Given the prevalence of titles in the genre released in recent years, it’s understandable that some gamers were hesitant when it became apparent that Arkane Studios’ Redfall would be following the looter-shooter script. What many likely didn’t expect was a post-release backlash from players and critics so intense that Xbox head Phil Spencer apologized for Redfall’s launch during a recent podcast appearance. Though several complaints centered on Redfall’s poor framerate and numerous technical problems, the game’s lackluster selection of weapons has also become a target of some players’ ire.
Although players can fill their arsenal with several different types of weapons in Redfall, from standard pistols and shotguns to UV Blasters capable of petrifying the game’s undead enemies, the weapons within each category lack any sort of distinctive identity. The Legendary weapons in Redfall have little to set them apart from lower-level weapons in the same class apart from modifiers and damage output. This results in an experience where gunplay in Redfall feels largely the same a dozen hours into the campaign as it did when players first took to the streets of the spooky seaside city.
Redfall’s Weapons Follow a Familiar Formula
The feeling of being stuck with a selection of mostly similar-feeling weapons isn’t unique to Redfall, though. Many players likely had their first introduction to the now-ubiquitous gameplay trope of scrounging to build an arsenal of weapons color-coded by rarity with Gearbox’s Borderlands franchise. Building on the loot mechanics of early PC titles like Diablo and applying them to the first-person shooter space, Borderlands and its successors helped establish the looter-shooter genre that has become inescapable in recent years.
While titles like Borderlands and Bungie’s popular online shooter Destiny 2 excel at giving players a selection of weapons that don’t feel overly similar, others struggle in their attempts to follow the looter-shooter formula. The gaming landscape is littered with titles that embraced looter-shooter mechanics only to be met with a collective shrug by the gaming public, with EA’s notoriously troubled Anthem standing as one of the most egregious offenders. But even as gamers continue to voice their increasing displeasure with the rapidly-stagnating formula, the tide of looter-shooters currently in development shows no signs of slowing.
A Lack of Innovation is Leading to Stagnation in the Looter-Shooter Genre
Despite a growing number of complaints from gamers who’ve become frustrated with the proliferation of looter-shooter and live-service games in recent years developers continue to release titles packed with these contentious mechanics. Rocksteady Studios is the latest developer to face pushback for embracing the increasingly criticized formula, with many fans of the studio’s Arkhamverse games voicing their displeasure at the move away from solo stealth gameplay to looter-shooter mechanics in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Given the popularity of both long-running franchises like Gearbox’s Borderlands and newer genre entries like the Tom Clancy’s: The Division games, it’s unlikely that looter-shooters will be going away any time soon. But that doesn’t mean that the genre couldn’t benefit from some changes to the often-repetitive gameplay loop that’s become the subject of some players’ frustration. Rather than forcing players to discard or sell piles of identical, low-level weapons throughout a game, developers should try to ensure that each weapon has a distinct identity. This could take the form of adding more variety to the traits assigned to weapons, or even introducing greater variability to the way different weapons within the same class feel in players’ hands.
Patches should eventually fix most of the technical problems plaguing Redfall, but the well-worn gameplay mechanics at the core of the title are something no software update can change. And unless the looter-shooter genre can evolve to offer players more than just a different color in their inventory slot or a few points difference to damage output each time they find a new weapon, Arkane’s new release likely won’t be the last to leave players wishing for a bit more variety.
Redfall is available now for PC and Xbox Series X/S.