Redfalllaunched three days ago but the amount of bad press it has received may have fooled you into thinking it has been more like three weeks.Redfall is Arkane’s lowest-scoring titlereviews-wise by quite some way, something that has apparently surprisedXbox. Phil Spencer revealed while discussing everything Redfall this week that the team’s mock reviews had the new vampire game scoring at least ten points higher.
“We do mock reviews for every game that we launch and this is double digits lower than where we thought we would be with this game,” Spencer toldKinda Funny. “That’s one of the disappointing things, we would never strive to launch a game that we thought was going to review in the low 60s.” Redfall has since fallen even lower, currently sitting ona Metacritic score of 59.
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Arkane’s next lowest-rated game is 2003’s Arx Fatalis which scored 71. Spencer and Xbox evidently thought even though Redfall was never going to be an Arkane masterpiece on the same level asPreyorDishonored, it would at least score better than the previous record holder for Arkane’s worst-scoring game.
Mock reviewing a game internally prior to its launch can obviously be helpful and must be something that prepares developers for the real thing, otherwise Xbox wouldn’t do it. However, it’s unclear who exactly conducted these mock reviews. Whoever it was, it seems that they were unable to factor in the various differing opinions reviewers will have once a game has launched.
The pressure was already onStarfieldto be a game-changer for Xbox, and Redfall’s launch has greatly increased that. Not only for Xbox, but forBethesdatoo, since the studio published Redfall. In the same interview as the one where he discussed mock reviews, Spencer clarified that even if Starfield is an “11/10” game,it isn’t going to prompt people to sell their PS5 and rush out to buy a Series X. After a 2022 in which Xbox launched no big exclusives, and now Redfall falling flat, Bethesda’s highly anticipated space RPG simply needs to be a hit.
As for the future of Redfall, that is currently unknown. It was previously promised that Redfall will have more support post-launch than any Arkane game to have come before it. It was also promised that the game will eventually be capable of running at 60fps.As players make laundry lists of bugsthat need fixing, and it currently beingentirely absent from Steam’s top sellers, there might be more important things that need fixing before upping the framerate and adding new characters.
