it honestly just makes me sad, i respect the amount of work put into this and i absolutely adore Arkane's other work, but it feels like redfall just fell flat.

I've seen rumours that Bethesda redistributed resources during Redfall's development to get Starfield out the door, and honestly after playing Redfall I can totally believe that.

Redfall has the bones of something great, but the world feels empty and the game-play feels unrealised. It just feels so different to every other Arkane game, and not in a good way. It feels stripped back. It feels like i'm playing an early access release of the game, like i can see this becoming something very cool and fun, but at the moment it's too full of glitches and bugs to really see that vision.

I still want to try and finish it, because I wanna give it a fair chance, so maybe this opinion will change once I've given it a couple of more hours. At this point though, I'm not loving it.

it's not a sequel, not a remake, more of a re-imagining of the original story. I'll be honest, story has never really been the strong point of Mirror's Edge but Catalyst does make some steps towards a genuinely compelling story, I really liked it! It wasn't completely predictable and it did have some genuinely great moments!

The gameplay is pretty different to Mirror's Edge, I'm not a huge fan of the often mandatory combat, one of my favourite parts of the original games was that playing as a pacifist was generally encouraged by the game. Faith isn't a fighter, she's a runner. The combat is pretty clean and generally isn't too difficult, and you can avoid combat in the open world sections. Still sucks that it's mandatory at any point.

The open world is gorgeous, and really fun to explore, i like the visual distinction between the different regions in Glass and I'm a big fan of the expanded worldbuilding and story that the logs and bags in the world and levels reveal.

Whilst I don't love it as much as the original Mirror's Edge, it's still a very good game and definitely worth giving a go if you see it in a steam sale or something. You can find homages to the original game in some places, it's very clearly a game made with love of the old game and not just a cash grab or rushed sequel. It's a good, fun game with some interesting characters and story. Not sure I really trust EA's criticisms of capitalism to be genuine, but the game does continue the same politics of the original, albeit watered down quite a bit.

The online features are pretty unnecessary, and they don't work anymore lol. also don't buy the dlc, it's literally just a bag reskin you absolutely don't need it. You don't need cosmetics ever, let alone in a single player game.