I miss the era of choose-your-own-adventure books. When I was a kid, I had a well-thumbed copy of… something with a wizard on it, filled to bursting with traps and terrors and treasures. It basically required you to memorise the entire thing beforehand to even stand a chance of making it out alive, and was in all likelihood probably quite terrible, but I still have fond memories of it.
Imagine my joy, then, that Arkane's latest little marketing push ahead of next month's release of Redfall is a choose-your-own browser game set in the titular town. Take Back Redfall is playable for free right now on Bethesda's site, and sees you play as one of Redfall's four protagonists—Layla Ellison—in her quest to take down the Night Manager, a vampire who was at the back of the queue when they were handing out foreboding villain titles.
It's pretty short and pretty easy, but it's not a bad way to kill five minutes and it provides yet another insight into Arkane's next game. If the browser game is any indication, you're gonna spend a lot of your time in Redfall finding ways to avoid head-on confrontations with enemies, although that might just be because Layla is a little squishier than her compatriots.
It would've been cool if the browser game gave you the option to select from more than one of the game's protagonists. Perhaps someone else would be a bit better at going in guns blazing. Layla seems to have trouble in scenarios she can't sneak around or levitate over, which is at least highly relatable.
Also, I guess you stand a chance of winning an Xbox if you share your game on Facebook, Twitter, Friendster, Pets dot com and what-have-you.
Redfall releases in less than a month, on May 2. As an inveterate Dishonored and Prey fan, I'm holding out hope Arkane pulls this one out the bag, but PCG's Robin Valentine wasn't too impressed when he got some hands-on time with Redfall last month. "Redfall feels quiet and empty alone," he wrote, "but I'm not sure it's a world I'm keen to pull my friends into either".
