Bethesda's Pete Hines Says Redfall Will Be a Good Game Eventually, Compares It to Fallout 76

Earlier today, a massive amount of information was leaked through documents surrounding the Microsoft-FTC case. Now, Xbox head Phil Spencer has issued a response.

«There will be people ten years from now who are going to join Game Pass, and Redfall will be there.»

While Bethesda may have hit a slam dunk with Starfield, the same can hardly be said about Arkane Studios’ Redfall. Having launched just a few months prior to Starfield, Redfall was met with a wall of well-warranted critique. Yet, according to Bethesda’s head of publishing, the book hasn’t yet closed on Redfall.

There’s been a bad trend in video games over the last several years that gamers are truly tired of. We’re speaking of developers launching titles that aren’t ready for release and then expecting gamers to play them, buy them, or stay with them despite their “buggy states.” An excellent example of this is Redfall. The game by Arkane Studios, who had an excellent track record before this title, was an unmitigated disaster due to how buggy and boring the game was at launch. The title was dead on arrival, and it’s stayed that way ever since.

Bethesda's head of publishing, Pete Hines, has said that game bugs are inevitable and they ultimately allow the studio to lean into player freedom. 

Bethesda’s head of publishing, Pete Hines, has affirmed that Arkane’s co-op FPS Redfall won’t be abandoned, and that “we're going to get it to be a good game”. 

Redfall, the first big exclusive game released by Bethesda since it was acquired by Microsoft, got a disappointing reception. Even Microsoft executives Phil Spencer (CEO of the Gaming section) and Matt Booty (Head of Xbox Game Studios) had to acknowledge it while vowing to support developer Arkane Austin in its endeavor to improve the game.

Bethesda‘s head of publishing Pete Hines says the company will make Redfall “a good game”, despite an underwhelming reception at launch.

Bethesda Game Studios’ titles have always had a reputation for being technically rough, buggy games, and though Starfield is very clearly the most polished a BGS game has been at launch in a long, long time, it still has its fair share of technical hiccups.

Pete Hines, publishing head at Bethesda Softworks, has stated that the company has no plans to give up on Redfall, and that the game will become good down the line with updates bringing in improvements. The company hopes to raise the quality of the game to the same extent as it has other titles like The Elder Scrolls Online and Fallout 76.

Never has a Bethesda game been released without at least a few bugs. We all know how it goes… we either cease to play Skyrim because our AI companions won’t stop running into traps, or we embrace the wonderful weirdness and turn it into streaming content. And it’s not just us players who feel the need to cut Bethesda games some slack for their shortcomings.

Bethesda's Senior VP of Global Marketing and Communications, Pete Hines, wants people to skip sleep and stay up in order to play Starfield.