Redfall is out now, and in rare Arkane fashion, it's not being met with much hype at all. The opposite, in fact, as players share their disappointment with everything from the gameplay to the performance. Now, as players sink more hours into the shooter to try and make the most of it, another complaint is emerging: the enemy AI kinda sucks.
That's at least according to some of the clips circulating online, showing enemies react to attacks in an absolutely bizarre manner. With baddies doing little more than step side to side whenever they come under fire, it's giving players very little in the way of challenge, leading to further complaints that Redfall is just far too easy to beat in its current state.
"This is shockingly bad," says Reddit user lolyouseriousbro. "The graphics are bad, the AI is horrible, the gameplay is mediocre at best."
Elsewhere in the subreddit, Neosss1995 shares a video of this AI in action. Although that might be the wrong word for it, because these NPCs aren't very animated at all.
Others are sharing even more concerning instances of poor enemy AI, saying that this is what the game runs like on the hardest difficulty. Here, we can see that they have next to no awareness of where the player actually is, even when they've stopped sneaking and opened fire on them.
In another instance, we can see that the enemies don't even care about each other. Here, they're all getting taken out one by one by a sniper, but don't react with any sense of urgency. Hell, it's hard to say that they're reacting much at all.
Admittedly, Redfall wasn't going into its launch without a whole lot of goodwill left over. While many thought Arkane couldn't put a foot wrong, having developed hits such as Dishonored and Deathloop, there were plenty of warning signs with Redfall. First of all, there was the always online requirement, even in single player. For a studio best known for its offline offerings, this was a huge blow. Then, there was the inclusion of Denuvo DRM - a feature that has long been linked to poor performances on PC. Lastly, there was the eleventh-hour reveal that console players would be capped at 30fps, far below what we've come to expect from next-gen.
With this being said, Redfall will have to make a huge turnaround to salvage its reputation. Yet given how many issues players are coming across, it's hard to see how that will happen anytime soon.