You may start on an urban street that twists like a helix leading to a theater, then enter the theater and walk right through the movie screen to continue into a foggy, vampire-filled forest. These missions are procedurally generated - made up of a variety of tilesets all stitched together to create a nightmarish assembly of familiar locations. Somewhere in the area is a magic door, and when you enter it you’re transported into a special instanced mission. If you don’t destroy nests as soon as they appear, their influence will continue to grow outward, expanding across the map to power up vampires far and wide. It’s explained that the vampires draw their power from their nests - a shared psychic dream they enter when they sleep, and any vampires you encounter within range of the nest will have super strength. They appear as a blue circle on the map, and when you enter the area where they appear you’ll find that the entire area now has a sickly blue tint to it. Nests start cropping up all around Redfall after you complete the first few introductory missions. Related: Arkane's First-Class Level Design Is Redfall's Undoing Considering how thinly stretched this game is, I can’t help but wonder if Arkane would have been better off limiting its scope and honing on one good idea, and Vampire Nests may have been the best candidate. I can imagine a version of Redfall that centers these kinds of procedural missions, playing more like Left 4 Dead or Vermintide than an open-world game. They’re also grounded in the narrative of Redfall and offer some great world building for the game’s unique brand of vampires. They’re both stronghold-style missions, which every open-world game needs, as well as randomized gear runs, which every looter game needs. Conceptually, vampire nests have a lot going for them. One of those ideas is the vampire nests, a series of procedurally generated dungeons that appear throughout the town of Redfall. There are glimpses of good ideas, but none of them were given the time and attention they needed to become great ones. Even outside of its major gameplay bugs, Redfall just isn’t a particularly compelling looter or shooter. I wrote about why it fails as an open-world looter shooter at length in my review, but the short version is that the character progression, loot systems, mission design, and narrative fail to come together in a cohesive way or deliver a worthwhile experience that compels you to stick with it.
As a big fan of Arkane, Redfall was a major letdown.
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