When you run into a bunch of Redfall vampires in the upcoming FPS game from Arkane Austin, there won’t be any question about how to handle things: you need to eradicate them. The developer shed new light on Redfall’s version of vampires and vampirism during at panel broadcast at QuakeCon 2022, explaining that these vamps are just really, really bad people – and always have been.
“The vampires in our game, and the vampirism that they have, it’s not a disease, it’s not an accident – it’s not something that you can cure,” says Ricardo Bare, Redfall creative director. “The people who become vampires in our game, in a sense, they already were vampires on the inside. It’s more like a metamorphosis, and not a disease that they caught.”
Arkane has already explained that Redfall’s version of vampirism, while maintaining many of the traditional characteristics of the vampires we all know and love, is a man-made phenomenon. It begins with a group of extremely wealthy people seeking a technological solution to everlasting life.
“They’re not innocent people that you’re trying to save,” Bare explains.
“These are vampires that wanted this to happen to them. They wanted to live forever, even at the expense of other people,” says studio director Harvey Smith. “Even if it requires the blood of other people. They’re horrible monsters.”
Vampires in Redfall fall into a few different tiers, and even the lowest of the vampires will be dangerous enemies. Several named vampires will serve as underbosses, and above them there are vampire gods – beings so powerful that they’ve managed to push the water around the island back and trapped you and your friends on Redfall. These vampire gods, Arkane says, serve as boss encounters that break up chapters in the game.
The rank and file enemies, however, are vampire cultists – these are humans who aspire to become vampires, but for whom the vampires have different plans. They can be ‘modified’ by the vampires to serve different purposes, including as ‘blood bags’ who grow huge boils full of blood for vampires to ‘snack’ on when they get a bit thirsty.
Arkane is calling Redfall its “most ambitious game to date,” which is saying quite a bit coming from the studio that brought you Dishonored and Prey.
We don’t have a Redfall release date yet, but earlier this year, Bethesda announced that Redfall has been delayed into 2023 along with Bethesda’s upcoming RPG game Starfield.