Redfall is an upcoming co-op vampire survival game from Arkane, the studio that brought us popular titles like Dishonored and Deathloop. Four players can take part in this story-driven action shooter in co-op mode, and we got some information about how things work thanks to IGN’s interview with Arkane director Harvey Smith. IGN’s Miranda Sanchez asks Smith if co-op story progress saves for all players that join a game in Redfall.
Does Co-op Progress in Redfall Save for All Players?
As with most co-op games, one player hosts the session in Redfall. The host’s game file is the only one that will save the story progression and remain persistent. For the three other players, character progression does save–meaning items found, levels gained, character stats earned–but the story progress does not.
In other words, a new player who hops into a friend’s game halfway through the story will start at that point. However, for solo play, that player starts back at the beginning of the story.
Harvey Smith sums it up nicely during the interview:
I’ve been playing with you, but now I’m going to play on my own. So I start playing through the campaign, but then I start hitting missions that I’ve already done. So for the flow of things, you wanna have to redo those. The story would be very confusing if you got to mission 8 and it said, “skip this one because you’ve already done it,” or whatever. So we just decided that your hero, your gear, your experience points–that stuff is always persistent. But your mission flow is persistent if you’re the host.
It makes sense that the story would be confusing if you did things in a checklist format, where you complete a mission and never have to play it again. The story would become fragmented and difficult to follow, so we feel this decision is reasonable. The gear, character experience, and other character-specific skills and progress are persistent, so you don’t waste time by joining a friend’s session.
Redfall was one of the biggest announcements at the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase 2022. It was initially slated to drop in summer 2022, but Bethesda needed to push back both Redfall and its other upcoming title, Starfield, to early 2023. There’s currently no hard-set release date for Redfall.
Redfall is set to release in Q1/Q2 of 2023 on Microsoft Windows and Xbox Series X/S.
