Arkane Studios’ Redfall is one of the most highly-anticipated upcoming releases of the next 12 months, and the Xbox exclusive vampire blaster promises to give players countless ways to, well, blast through vampires.
In an interview with IGN, however, a lead developer on Redfall has revealed that while there is a lot of choice when it comes to picking a character and fleshing them out with the abilities and skills you want, you’ll have to give Redfall several playthroughs to experience them all.
Arkane Austin’s studio director and the co-creative director on Redfall, Harvey Smith, says that for a playthrough of Redfall you cannot swap between the four main characters – you’re locked into your initial pick for the entire playthrough. Smith also confirms that there will be no respeccing, whereby you’ll be able to reallocate things like skill points to create different builds on the fly. This means you’ll be locked into whatever build you decide for yourself too, and the only way to experience a different build or a different character is to simply replay the game.
“[If] you start the campaign with Layla, for instance, you’re bound to Layla through the campaign mission, side missions, the whole flow of the game, to the endgame,” Smith explains. “And then after that, you can play again with Layla and keep advancing her or you can start a new character, but you can’t switch characters mid-track.
“Currently, we have no plans to respec either. You can start a new playthrough and try a different set of powers, a different set of weapons, et cetera, but currently, when you start the campaign with a character, you’re committed all the way through.”
Smith also goes into some detail around the types of powers and abilities we’ll be able to choose from and enhance.
“Every hero is made up of a bunch of choices you can make through [power up] trees. They all have three primary active powers that you can upgrade in a bunch of different ways. Then they have some passive powers. And then there is a set of skills that are kind of common across all the characters. Like, can I carry more medical resources or more lock picks?”
With a lot of different character and build combinations on offer, but the inability to swap or respec between them, Arkane is certainly encouraging replayability with Redfall. We’ll have to see whether that will be a positive or a negative thing once the Redfall release date finally arrives.