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Red Dead Redemption 2


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So some positives - as it may of sounded like I was negative about it in my original post.

 

  • The fire particle effects are legit insane. As are the skyboxes.
  • The blonde lady showed up again which gives more evidence of her being a playable character or someone key to the plot.
  • There are lots of clues that it isn’t plainsailing for the Crew, seems to be lots of arguments and infighting. The whole ‘sons under Dutch’ stuff makes me think someone is trying to convince someone to stay
  • Arthur still seems like a bit of an arsehole, but there is a few clues in this that he may be redeemed at some point and not all bad.

 

 

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World’s first look at RDR2

Who is Arthur Morgan?

Why RDR2 is more than just a prequel

 

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Based on everything we’ve seen so far, we already know that Red Dead Redemption 2’s protagonist Arthur Morgan is a hard man . He’s a killer, a thief, and comfortable with a host of other jobs that are just as dirty. But that doesn’t necessarily make him a bad man - at least, not the complete jerk that some might think he is as after his debut in Red Dead 2’s second trailer. After seeing a day in Arthur’s life and talking to his creators at Rockstar, it seems that despite his rough exterior, Mr. Morgan has the potential to be one of this year’s more compelling protagonists.

In addition to being the Van der Linde gang’s chief enforcer and burliest muscle (seriously, we watched the guy deadlift a 5-point buck like it was nothing), Morgan is also Dutch’s right-hand when it comes to leading the crew. When he’s not robbing trains or running from the law, he can be found providing the outlaw’s camp with much needed food or supplies. While he doesn’t necessarily have to shoulder these burdens, it’s with a good-natured (and charmingly drawled) “Well, alright then,” when he does.

He often finds himself the de facto mediator in disputes between members of the gang, as well - when he’s not involved with them directly, that is. Even then, he shows himself to be a reasonable and fair-minded leader. We saw an instance wherein Arthur found himself the target of Bill Williamson’s ire after a stick-up gone wrong, calling him out on the fact that “every time I get in trouble, I’m called a fool and an idiot, but when you get in trouble, ‘ohhhh, it’s just one’a them things.’” Despite the fact that anyone who’s spent time around Bill can tell there’s probably a great deal of difference between the two scenarios, Arthur puts the solidarity of the camp before his own pride and agrees to help Bill with a favor. He knows that sometimes you have to put family first, and Dutch’s band of gunslingers, runaways, and outcasts is the closest thing to family that Arthur’s ever known.

 

Hunting

You can take pelts from animals or put them on your horse.

Using bows to get clean kills makes what you hunted worth more.

Killed animals decay overtime.


Horses

You can build a bond with your horse. Improving the bond will make your horse trust you more, it wont run away in a firefight, and it will be able to hear your whistle from longer distances.

Heavier weapons are left on your horse, such as the Winchester Rifle.

If your horse dies you have to restart the bonding process with a new horse.

 

 

 

 

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French Interview with Rockstar North Co-President Rob Nelson

 

 
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As we promised (and teased on our social networks), in addition to the demo we attended with the developers of Rockstar North (and the visit of their new premises in Edinburgh), we also had the opportunity to talk with Rob Nelson, Co-President of Rockstar North Studio. For a little over 45 minutes, we were able to ask him all our questions, to better understand the intentions with this Red Dead Redemption 2. He explains what the development - and success - of GTA V could bring them for shape this new open world, more interactive and organic than ever.

 



1 / When Red Dead Redemption 2 comes out at the end of October, it will have been 8 years between the first episode. Have you really benefited from these 8 years of development? Because such a gestation time is a luxury today that few studios can afford ...

Yes, we have used these 8 years of development. We started working on Red Dead Redemption 2, our first ideas, the concept, as soon as we finished the first one. And it's a small team in San Diego who has already worked on the first one who started thinking about it. Dan (Houser, ed) of course, who was already working on the script, what would happen in this sequel ... But there was not only the story to tell the truth, the whole universe, which direction we wanted take, what kind of story we wanted to tell and especially what universe we wanted to propose. So we started in small committee, slowly to put our ideas in place. And as we progressed in the game, the team grew visibly to become our central project as you could see by visiting our studios. Today everyone is working on it.

 

2 / What did you start with when you started producing Red Dead Redemption 2? The story ? The universe? The open world? 
It's both history and the world. These two elements are intimately linked. One does not go without the other. And for Red Dead Redemption 2, it's even more valuable because as you know, this is a prequel and we had to connect this story to the events of the first Red Dead, that's why these two aspects must be treated at the same time. If it was a sequel, maybe we could have had more freedom in the choice of our world, I do not know ... But as it is a prequel and the story tells how this gang (that of Dutch Van Der Linde, ed) behaved at that time before it dissolves, there was necessarily this side cross-over.

 

3 / Technically, Red Dead 2 is the first "next gen" game developed by Rockstar on PS4 and Xbox One, since GTA V was a remaster of a game released on the previous console generation. How did you work on the game? Have you managed to push the technical limits of machines? GTA V was already very impressive when it was released. 
GTA V was released at the end of the cycle of PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles, which allowed us to optimize the performance of each machine. And then, we brought the game on the new consoles and spent a lot of time to improve it. We did not just overwrite the graphics, we really reworked a lot of things, add new things. And while working on the remaster version of GTA V, we looked at everything we had managed to do; not only the graphics, but also the unfolding of missions, how to integrate them into an open world and how to optimize them. There were also things that we wanted to correct with the remaster version, but that we could not do because the structure and the base were defined and it was impossible to return to it. I am thinking in particular of the AI of the Police or the whole traffic system, things like that. We could do a lot of other things, like adding new cars, improving the sound, but we could not do it all again. So, while developing Red Dead Redemption 2, we had that in mind, that we had to review everything to go even further. 

Red Dead Redemption 2

 

4 / What did you learn from GTA V that allowed you to go further with Red Dead Redemption 2? I mean, it's not really the same open world. GTA V, it's a lot of traffic management, buildings as far as the eye can see, whereas in Red Dead 2, it's above all nature, animals, it's not really the same behavior, nor the same way to understand things ... 
Our goal with Red Dead Redemption 2 is to offer an immersive world where nature is as beautiful as possible. Beautiful landscapes, big, massive, with as many varieties as possible, with mud, snow and technically, we are challenged. We really wanted a real visual gap between the first Red Dead Redemption and this sequel. Red Dead was already satisfying, but it was more desert environments, very dusty. We find all this in Red Dead 2, but we wanted to go further, by proposing more wilderness, cities too and that's what we learned about GTA V that allowed us to evolve all that. And I think the thing we learned most about working on GTA V is to make the world more interactive. With GTA V, we realized a gigantic and immersive world, but with Red Dead Redemption 2, we wanted to go even further, to be able to touch things, to be able to pick up anything, to interact with them, to whether characters or animals.To be able to go beyond the facade of the world, to be able to feel it, that it is just the ground that is deformed by the mud, that the characters can slide along the slopes, to adapt and to adjust the changes of postures and of animations according to the ground, the situations, that they cross a bush climb a hill. We wanted the player to be as connected as possible to the world around him, with the utmost respect. This is something we would have liked to have done with GTA V already and that we could not integrate for various reasons: lack of time, technology that was not ready yet or what do I know yet. Being able to do it for Red Dead Redemption 2 was something that guided us throughout the development process. 

5 / The story of Red Dead 2 is before the events of the first episode. What made you go back? Allow somewhere to revive John Marston? 
It is above all a story that we wanted to tell. In the first episode, John Marston kept talking about his past, what happened before, and I think that's something people wanted to know.Myself, I wanted to know about these earlier events, so we asked Dan (Houser, ed): "Please, please, please, tell us that the story of Red Dead Redemption 2 will evoke the Dutch gang ... "(laughs). I think people loved John so much, but also Dutch, with his so mysterious side, and having this chance to go back in the past and explore all that we missed to see how this gang has evolved, with this young John Marston is an opportunity that we obviously could not miss.And then this story also contrasts with that of the first episode where it was question of redemption, this desperate search to save his family. This is a totally different story, you play an active outlaw who lives in this gang and you do not have that pressure, which allows you to play with a really new approach. 

6 / Arthur Morgan seems to be the main hero of Red Dead 2. He seems quite different from John Marston in his attitude. What kind of character is he? 
Arthur is different from John, in the sense that John has tried to become someone good, right and John will be different in Red Dead 2. He is young, he is part of this gang and he embraces fully this outlaw life he tried to escape afterwards. Arthur is really different from John yes. It's Dutch's right arm to start, his bodyguard, but he's more than that. Arthur has been with Dutch since he was a child, he has been taking care of him since he was little. Therefore, Arthur is very loyal to Dutch, there is some kind of father-son relationship between the two and Arthur sees the gang as his family and he will do whatever it takes to protect him. But we also played on the idea that you take control of Arthur at some point in his life, so you will share his adventure, his story, but how much the player will be able to influence his actions. This is a bit of the main idea, with choices that will slightly affect the character of the character. It's a bit like what we could find in the first Red Dead with these choices that the player could have, with this good and this bad side. 

Red Dead Redemption 2

7 / One of the big novelties of the game lies in the notion of camp. How does it work ?Can the player create his own camp, move it from one place to another? 
The player can change the camp, while following the story. What he does know is that the Dutch gang is being pursued, so he has to be on the move. The story of Red Dead Redemption 2 being a few years before the events of the first, we are witnessing the end of the era of the outlaws. The world around them is changing, modernizing, and they have been rejected by society. Their way of life is coming to an end and the scenario will follow this gang, which will try to survive and continue to perpetuate this way of living so atypical. The movements of the gang are intimately linked to the story. As for the camp, and you saw it during the demo, Arthur can contribute to his development, or not. 
 

8 / In this regard, what are the consequences if Arthur does not handle the camp properly? If he brings neither money nor resource? Are people going to starve? Will some desert him? 
Yes, in a way, we can say that. It's a bit of an idea. We will try to leave a field of possibilities quite important for the player. It depends on how you act, your contribution, a little as if it was karma that was going to decide for you. You will have to do things for the camp, for your friends or family members. You never know what's going to happen, but if you act in a positive way, the people in the camp will make you feel good. We made it an integral part of the story, that the player can get involved in the camp. But we also tried to balance the system to prevent it becoming too time consuming, or mandatory. We know that some players are not going to join this management system, so we tried to find the middle way to give some freedom to the player. For example, those who invest heavily in the camp will be greatly rewarded, but never punish others who do not want to manage the camp thoroughly. Which makes sense somewhere. 

Red Dead Redemption 2
 

9 / What is more difficult to achieve? An urban open world like GTA V or an open world with wilderness at the Red Dead Redemption 2? 
I do not know ... They both have their respective problems, but it's true that an urban open world is quite complex, especially if you start to make chaos inside, that it goes into a chain reaction, and that everything must remain realistic coherent. Once again, it's complicated to say, they each have their own difficulties. In GTA, you can walk on the street and cross PEDS, PEDS are called NPCs who hold a cup of coffee. If you get in their way, or worse, if you point your gun at them, they will almost all drop their tumbler and turn around at once. And if you ever show yourself aggressive, they will in turn be violent and want to fight or run away. We did not have many situations that could work between them. It was so complex to manage. That's what helped us for Red Dead Redemption 2. Knowing that the story will take place several years before the events of the first episode, and that we wanted to introduce the notion of gang with which Arthur Morgan evolves and works , a gang that must be more credible and realistic, then it was necessary that this gang exists in the world in which it is. The idea is not right to create interactions during missions, but also outside, inside this camp. Once a mission is over, everyone leaves and everyone goes about their business, but the notion of interactivity has to continue beyond that.

 

We had already explored this track in terms of interactivity with GTA V, especially in Michael's house. Inside, we could find her whole family, we could walk around and see each member make a little life, Tracy in bed, Jimmy playing at his console ... And all this helped to instill a feeling authenticity, giving the impression that this family is real and this while remaining off mission. And that's exactly what we're trying to do with Red Dead Redemption 2, clear the boundaries between missions, open world and make you feel like a living character in an authentic and consistent world. This is our biggest challenge for Red Dead Redemption 2. People thought they were going to play a solitary outlaw again, but this time around, with this notion of gang, you're going to have to live with these people, love them, work with them, fight with them. And that's why we came up with the idea of the camp you saw earlier during the demo. That too was a real challenge for us, to make it credible, dynamic and evolutionary too.So, for the sake of consistency and authenticity, we obviously could not neglect the characters once they left the camp. So we had to evolve our "Ambiant Population System" so that these NPCs do something else than drop their cup of coffee and run away. So we had to create several types of NPCs, with different characters, more intimate, less neutral and not just aggressive. It was important for us to have different ways of thinking, whether it was a guard on a ranch or in a factory, they do not react in the same way. For example, if you start entering his home, he will know that you are breaking his property and will react accordingly according to your approach. Remember during the demo, the camper Arthur met at one point, he did not want any company. And this character has a different logic of the NPCs who react according to your attitude. The idea is that you can understand that there will be really different characters for each character that will be crossed in the game, so that this world remains unique, alive, organic.

 

The city is quite complex because a lot more things are going on and if you start to fuck, you have to react in a credible way. If I start pushing someone and maybe start a fight with him, we did not want the NPC to start running and screaming stupidly. So we balanced our system according to the actions performed. For example, if you insult them only, it's not a big deal, they'll just get upset. Basically, it is the notion of interactivity between the characters in this universe that pushed us to go further for Red Dead Redemption 2, which was a pretty funny exercise in the end.


Red Dead Redemption 2

 

10 / During the demo, I noticed that the famous Dead Eye system was still present. Has it been improved? Can we expect novelties in mechanics? I also saw that there were slow downs on some strong moments.

The Dead-Eye has been improved and now includes features that we will unveil later. During the robbery mission that we showed you, you could see that the Dead-Eye could be triggered automatically when leaving the bank, but also by the player during horse pursuits to mark the targets. We also showed that there were kill-cams at times during the shooting.

 

11 / What kind of missions have you planned in the game? One of the many criticisms made in open world games are the so-called "FedEx" side missions, which are not very interesting. Should the side quests necessarily be lighter, less exciting than the main missions?

We have done a great deal of work on this aspect, our goal being to limit the differences between the missions of the main campaign and the other quests. It is important that these be seen as both fun and varied activities, while remaining consistent from Arthur's point of view.Everything must appear natural, without any transition or lag, to reinforce the sense of immersion and connection between each mission. For example, in the camp, a simple conversation with an NPC can result in a bank robbery, or reveal important details about the story, background, and thus trigger a new mission that the player may want to do any of the following: continuation or later. Simply leaving the camp to search for supplies may allow the player to discover other interesting activities, or other goals. Everything is done to reinforce the feeling of embodying the character Arthur, an outlaw who is part of a famous gang, not to mention that everything must remain as entertaining as possible.

 

12 / Rockstar Games is known for the quality of these open-world games, capable of integrating both high-quality storytelling, unparalleled sense of detail, rich content and well-oiled gameplay mechanics, all in a massive open world, Is this the ideal recipe for you to make the best games? 
I think it is above all the balance of all these elements that you just mentioned. Being immersed in a credible world with a captivating story, capable of engaging the player, while giving them the freedom to lose themselves, then returning to the main quest in a natural way, is something important for us. And that was our main goal for Red Dead Redemption 2, to erase the boundaries between all these aspects to make it coherent and organic. It is through history that everything will make sense, as if we merged all these elements together to make the experience in this open world the most complete. The gang needs money to do this, you will have to carry out missions as diverse as various to rob banks, intercept trains, steal people, hunt, but also resale. There are 1001 ways to make money, even outside missions, in an honorable way, and less respectable too, to let the player do what he wants. You can kill people to steal their money, but you can also threaten them and extract their currency less violently. To leave the choice to the player is very important for us. It is not Manichean systematically, it is not good against evil, everything is nuanced. Of course we play Arthur, and he has his own character, but you are given the opportunity to shape his way of behaving a bit.

Red Dead Redemption 2
 

13 / I have observed an incredible amount of small details that maybe some players will not see, or pay attention to, like the fact that Arthur Morgan shakes his glass to dry it before putting it in his bag, that an NPC puts his hand on his gun in suspicion when Arthur Morgan gets closer to him, the horse that takes small steps on the side to avoid an obstacle, that it is necessary to calm him if this one is panicked after hearing a shot… 
Yes, Arthur who shakes his glass or throws his bottle of whiskey after finishing it, I'm glad you could notice these little details. There are indeed a lot of little things like that in the game. We do not know if everyone will see all that we could integrate, but I hope that the players will see most of them. For GTA V, I saw videos that focused on these small elements, such as the sound of Michael's flip flops, or the radiator fan of cars that goes out a few seconds after shutting down the engine, and I was glad that people could have noticed. This is also our way of doing things, the smallest detail in a massive open world. For Red Dead Redemption 2, we tried to go further in the interiors. You can go into a house, open the drawers, take the jewelry in the drawers. Small things in even smaller things, so that the world is the deepest and most credible possible. From big coffers to small pockets in people's jackets, you can steal everything, without ever knowing what you're going to fall on. We tried to create a consistent world in which it is possible to jump and hold onto a train running at full speed, enter the cars, find a bag, open it and take what's inside, come out the train without being spotted, all this will be possible.

 

14 / Have you ever said that sometimes you went too far in detail? Do you put limits? 
Oh, all the time! Permanently ! You know, one day someone from the team ... Jonathon Ashcroft, it's about him, said something very sensible, it's the first time we're working on a game which tells us what he needs. And I think once we understand what we're looking for, everything has to gravitate around this idea and make it coherent. The idea of the gang, the camp, the interaction between the characters, those with whom there will be cutscenes, the way the horse behaves, which must be in osmosis with the attitudes of Arthur. The animal has a high level of interaction with the character, depending on your reactions. This is also valid with other animals of nature. In the demo, you could see a deer grazing, raise his head as Arthur approaches him. If you are ever a threat to him, he will continue to eat quietly. On the other hand, if you shoot him, there will be several different animations. We come back to the example with the PEDS with their cup of coffee, which react according to whether they are insulted, attacked or shot at. They will react according to your attitude and have different types of reflexes.

 

15 / Still on the details, I noticed several types and degrees of dirt on Arthur's clothes.Dirt, sweat, mud, etc. Will it evolve in real time or are just textures that will not move? 
We put a system in place, but we basically did that by hand, knowing that the game will take into account how long you have kept your clothes on you. Of course, if you ride in the mud, you will get dirty. So there is a system, but it is still generated by hand and we have incorporated it according to the situations. It's pretty much the same thing with hair growing and you can cut too ...

 

Huh, hair grow in the game ?! 
Yes quite ! The beard too. But this time, it's only by subtraction. Not like in GTA V where you could go to the hairdresser and go out with a beard and even longer hair. You will have to wait for your beard to grow and ask you if you want to shave it, or just the chin, or the mustache.On the other hand, once it's cut, you have to wait for her to push back to return to the barber's.So yes, at Rockstar, we live constantly in this world where "Yes, we do too much and we are a bit crazy in our head and sometimes we have to know Stop now". This is what is difficult, knowing how to draw the contours of what we want to do, and allow all the elements that we managed to integrate inside are connected between them. We did not want to cheat with "smoking mirrors" to hide the connections, everything had to be "seamless", without transition, natural, in order to keep the player immersed in this world, without cheating and without revealing the limits of development (an invisible wall for example, note). Once the decision is made to make a coherent and organic world, we have to go all the way to avoid imbalance and lag. 

Red Dead Redemption 2

 

16 / Rumors, maybe false, circulated, being that we could play several characters in this sequel. Have you been tempted to take back what was done with GTA 5 and its real-time character switch during the adventure? 
Yes, we thought about it and we decided that there would be no switch in the game. This is the story of Arthur Morgan and the player will stay with Arthur during his adventure, which is a strong character . We liked the switch system in GTA V and we had a lot of fun with it, maybe we will do it again with another game, but in Red Dead Redemption 2, you are this man and you will share his adventure and as I have already said, the way you will succeed in influencing its trajectory, while retaining its initial character. In this game, and more than any we have developed so far, we thought about it from the start, because Arthur is not your avatar, it's not you, the player, you do not can not make him do anything, because he comes with his background, his story, his liabilities. He is an outlaw in his thirties who lives in his own way, according to certain rules. And it happened to him a lot of things in his life, some very critical that influenced him in his choices, and you, as a player, you will participate in his adventure.So no character switch in Red Dead Redemption 2.

 

17 / Many would have loved facing Indians in the first Red Dead. But this was unfortunately not the case. Have you thought about integrating them into this prequel suite? 
We have always wanted to stick to the period during which our games take place and so we will scrupulously follow what this period imposes on us ... 
 

18 / Open world games keep pushing the limits of interaction with the player. How far can we go? What are the things you forbid in a game of this magnitude, and on the contrary, what challenges you the most? 
Knowing where you start and knowing where you stop, I think it's a good starting point to know your limits. As far as we are concerned, it is knowing how to treat our world, more interactive than it has been compared to our other productions. We realized that we had to go further, to widen the space between aiming and shooting, that it implies consequences for our actions according to the situation proposed. That's how our system works. Everything is very mechanical and it also asked us to rethink our controls, the grip, so that the player feels the character in a natural way.

 

19 / Where do all these ideas come from? Is it only one person who decides where the entire team brainstorm?

Everyone participates in the development of ideas in the game. Here in this building in Edinburgh, San Diego, Toronto, everywhere. We are never short of ideas and all are good to take. Once we have chosen our angle of attack, everything must be done so that we can go beyond what we have decided. Everything we learned in our previous games, and with the power offered by these consoles, we managed to go further.

 

20 / Red Dead Redemption is considered by many players as the best game of the previous generation. Did you expect such a plebiscite, especially since the game takes place at a time that is not necessarily popular with the general public?

We still hope that his game is a great success, but clearly, we are never certain of the reception that the public offers us. However, we know how the first Red Dead Redemption has a place in the hearts of players. And with this prequel suite, which is also the game that comes after GTA V, it is above all the game of a whole team, because they are the same people who worked together, and we hope that we will be to the height after these 8 years of development.

 

 

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Yeah they don’t bother me either, been around donkeys years now and I love a bit of vidya gaem tat so bring them on, will probably go for the Ultimate Edition, I tried to pre-order the Collector’s Box on R* Warehouse but it was already sold out ?

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