Arkane has revealed that just one section of Redfall’s map is bigger in size than the entirety of Talos I, the space station setting of Prey.
Speaking as part of the ‘Bringing Redfall to Life’ panel at Quakecon 2022, Redfall’s art director, Karen Segars, said: “The Talos in Prey was five football fields. The size of Redfall is kinda ‘hold my beer’ on that one.”
To help explain just how large the Redfall open world is, Arkane Austin’s studio director, Harvey Smith, recalled a fun moment from earlier in development. “Jim McGill took Talos at scale and dropped it in the middle of the farm that’s [in Redfall’s second district area]. And the district just eats the whole space station, of course. It’s gigantic.”
“It was just the size of the actual farm area, and that’s just one mission,” added Aaron Carter, Redfall’s lead producer.
As this makes clear, Redfall is the largest world Arkane has ever created. While admittedly being able to fit the entirety of Talos I into a farm doesn’t quite take into consideration the multi-layered aspect of the station and its many corridors and hidden spaces, it does give you a good idea of how Redfall dwarfs Prey in size. The farm which the station can be dropped into is one segment of one district, and Redfall is made up of two different districts.
Still, you should maybe not expect Redfall to be among the largest worlds ever created. “It’s an open world, but it’s not an open world based on the scale of vehicles, it’s an open world based on foot,” explained Smith. Something like GTA, in which you speed around in cars, needs to be much bigger than a world in which you’re only able to run and walk.
For more from Redfall, check out how Arkane had to rethink its “too open” open world, and our interview with the developers about how that classic Dishonored and Prey magic can still be found in a co-op game. The developers also recently revealed that vampire gods will be among Redfall’s bosses.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.