Digital Foundry analyses Redfall on Xbox: 'a sad tale of unfulfilled potential and profound technical issues'
Redfall is an open world first-person shooter that combines mechanics-driven, immersive sim-style design with optional cooperative multiplayer. It promises a vast Unreal Engine 4-powered world to explore while casting aside the shackles of the last-generation Xbox One hardware with a release exclusively targeting Xbox Series consoles and the PC. Alas, things have perhaps not gone quite as planned.
As in many other open world games, Redfall features a dynamic time of day system with an appropriately dynamic shadow map that changes based on the angle of the darkened sun looming above. From a distance, the world of Redfall holds up surprisingly well - the map is easy to parse with visible landmarks dotting the landscape while screen-space shadows help tie everything together.
There are many other issues. Shadow quality is unacceptable throughout. The game updates its shadow map position on a per-frame basis according to the angle of the sun, which is nice, but the poor resolve produces severe visual artefacts. Lighting is also questionable at points - the lack of proper dynamic indirect lighting is painfully obvious when interacting with characters throughout the world.
Even when they're working correctly, the behaviour feels inelegant. It's difficult to play a stealthy character as foes are either overly sensitive or not sensitive enough, removing any sense of immersion. They can function acceptably well in normal combat but it's still not where it needs to be. Beyond resolution, however, there are a handful of visual differences between Xbox Series X and Series S. Firstly, screen-space reflections are disabled on Series S during gameplay. Puddles, reflective floors and pools of blood alike all lack that additional sheen you get on Xbox Series X. Given how lightweight Unreal Engine 4's SSR can be, I'm surprised it has been disabled on Series S in its 30fps quality mode.
Firstly, traversal stutter occurs when moving between different sections of a map. This is a side-effect of how Unreal Engine 4 handles open world environments and it occurs on every platform including PC. Secondly, in scenes filled with transparency effects, such as smoke and fire, the frame-rate can dip significantly as long as these effects remain on-screen.
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