Author: Game Infliction

When Miles Tost moved from The Witcher 3 to Cyberpunk 2077 in 2016, he soon realized that he was dealing with a unique challenge. Despite both being RPGs, the two “couldn’t be more different,” with CD Projekt aiming to make a “gigantic leap forward” in terms of the freedom that Cyberpunk 2077 offered with gameplay. As a level designer, Tost was asked to create levels that supported every style of play, from brute force to stealth to everything else in between, all in a huge open world.

“As insane as it sounded, it also sounded f*cking awesome, and boy were we up to the challenge,” Tost said.

Of course, we know what happened next. Cyberpunk 2077 struggled when it was released in 2020, especially on older consoles like the PlayStation 4. Even beyond its technical problems, though, many players observed its shortcomings as an immersive sim. In particular, it did a poor job of making the various playstyles feel meaningful, dampening the sense of reward gained from exploration. Cyberpunk 2077 has since recovered somewhat, but CD Projekt remains keen to figure out exactly what went wrong with its ambitious RPG.

‘We pride ourselves on being storytellers’

Tost’s observations were part of a GDC 2023 panel entitled “What Cyberpunk 2077 Taught Us About Non-Linear Level Design,” which delved into the issues that CD Projekt Red encountered in trying to make branching paths feel rewarding and special. Like many of CD Projekt’s developers, Tost has a blunt and self-deprecating sense of humor about Cyberpunk’s launch. When a power surge makes it difficult to make out some of his level design diagrams during the talk, he joked, “It wouldn’t be a Cyberpunk talk if everything was working fine.”

But these quips belie a company-wide desire to learn as many lessons as possible from its troubled launch, leading the design team to conduct a comprehensive analysis of where Cyberpunk 2077 went wrong. For his part, Tost chose to focus on why the non-linear level design didn’t seem to work. How was it that games with less variety seemed more vital and open-ended than Cyberpunk 2077?

Tost ultimately determined that one of CD Projekt’s biggest strengths – its commitment to telling a strong story – was also a key stumbling block.

“We pride ourselves on being storytellers, and we didn’t want to stop a player’s lack of foresight from enjoying the narrative,” Tost explained.

That meant including what Tost calls a “generic path” for anyone who didn’t properly spec their character, and just to make sure they didn’t miss it, making it as obvious as possible. The result, Tost says, is that most players opted to take the path of least resistance, trivializing what was meant to be a robust selection of playstyles.

When criticizing Cyberpunk 2077, many reviewers point to this aspect as one of its fundamental weaknesses, and perhaps a crucial reason that no amount of polish can ever make it a truly great RPG. But in analyzing Cyberpunk 2077’s level design, Tost came away with a handful of new design principles he hopes will inform CD Projekt’s work going forward.

He begins by citing Dishonored 1 and 2 as key influences, pointing out how Arkane’s stealth series tends to do a better job of rewarding players for finding a different path.

“We need to treat paths as special,” Tost explains. “This is what creates value in the choices players make.”

By contrast, Cyberpunk 2077’s generic path would often have what he called a “cool, bespoke experience,” such as custom interactions or chatter. Often, Tost says, Cyberpunk’s paths would come together in a bottleneck filled with these rewards, leaving players with the sense that none of their choices ever mattered.

Remedying this problem can be as simple as placing separate paths further away from one another, observing that as long as two paths are close to one another, they’re perceived as the same path. The more isolated or exclusive a path feels, Tost says, the more special it can become in the player’s mind, allowing them to “fully focus on experiencing the chosen path.” It also produces a heightened sense of curiosity, he explains, making players wonder what they might have missed.

Three basic principles

Ultimately, Tost developed three basic principles for level design, though he cautions that it ultimately depends on the game they’re being applied to.

1. The perception of distance. The closer paths are to each other, the less it feels like picking one makes a difference.
2. The more exclusive or isolated a path feels, the more special it can become in the player’s mind. It allows players to fully focus on experiencing the chosen path. It heightens player’s curiosity about “what if.”
3. Validation. Paths need to be treated as special. This is what creates value in the choices the player’s make. Make it worth their time and give them a show. Provide exclusive scenes, encounters, or world-building.

Taken together, Tost believes the desired effect can be achieved by spreading out the entrances to the different paths; limiting and controlling what players can see; forcing them to commit to a choice using tricks like one-way drops and passages, and then properly rewarding them with exclusive content and other incentives. Doing so will also give designers more freedom to create incentives to use playstyles, Tost says, such as utilizing stealth abilities to sneak past a powerful enemy to a secret passage.

Even without these improvements, though, Cyberpunk 2077 seems to be growing in esteem among fans, not the least because it’s one of the most technically ambitious RPGs ever made. Whether it ever lives up to its original potential remains an open question, but Tost at least seems confident that these lessons can be applied to future games.

“All three principles [perception, exclusivity, and validation] are not restricted to, but particularly effective at enhancing the powers of two different level design beats, designed to maximize choice and reward: that is, discovery and exploration,” Tost concluded, calling it “food for thought” for other developers.

We’ll get to see whether these lessons pay off with the Phantom Liberty expansion, which is set to launch later this year. For now, Cyberpunk 2077 is available on PS5, Xbox, and PC. A sequel is also in development. Keep an eye on this space for lots more coverage as GDC 2023 continues.

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Are you looking to build out your collection of board games at home, or want something new and exciting to play during your next game night? If so, there’s no better time than now to buy one, thanks to Amazon’s board game sale. During this time, you can save plenty (up to 51%!) on select board games, from Pandemic to Betrayal to Azul.

Below, you can see which board games are included in Amazon’s sale right now, along with how much you can save on each one.

Board Games on Sale At Amazon

If you want to see a collection of some of the best board games to play throughout this year, we’ve got you covered there, too. In our guide to the Best Board Games to Play in 2023, we’ve curated a wide selection of board games, from classic picks to exciting new ones, that are perfect for including in your next game night. This selection includes Ticket to Ride, Gloomhaven, Codenames, Pandemic, and many more. Some of these games are even included in Amazon’s board game sale listed above, which is even better! You can now add some of the best board games around to your collection at home for a much cheaper price.

Board games aren’t the only items on sale on Amazon right now, either. For those looking to buy some new tech, you can also save 20% on 2nd Generation Apple Airpods Pro earbuds, which are originally $249 and are now available for just $199.99. Or, if you’re looking for a new microSD card for your Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck, you can find the Samsung EVO Select 512GB microSD card on sale on Amazon as well, docked down 53% from $84.99 to $39.99.

Hannah Hoolihan is a freelance writer who works with the Guides and Commerce teams here at IGN.

Arkane Austin has said that it is working on a fix that will reverse Redfall’s always-online requirement, an aspect that was met with backlash when first announced.

In an interview with Eurogamer, game director Harvey Smith said, “We listen. And we have already started work to address this in the future. We have to do some things like encrypt your save games and do a bunch of UI work to support it. And so we are looking into – I’m not supposed to promise anything – but we’re looking into and working actively toward fixing that in the future.”

Smith also went into more detail about why Redfall was designed as an always-online experience from the start. It wasn’t to sell microtransactions from an in-game store, as the game doesn’t even have one (DLC is planned, including guns and costume bundles, but they will be sold via the Xbox store). Instead, the decision behind requiring an online connection was to help Arkane understand how people were playing Redfall and when they were facing difficulties.

“It allows us to do some accessibility stuff. It allows us for telemetry, like – if everybody’s falling off ladders and dying, holy shit that shows up,” Smith explained. “And so we can go and tweak the ladder code. There are reasons we set out to do that that are not insidious.”

Smith noted that Arkane wanted to take the empathetic approach to players’ concerns as not everyone has a stable internet connection and are sometimes prone to outages. “And so I think it is a legitimate critique,” said Smith.

Smith’s use of the term “fixing that in the future” may point to the system being changed after launch, so it currently seems sensible temper any expectations that Redfall will definitely launch with an offline mode.

Redfall launches on May 2 for PC and Xbox Series X|S. In IGN’s Redfall preview, we said, “If Arkane Austin can bring its own version of the kind of innovation [Far Cry 2 and STALKER] did back in the late 2000s, then Redfall could well inject a static genre with some long-overdue excitement.”

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He’s been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications such as Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.

When not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey

In a game all about vampire slaying it’s pretty important that killing your blood-feasting foes feels like an event in and of itself. That’s exactly what Arkane Austin has done with Redfall; much like how assassination-sim Dishonored had gloriously bloody backstab animations, Redfall revels in the act of plunging a wooden stake through a vampire’s heart. There’s weight in the blow as you knock your foe backwards and slam them into the floor, pushing a boot into a jaw that quickly evaporates into fiery dust. Yeah, killing vampires in Redfall feels good.

At a recent hands-on event I played around 90 minutes of Redfall, which gave me the first taste of something akin to a Far Cry game made by Stephen King. It’s an open-world shooter set in modern day Massachusetts, filled with gothic small-town vibes, fanged horrors, and a buffet of activity types.

That means Prey and Dishonored developer Arkane Austin is operating in uncharted territory. Redfall is very different to the studio’s other games and initially feels a lot more conventional. A freely explored map with safehouses, enemy camps, side errands, and tier-graded loot? Check, check, check, and check. But the more I played, the more I saw of what I’d expect from the historically ambitious developer. The island town of Redfall has clever environment design that’s engineered to compliment your skills. The enemy AI is there to be toyed with, allowing you to bait your foes into traps. And every second room I entered felt staged to tell a story. Redfall definitely is an Arkane game, just not the one I expected.

The demo began mid-way through an investigation into Dr. Addison, a physician-turned-vampire god known as The Hollow Man. I was to search his mansion – a ransacked estate that appeared frozen in time, mid-explosion – in the hope of discovering something that may weaken him. Of course, said mansion was crawling with enemies, both blood suckers and the humans who work in service to them. It was a classic infiltration set-up and has much of what you’d expect of Arkane’s work in this field. Patrolling cultists guarded the perimeter, CCTV camera-like vampires lurked on the building’s roof, and there were multiple entry points to choose from. Inside, the route to my objective was spelled out only with clues, and so exploration and close reading of the space is mandatory.

It soon became clear that to find what I was looking for I needed to replace three characters missing from Addison’s daughter’s doll house. After scouring the house and finding the little figures I needed, I was transported back to a period where the mansion was tidy, un-exploded, and Addison hadn’t gone full vampire mode. In this timeline – which felt like a simpler, less fantastical version of Dishonored 2’s Crack in the Slab in the way it repurposed the location to tell its story – I watched apparitions play out a tragedy between Addison and his daughter. It’s a tale I won’t spoil here, but one that reveals the vampire god’s weakness and presumably will help me burn him out of existence in a later mission.

Of course, Redfall isn’t all about rebuilding creepy doll houses and reliving childrens’ trauma. As mentioned earlier, it’s also very much about sending vampires to hell in very cool ways. Your arsenal comprises a bunch of conventional firearms – shotguns, pistols, assault rifles and the like – as well as a variety of DIY weapons designed specifically for vampire hunting. The selection I’ve used of the former feel heavy and powerful, but even those with the highest stats are unable to truly eliminate a vampire. Bloodsuckers downed by regular guns will reanimate a few moments later and so, in tradition with vampire lore, the only way to properly end them is with a stake driven through their heart. Many guns are equipped with a wooden bayonet for such occasions, but the jury-rigged stake launcher lets you dust vamps from a distance with a single trigger pull. Ammo for the launcher seems much more scarce than regular bullets, though, and so I found myself continually assessing if each fanged target was worth the shot.

Should you be out of stakes, there are other ways to do the job. Fire does the trick, and so exploding hazards or flare guns will turn a vampire into a smouldering barbecue. Electricity also generates heat, and so setting up some kind of a livewire trap will fry them, too. They also hate ultraviolet light (it freezes them into temporary stone statues), so a UV emitter gun is a handy thing to pack – just remember to shatter your targets before the petrification wears off. All these techniques give the sense of vampire hunting being a process, a profession. To be the slayer means learning the tricks of the trade.

Each of Redfall’s four playable protagonists are equipped with unique skills to help with that process. For this session I played as Devinder Crousley, a quippy British cryptozoologist most obviously built around being a modern-day Buffy. His Arc Javelin is an electrified spear that can chain bolts of lightning around a group of enemies, and scoring a perfect throw with it feels immensely satisfying. The Blacklight, meanwhile, floods a wide area with UV light for quick crowd control. They were useful in my single-player demo, but are abilities I’m excited to use as part of a co-op session; I’m interested to see the results of experimentation with a combination of different characters’ skills.

My favourite of Devinder’s gadgets is his Translocator, a frisbee-like device that teleports you to wherever it is thrown. It’s Redfall’s closest answer to Dishonored’s Blink ability and it quickly became my most-used tool, letting me access out-of-reach open windows, flank enemies, appear behind guards for takedowns, and bypass grids of laser trip mines. It also helped just getting around; while Redfall’s map seems much smaller than those in most open world shooters there’s still a lot of ground to cover, and being able to throw the Translocator over houses, streets, and fences was very handy for exploring the town.

As you’d expect from a game in this genre, there’s a whole bunch of things to do beyond the main storyline. There are multiple safehouses to unlock, each of which becomes an ammunition stockpile and fast-travel location. There are activities which help pull neighbourhoods back from full vampire infestation, such as wiping out cultist rallies or preventing a powerful creature emerging from its blood amber cocoon. Then there are errand-like side quests that appear to be peppered with Arkane Easter eggs, such as one where you head off to find whisky and cigars.

But the best side activities are the strangest ones, at least from the small sample I’ve seen so far. Vampire Nests transport you into a twisted psychic realm where you must destroy a room-sized heart and then claim as much treasure as possible before the entire place collapses around you like some kind of blood splattered game show. Back in the town, you’re frequently reminded that ‘The Vampire Gods Are Watching You’, and if you cause too much trouble they’ll send an Incredible Hulk-like freak to beat seven bells out of you in a battle played out beneath a wild electrical storm. The repeating nature of open-world tasks feels completely at odds with Arkane’s typically hand-crafted approach, but it’s in these two activities that I saw a glimmer of how the studio is rethinking the building blocks of the genre to make them feel more systemic or novel.

The other area in which traditional open-world shooter design is at odds with Arkane’s legacy is stealth. To be clear: stealth is a component of Redfall, but it adheres to a very different rulebook than that used by Dishonored. Sneaking flows between regular bursts of violent, chaotic conflict. And that’s okay. Dishonored was Arkane’s interpretation of pure stealth classics like Thief, but the studio’s touchstones for Redfall are very different. Before my demo began, co-director Harvey Smith namechecked Far Cry 2 and STALKER as influences; two shooters from an experimental period years before the likes of Gearbox and Ubisoft established the largely unwavering open-world FPS formula. If Arkane Austin can bring its own version of the kind of innovation those games did back in the late 2000s, then Redfall could well inject a static genre with some long-overdue excitement.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.