Bowing out with Redfall's final update, Arkane Austin is flexing its immersive sim heritage one last time.
Arkane Austin was sadly closed as part of Xbox's brutal studio closures earlier this month, with Redfall's final update marking a bittersweet end to the team behind genre-defining immersive sims like Dishonored and Prey. And rather fittingly, the update itself pays tribute to Arkane's own history as a modern champion of the immersive sim genre as well as Looking Glass Studios' System Shock, the 1994 first-person action game that pioneered the genre.
As revealed in the patch notes, Redfall's farewell update is titled Version 1.451.3.0, which at first blush probably doesn't bare any particular significance. However, '451' is actually a reference to one of the longest running Easter eggs in gaming. As legend has it, the old access code to Looking Glass's Massachusetts headquarters was 0451, and the studio put that series of numbers into System Shock as the key code for the first locked door in the game. Subsequently, Looking Glass kept the joke running by referencing 451 in both Thief and then System Shock 2, and then Eidos, the eventual rights holder to Looking Glass IP Thief, continued tradition by adding it to a bunch of Deus Ex games.
- Dishonored 2 cost more to make than Skyrim and sold worse, but ex-dev says it was so good that it gave Arkane "seal-of-quality protection" within Bethesda
- Despite more than $60 million in investments, Shroud-backed FPS Spectre Divide and its dev are shutting down after the first season failed "to cover day-to-day costs"
Meanwhile, Arkane, clearly inspired by Looking Glass Studios games, implemented the same code in various ways into its own games including Dishonored, Dishonored 2, Prey, Deathloop, and now Redfall. In something of a poignant full circle moment, I also just remembered Arkane snuck a 451 reference into Redfall's launch trailer back in April 2023, a harsh reminder of the volatility of the gaming industry right now.
Anyway, Redfall's 451 update is a banger. The big highlights include the long-awaited offline mode, "ReVamped" Neighborhood and Nest systems, and a pausing feature for single-player missions. Redfall's servers are staying online for the foreseeable future, but since the game never quite managed to find a very active player base, it seems inevitable that the offline mode will eventually become the only way to play.
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