Here’s some good news about Redfall, Arkane Austin’s upcoming open-world FPS game. In an interview with Eurogamer, Arkane said that work on removing the game’s online-only when playing in single-player is underway.
“We listen,” said game director Harvey Smith. “And we have already started work to address this in the future. We have to do some things like encrypt your save games and do a bunch of UI work to support it.
“And so we are looking into- I’m not supposed to promise anything- but we’re looking into and working actively toward fixing that in the future.”
Redfall was first revealed as a co-op shooter, something completely different to Arkane, the house that usually only makes immersive sims. It was later revealed that the game can be played solo– the recent media previews seem to have all the folks that went hands-on with Redfall playing solo rather than co-op.
However, Redfall requires a persistent internet connection to work even when playing single player. It’s not something fans want to see for a multitude of reasons- from folks that don’t have a constant internet connection to the worries of preservation should the game eventually be delisted far in the future.
But Smith provided a reason why Redfall was designed as an online-only title to begin with. It’s to collect telemetry, to inform the devs what to fix or improve on.
“It allows us for telemetry,” he said. “Like- if everybody’s falling off ladders and dying, holy shit that shows up. And so we can go and tweak the ladder code. There are reasons we set out to do that that are not insidious.”
Redfall will still launch as a game with online-only requirements, but at least it’s good to know the developers listen and willing to make the change.
Redfall releases on May 2 on PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, Microsoft Store) and Xbox Series X|S. The game will be available on Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass day-1 of launch.