Xbox"s Arkane Studios is less than two months away from shipping its next game, Redfall. Unlike its previous immersive sim endeavors though, the latest project is aimed at being a cooperative multiplayer game. Unfortunately, a recent FAQ revealed that the game requires you to be always online, even if you"re playing solo. That is exactly what Arkane is apparently attempting to reverse.
In an interview with Eurogamer, Redfall game director Harvey Smith revealed that work has already begun to remove the always-online requirement. This involves changing how the game"s save encryption works and UI elements according to the studio, so a timeframe was not given for when the change will be shipped. This may mean it will arrive as part of a post-launch update.
"There are people who live in places where there are outages or their broadband is shitty, or they"re competing with their family members, because their mum"s streaming a movie or their brother"s on another device," said Smith regarding negative reactions to always-online experiences. "And so I think it is a legitimate critique."
"We do take it with a lot of empathy, we listen. And we have already started work to address this in the future", adds Smith. "I"m not supposed to promise anything - but we"re looking into and working actively toward fixing that in the future."
As for why Redfall was designed as an always-online title in the first place, Arkane had wanted more telemetry data for accessibility. "if everybody"s falling off ladders and dying, holy shit that shows up. And so we can go and tweak the ladder code," Smith continued. "There are reasons we set out to do that that are not insidious."
The game director also confirmed that Redfall will not feature an in-game shop or microtransactions, with only DLC bundles planned for sale as post-launch support.
Redfall launches May 2 on Xbox Series X|S and PC alongside Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass subscription services.
Source: Eurogamer