I must concede that if Redfall was a next gen graphics tour de force at 4K, the fervor against 30 fps would be less impassioned. But the game looks mid at best. This was definitely a last gen title ported over to next gen.
These lengthy dev cycles need to end. By time the game comes out it goes from great graphics when revealed to middling graphics once released. This is an Xbox OneX and PS4 title trying to compete with AAA current gen games.
Arkane is learning a tough lesson. There's a big difference between being a mid-tier 3rd party developer to a first party studio. First party games have a higher expectation. Hopefully their next title takes this into consideration.
If Microsoft actually had a bigger stable of first party titles that were ready, Redfall would have been delayed a couple of years to move it to UE 5 and polish up the visuals a bit more.
Arkane is a B-tier studio that's out of their depth as a first party.
The long dev cycles are a necessity if you want to make your AAA even more AAA. But it got to a point where some games are too long in a sense. There has to be a way to streamline that. But it needs good studios with good direction, and to choose to do smaller games. Not easy to decide when graphics and having huge amount of content is king in marketing terms. We do not need GOW Ragnarok to be that big, but it had to be or the trilogy would have been ended around the PS6, and that had been said by Cory Balrog himself. If one of the best studios can't get away with it it will be hard to escape that.
I disagree about Arkane. They have no responsability in this. They are not a B- tier studio. They just are a small one. Nothing wrong with that. When they got into the Microsoft umbrella they lost control of their future. And it became Microsoft responsibility to make the right choices about this game. Failure can happen in the gaming market as in any market. Destruction all stars bombed not that long ago. It was Sony responsibily, and it was their failure. Same for the TLOU pc port that we got recently. Nintendo failed to bring Metroid 4 to completion and it seems that the game is far from being done. Those things happen.
But we can easily find excuses for those failures. Destruction was just not a good game enough. Covid made consoles hard to get so there was not enough consoles when the game was out. Nintendo got unlucky and the studio they send Metroid failed to do it justice so they got it back in house. And will probably make it a switch 2 launch game. The TLOU is a port, and the "real one" was good on PS5. Shit take but for Sony the PC is just an aftermarket at the moment. They got Nixxes to help but they can't do it for all of Sony games.
Halo Infinite got delayed. It still was out unfinished. This game seems to have the same problems. We heard rumors here that Starfield too will be coming hot after another 1 year delay. Being considered as a first party is all about being compared to some of the best studios in the world. And if games like Kena, Sifu or Stray can do it, Arkane can do it too. Returnal is proof that even a small develloper can grow to do great things with help. And hellblade 2 will be I hope the same for Xbox.
Arkane is paying the price of Xbox weak momentum. I am certain that they are full of people that do all they can do to ship a good game. Like 343 was before them. But bad choices have been made. And they will pay the price by having lay offs when it could have been prevented by either stopping it earlier if the game was not good enough for Microsoft ambitions or delayed until it is ready.
Sorry for the rant but I see so often people attack the studios when they are just bound by impossible deadlines and mandates that the executives consider indispensable.