What makes Redfall different to other Arkane games? It’s all comes down to trust
One of my favourite ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ moments in games comes in Final Fantasy 10, just after you defeat a big machine on a lake of ice near one of the title’s multiple temples. Your party jumps onto snowmobiles – two people per vehicle – and heads towards Macalania Temple to continue its journey. You follow main character Tidus for this part of the game, but who accompanies him on the sled can vary. It can be more or less any of the characters in the game, and who joins you depends entirely on some in-game criteria.
The game calls this ‘affection’. If Tidus uses a healing item, or healing magic, on another member of the cast, the hidden stat goes up. If he intercepts an attack aimed at them, it goes up. If he talks to a character first when they’re all spread out in an area, it goes up. At no point are you told about this, and at no point does it really matter. But, play your cards right, and you’ll see get a small interaction with another character that serves to deepen your understanding of them, or provide another sliver of context on the world.
I am obsessed with things like this in games. Alex once referred to himself as a ‘lore goblin’ for Elden Ring, and the phrase stuck with me. That’s what moments like this do to me. Seeing Rikku nuzzle her head into Tidus in a show of deep affection you don’t really see in the game – all because I’ve trusted/interacted with her the most up to this point? It’s a small but meaningful reward, and something uniquely enriching when it comes to player agency.