As hungry gamers count down the days until the release of Red Dead Redemption 2, its creators continue to drop tantalising nuggets of information surrounding the game.
The sequel is out on October 26, where we’ll finally be able to see what Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang get faced with in the new saga.
Of course, one of the most highly-anticipated games of recent times would be a disappointment if you could race through it quicker than I fall off the edge of Rainbow Road in Mario Kart (which is really quick).
The good news is, that’s not going to happen, as one of the brain’s behind the game recently revealed Red Dead Redemption 2‘s campaign alone will run to at least 60 hours of gameplay.
Speaking to Vulture, Rockstar’s vice president for creative, Dan Houser, revealed the process and thinking behind the new game, and that its epic 60 hour campaign was originally more like 65.
This was because Arthur Morgan, one of the game’s protagonists, had two love interests. However, they ‘decided one of them didn’t work’.
Whole missions were also removed because, as Dan said:
They were never going to work technically or be quite slick enough, or they felt superfluous. We removed a mission on a train where you had to deal with bounty hunters, because it was fun at first, but then it wasn’t. This part of the process is always about compromise and horse trading. Everyone always loses bits of the game they love.
The five hours lost, however, are nothing compared to the hours gone into the making of the game. Bringing the game’s script to life required 2,200 days of motion-capture work (Grand Theft Auto III only needed five), and needed 1,200 actors, 700 of which had dialogue.
Dan said:
We’re the biggest employers of actors in terms of numbers of anyone in New York, by miles.
It’s paid off though, and the result is, as Dan says:
This seamless, natural-feeling experience in a world that appears real, an interactive homage to the American rural experience. [It’s] a vast four-dimensional mosaic in which the fourth dimension is time, in which the world unfolds around you, dependent on what you do.
There are thoughts of another Red Dead Redemption game, however it would only be ‘if this one does well enough and we think we have other interesting things to say.’
Instead, Rockstar is focussing on the game’s multiplayer mode, which is due for release in November 2018, though scenes are still being written and shot at the moment.
The online multiplayer mode will support up to 32 players (two more than GTA), and take up a whopping 105gb to install.
Red Dead Redemption 2 launches for PS4 and Xbox One on October 26, and will be entirely playable in first-person from day one, similar to GTA V’s first-person mode.
Red Dead Online will arrive as a public beta one month after launch in November. Rockstar have warned players to expect a few kinks, but are confident these will be ironed out in the long run.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.