittersphere is anything to go by ("Immersive Sims until I die!" "Should our next game be first person?" POLL), plus WolfEye's personell, it's not going to be a "games as a service" looter shooter anyhow.

Despite my ancient 1050ti, I've given in and picked up Deathloop on Saturday, an oldschool boxed copy.

 

[Spacer's Nugget]

Don't bother asking how the many, many other game dev studios managed to do a better job at surviving the apocalypse and delivering competently made products (PC ports aside).

 

[karoliner]

Best streamer ever is playing Redfall.

 

[Rocket-Propelled Game]

That thumbnail is the most beautifully awful thing I have ever seen.

 

[Dexter]

 

[Rocket-Propelled Game]

I can't tell who's talking to who but it's a weird day when Derek Smart of all people is saying something reasonable, at least within the context of a conversation.

EDIT: Oh God, that Sam Winkler dope is a bigwig at Gearbox. AWAY! AWAY, YEW PLAGUE-RIDDEN RAT!

 

[Bad Sector]

For as long as i remember* "game developer" was basically anyone who worked on games regardless of what aspect of game development they did as it is yet another case where the gaming industry has come up with its own terms for stuff. Outside of gamedev in other IT fields developer=programmer, so when the streams cross people get confused (if they don't already know about it).

*=as an early example see how the people who made the original Rise of the Triad called themselves "Developers of Incredible Power" and the name was picked by Tom Hall who was a designer

 

[Trithne]

Yeah nah, this trend of exalting the "writers" needs to die. Return to classic gaming: Premise, bunch of gameplay, end.

"Narrative Designer" is a job for a movie studio, not games. The narrative you need in a game is "You're this person, this dude/demons/aliens are up to no good, fuck them up." Washed up hacks who couldn't make it in movies so they write shit moviegames are what caused this.

 

[Sarathiour]

The issue is that people don't even understand what's narration in videogame is. Videogame narration is not about you cringey metaphorical story about vampire being rich white getting in the way of your luxuray space gay communist utopia.
It's about how you are introducing new concept and gameplay element throughout the game, how you build up an important confrontation, and what sentiment you are trying to convey to the player trough this segment : horror, exultation, stress, ect ...

 

[Dexter]

Videogame narration is not about you cringey metaphorical story about vampire being rich white getting in the way of your luxuray space gay communist utopia.

No, it's the first one:

 

[Luka-boy]

 

[Alienman]

Yeah nah, this trend of exalting the "writers" needs to die. Return to classic gaming: Premise, bunch of gameplay, end.

"Narrative Designer" is a job for a movie studio, not games. The narrative you need in a game is "You're this person, this dude/demons/aliens are up to no good, fuck them up." Washed up hacks who couldn't make it in movies so they write shit moviegames are what caused this.

It's the journos that do that. It's not organic.

 

[Roguey]

What a dumb tunnel-visioned argument. "Only programmers are developers" gets you things like Programmer Art.

 

[Fedora Master]

If your job is "Narrative Designer" and your narrative is shit, maybe you're in the wrong job.

 

[Latelistener]

It's strange huh. Even middle class studios have writing teams nowadays and yet narrative in most games is cringe inducing shit.

Not just talking about the quality of texts, but how it all goes with gameplay too. Starting from smaller issues, like main characters talking too much without any good reason. Ending with bigger issues like ludonarrative dissonance.

I also noticed how many games nowadays have issues with game design. I'm not talking about Ubisoft-grind-kind-of-shit, which was obviously done on purpose.

I'm talking about glaring unintended issues. And this often pairs with a perfectly optimized, graphically advanced and great sounding game.

Alien: Isolation quickly comes to my mind for some reason (maybe because I still remember the hate for game designers for ruining it), but there are probably better examples of this.

20 years ago I thought yeah, we have great ideas and imagine how they look with more advanced technical side. Haha.

 

[Tyranicon]

Don't worry friends, all these people are going to be replaced by AI soon enough.

And then it'll get even worse!

 

[Dexter]

Yeah, his "ironic?" OG take was much better. Writing cringe Zoomer dialogue doesn't make you a "developer", providing voice acting doesn't make you a "developer", nor does participating in QA at some outsourced company. As we've seen recently with Tech companies they can get rid of large percentages of their staff and have the same or better results than before if what remains are people doing actual work. Writing the manual also doesn't make you a "developer", I believe Cleve talked about that in the past: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...-turn-based-oldschool-crpg.76616/post-2298283

 

[Tyranicon]

Twitter drama should be ignored and at most, mocked.

 

[Roguey]

Writing cringe Zoomer dialogue doesn't make you a "developer"

No one would care about Disco Elysium if it wasn't for Kurvitz and pals. The Prime Juntas wouldn't make anything as well-received on their own.

 

[Spacer's Nugget]

You know things were bad during development when even someone like her ditched Arkane Austin.

My only hope now is that Raf persuades the remaining Ion Storm alumni (and maybe some of the "rough diamond" newbies) to join WolfEye, and leave the Austin studio to be "integrated" into BGS or ZeniMax Online.