Redfall's 1.1 patch offers changes to AI, enemy frequency and visual fidelity

Redfall took a beating at launch for its bugs, its lackluster AI, and its bare open world. There were swift apologies from its developers and pledges to improve the experience, a process which started today with the release of Redfall's 1.1 patch. It offers "incremental improvements" to combat, AI and visuals across the open world vampire shooter, alongside a commitment that there will be more updates to come.

"Building a play space this large has been humbling to say the least," says the v1.1 patch notes. "We recognize that we still have work to do, and we plan to address as much as we can, as quickly as we can." Specifically, they say that there are four key areas feedback tells them need improvement: enemy AI responsiveness, enemy encounter frequency, vampire combat efficiency and improvements to graphical fidelity.

This patch makes some progress on all of the above. Enemy encounter spawn rates have been increased in the open world, and "multiple instances of enemies appearing unresponsible in combat" have been fixed. Vampire melee attacks will now be more effective and Cultists and Bellweather enemies will now react faster, while the Rook will now be "relentless" in hunting down living party members.

There have also been AI changes to make vampires more likely to wake up in response to noise and improve human navigation and enemy pathfinding, and visual changes to improve lighting in indoor areas, models and materials when viewed from a distance, and to make mission briefing sequences brighter.

The full list of patch notes includes plenty of basic bug fixes and more general changes than I've mentioned here. Whether it's enough to make it feel less like an abandoned live service game, as Ed described it in his Redfall review, remains to be seen, but it's good that Arkane continue to support it.