Arkane Austin has revealed that Redfall will feature a number of powerful bosses known as “vampire gods” that have trapped you in the Massachusetts town.
Speaking as part of the ‘Bringing Redfall to Life’ panel at Quakecon 2022, members of Arkane explained that the vampires in its upcoming open world game are not produced by a virus, but are instead the product of a biotech company. Aevum Laboratories came to the town of Redfall to research life extension and eventually created vampires.
Each and every vampire in the game has chosen to take Aevum’s technology, transforming into a blood dependent being in the name of living forever. But the ones that take Aevum’s technology to its very limits become supremely powerful monsters that Arkane refers to as vampire gods.
“We have a series of vampire gods, which are the most twisted, most changed by the whole process,” explained Arkane Austin’s studio director, Harvey Smith, “and those serve as chapter breakpoints across the game.”
“The vampire gods have the most power,” added creative director Ricardo Bare. “They’re the ones trapping you on the island. They’ve pushed the waters back, they’re the ones who’ve blacked out the sun. They’re tremendously powerful.”
The fact that the vampire gods act as “chapter breakpoints” suggests that they may be Redfall’s equivalent of Dishonored’s targets or Deathloop’s visionaries.
Working with the vampires are a bunch of human cultists, who hang out with their bloodsucking leaders in hope of one day becoming a vampire, too. While some are sired and become hugely powerful, others are turned into familiars and other such lower-end monsters.
“The vampires can choose instead to turn them into these other horrible things,” explained Bare. “One of them is called the Bloodbag, which is just this grotesque creature. It’s like the vampiric version of a milk cow, it just produces excess, bloated amounts of blood for the vampires to sip on when they’re thirsty.”
The panel also confirmed that staking would be one method of killing vampires, alongside a collection of conventional and DIY guns. Stakes are mounted to guns like bayonets, and the panel showed off a few of the more unusual ones, including a snapped guitar neck and a sharpened garden gnome. There will, of course, be many ways to kill vampires.
For more from Redfall, check out our interview with Arkane about how co-op and progression works, as well as how it will be a classic immersive sim-style single-player game, too.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.