COMMENTARY - Redfall should be great, but it can’t catch a PR break

Quality control.

By Jonathan Garrett
01/05/23

We can reasonably acknowledge that 2022 was not a barn burner for Microsoft; if anything, it was a fairly desolate year, especially for their first party. At least 2023 is looking set to provide hope for the future. Game Pass has been well stocked since January, and with Redfall dropping tomorrow, it’s a good time to acknowledge the jolliness of its premise, the talent at Arkane, and also the flaming wreckage of this games PR campaign.

There has been a relentless string of Picard face palm inducing moments that have partially soured what in my ways should be Bethesda’s first big hitting Xbox / PC exclusive (since Deathloop and Ghostwire: Tokyo were both previously timed PS5 releases). First, the delay, which alongside Starfield left last year’s Xbox calendar in quite the rut. Then, the always online requirement (which will be removed post launch, apparently). The grand finale: no console performance mode at launch.

That last one certainly stings this guy, who likes his FPS’ to feel butter smooth. Even though it’s a Series X/S only release, it never felt like Redfall was pushing any technical barriers. All videos / demoes up to this point had been shown in 60fps, from what is clearly now the PC version. Even the promise of another post launch fix has left me wondering: why not just delay again?

It’s possible that the economics of such a thing would be impractical, or that too could be perceived as yet another wonky PR move that would do more harm than good. I want to believe that Redfall will deliver on its promise of tight, Arkane drizzled co-op action, but until consoles get some updated performance options, it’ll be the PC version for this guy out of the gate.