The Story Behind the Story of ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’
August 17, 2018“Red Dead Redemption 2” doesn’t deliver one story, it delivers 23 of them. And in true Rockstar Game fashion, that’s not the game’s most impressive feat.
In taking on the prequel story of what made “Red Dead Redemption’s” John Marston the redeemed vengeance-seeking gunman he became, Rockstar drops players in the role, not of Marston, but Arthur Morgan, another member of the Dutch Van der Linde Gang.
The team of nearly 2,000 spent eight years working to breath life into the 22 other members of the gang in a way that is meant to both provide depth to Morgan and give the world that he inhabits meaningful friends, all of whom have their own powerful stories.
To do this, Rockstar Games tells Variety, the studio created so many lines of dialog and AI-controlled triggers that the game does away with the need for cutscenes, overt missions and even a singular take on who Arthur is, delivering instead a living world and an Arthur shaped by developer and player.
Continue reading this story which first ran in Variety on August 17, 2018.
