Arkane revealed that only one section of Redfall’s map is larger in size than the entire Talos I, Prey’s space station.
Speaking as part of the ‘Bringing Redfall to Life’ panel at Quakecon 2022, Redfall art director Karen Segers said: “The talus in the prey was five football fields. The size of Redfall is quite ‘hold me a beer’ about it.”
To help explain just how big Redfall’s open world is, Arcane Austin studio director Harvey Smith recalled a fun moment from earlier in development. “Jim McGill took Talos to scale and dropped him in the middle of the farm ie [in Redfall’s second district area]. And the district just eats the whole space station, of course. It’s huge.”
“It was exactly the size of the actual farm area, and it’s just one mission,” added Aaron Carter, executive producer of Redfall.
As it makes clear, Redfall is the largest world Arkan has ever created. Granted, being able to fit an entire Talos I into a farm doesn’t really take into account the multi-level aspect of the station and its many corridors and hidden spaces, but it gives you a good idea of how Redfall dwarfs the prey in size. The farm you can drop the station on is one section of one district, and Redfall is made up of two different districts.
Still, you might not expect Redfall to be among the greatest worlds ever created. “It’s an open world, but it’s not an open world based on vehicle scale, it’s an open world based on foot,” explained Smith. Something like GTA, where you drive around in cars, needs to be much bigger than a world where you can just run and walk.
For more from Redfall, check out how Arkane had to rethink its “too open” open world, and our interview with the developers about how the classic magic of Dishonored and Prey can still be found in co-op gameplay. The developers also recently revealed that vampire gods will be among Redfall’s bosses.
Matt Porslow is IGN’s UK news and features editor.