After scouring the house and finding the little figures I needed, I was transported back to a period where the mansion was tidy, un-exploded, and Addison hadn’t gone full vampire mode. It soon became clear that to find what I was looking for I needed to replace three characters missing from Addison’s daughter’s doll house. Inside, the route to my objective was spelled out only with clues, and so exploration and close reading of the space is mandatory. Patrolling cultists guarded the perimeter, CCTV camera-like vampires lurked on the building’s roof, and there were multiple entry points to choose from. It was a classic infiltration set-up and has much of what you’d expect of Arkane’s work in this field. Of course, said mansion was crawling with enemies, both blood suckers and the humans who work in service to them.

I was to search his mansion – a ransacked estate that appeared frozen in time, mid-explosion – in the hope of discovering something that may weaken him. Addison, a physician-turned-vampire god known as The Hollow Man. The demo began mid-way through an investigation into Dr. Redfall definitely is an Arkane game, just not the one I expected. And every second room I entered felt staged to tell a story. The enemy AI is there to be toyed with, allowing you to bait your foes into traps. The island town of Redfall has clever environment design that’s engineered to compliment your skills.

But the more I played, the more I saw of what I’d expect from the historically ambitious developer.

A freely explored map with safehouses, enemy camps, side errands, and tier-graded loot? Check, check, check, and check. Redfall is very different to the studio’s other games and initially feels a lot more conventional. That means Prey and Dishonored developer Arkane Austin is operating in uncharted territory. It’s an open-world shooter set in modern day Massachusetts, filled with gothic small-town vibes, fanged horrors, and a buffet of activity types. At a recent hands-on event I played around 90 minutes of Redfall, which gave me the first taste of something akin to a Far Cry game made by Stephen King.

Redfall arkane