Bethesda now says Redfall's new heroes and other deluxe edition content won't arrive until sometime in 2024

16.11.2023 - 22:37 / pcgamer.com

Arkane has dropped a new update for its undead shooter Redfall that adds a powerful new weapon, makes a number of changes to AI, missions, and gameplay, and introduces a handful of performance and stability tweaks. Unfortunately, it also reveals that the promised "Hero Pass," a $30 upgrade to the base game that promises two new heroes to play as, is still in development and won't be around until sometime in 2024.

Redfall, you will recall, tanked badly when it launched earlier this year. It just wasn't very good, and player numbers reflected that assessment: Its average concurrent player count on Steam in its first month of release was a paltry 305, and in the six months since that number plummeted to just 17 over the past 30 days. 

Microsoft and Bethesda promised to keep working on it, and so they have, but not nearly at the pace we've seen from the developers of games like Remnant 2 or Starfield: Prior to today, only two updates had been released, neither of them notable game-changers.

That's the case for today's update as well. The headline item is the Basilisk, a sniper rifle that charges the first round in a full magazine with UV power that can petrify vampires—unless the vampire in question is immune to petrification, in which case, good luck.

Otherwise, though, this patch is a pretty standard, compact fixer-upper. Changes like improved NPC patrol pathing, better visibility of other players on the map, and performance fixes to improve FPS drops and stuttering are no doubt welcome, but there's a feeling of fiddling while Rome burns to it. I know there's a lot to be done, but will «human enemies are now able to climb awnings» turn things around for Redfall? 

If anything, it's had the opposite effect. There's clear frustration among the remaining player base on Reddit with the fact that, more than six months after release, there's still no sign of the deluxe edition content. This might not be a big deal if you bought the base game, got tired of it, and moved on with your life, but if you sprung for the $100 «Bite Back» edition, or bought the upgrade (the «Hero Pass») separately, you might fairly be feeling as though you just fired your money out the window of a moving car. 

All Bethesda had to say about it was a one-line comment at the end of the patch notes: «We're continuing development of The Hero Pass and we're excited to share more about Redfall's new heroes and other updates later next year.»

An even bigger complaint is the ongoing lack of matchmaking. Bizarrely, Redfall—a co-op four-player shooter—does not support matchmaking, which means you can't just hop in with a squad of strangers and have fun shooting stuff: You either play with your Steam friends, or you play alone.

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