You get story beats through memory flash-backs, which involve watching blue silhouettes replay a key moment from before the vampires took over.

For each core story mission, you'll get a kind of cutscene intro, but rather than a visual set piece they play out like someone put the Ken Burns effect on some concept art. It's something that comes as quite a shock compared to Arkane's other games. However, the narrative it's all packaged with is oddly lifeless in its presentation. You collect weapons and new gear throughout, and although, weirdly, there's no way to upgrade what you already have, there's a satisfying grind to proceedings. Gunplay is satisfying and figuring out how to best wield all three of your characters' powers both in combat and traversal is great. It's a shame because the gameplay is good. Each needs a generator to be found and turned on to be unlocked, and then subsequently provide one mission from a small pool of repeating options and a surprisingly underpowered sub-boss to defeat. Even the Safe Houses, which can be found and unlocked in each district of the map, repeat themselves almost immediately. There are some side quests that can be found by exploring or speaking to people in your base, but sadly they're basically shorter versions of similar ideas. They're linear and mostly revolve around heading out to a location to pick up an item, interact with something, or take down a named vampire - which are essentially just stronger versions of the standard vamps you'll find roaming the streets. You start at a base, with main quests chosen from a mission board.

It's essentially a squad-based shooter, more akin to something like Back 4 Blood or even The Division 2 in terms of mission structure and the way it handles multiplayer progression (albeit with some odd quirks). For a studio so renowned for making titles unlike other games, Redfall is surprisingly familiar.

Redfall ow new york