There’s a long history of developers crowbarring co-op into single-player games. While games like Resident Evil 5, Dead Space 3, and Gears of War have AI companions for Player Two to take control of, a lot of games will just drop a second character in without any narrative justification, or impact to the story. Growing up one of my favorite games to play with my brother was Halo: Combat Evolved, starring Master Chief and Master Chief 2, who would mysteriously disappear right before the start of every cutscene. Games like Halo are exactly the same whether you play it alone or with your little brother. If you’re lucky, the difficulty would scale up ever so slightly to make sure it's still a challenge, but otherwise, co-op was only an afterthought, back-of-the-box feature.
Redfall isn’t that kind of game. In fact, co-op is baked so deeply into every facet of Redfall, that it’s single-player mode that ends up feeling like the tacked-on experience. Not only is the combat and exploration limited in single player, but there are narrative, systems, and upgrade paths that are entirely unavailable to solo players. All games are more fun when you can play with your friends, but Redfall’s co-op features are so essential to the experience that you shouldn’t even bother playing it single-player.
There’s a system called Trust that only appears in co-op sessions. Whenever players kill enemies together and complete missions, they will earn experience and increase their Trust level with each other. Increasing your Trust rating has several gameplay benefits that improve your combat effectiveness when you’re within range of each other, but your characters will also build a relationship as Trust increases. The more you play with someone, the more conversation your characters will have, and the better they’ll get to know each other.
Each character has unique abilities that help them in combat and exploration, and most are designed to support the individual and the team. When Layla creates her psychic elevator bounce pad, every player can use it. The same goes for Devinder’s translocation disc. Once he throws it out and teleports away, the rest of the team can interact with the particles it leaves behind to teleport in after him. Characters have differing but complementary abilities that are meant to be used together. When you play alone, your specific character's abilities often dictate the paths you can take, but on a team you have so many more options.
Every character also has team-focused abilities built into their skill trees. Remi’s C4 explosive can be upgraded into a throwable that bounces teammates into the air, and she has a skill called Mi Familia that makes enemies take extra damage from allies at close range. There are things on every character’s skill tree that have no purpose in single-player, but not vice versa.
The biggest difference between playing co-op and playing single-player is how much co-op masks Redfall’s lousy combat and enemy AI. In co-op, you can maneuver around to flank enemies that are focused on your teammates, and the vampires will teleport around attacking everyone randomly. In single-player, everyone is always focused on you, and it makes for flat, uninteresting combat. Every vampire can be countered by walking backwards and strafing left or right just as they attack. Every enemy stands still and faces you so you can line up headshots and take them out one by one. You need the chaos and randomness of co-op to keep things engaging. You need teammates to mess up and fall sometimes so you can have your heroic moment where you stake the vampire and pick them back up. You need explosions to go off that you didn’t expect because your teammate shot a fuse box you didn’t notice. These are all things that don’t happen in single-player, and it makes the solo experience dull.
There are much better games to play with your buddies than Redfall right now. I highly recommend Deceive Inc., for one. Redfall can be enjoyable if you’re craving a Far Cry-like with friends, but if you’re planning on diving into Arkane’s new game solo just as you have in every Arkane game so far, pump the brakes. This one has single-player, but it definitely wasn’t made to be played alone.