New Information from GameStar Interview

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New Information from GameStar Interview about the Open World-Philosophy of Red Dead Redemption 2

 

The information below is not brand-new or something you have never heard before, but it contains some details about the open world-philosophy that haven't been talked about in this depth before. The information was translated from english to german by the GameStar team and then again from german to english by me. So please be aware that the information may not be a 100% faithfully:

 

- Since having an Open World is nothing special today and size doesn't make a game great (No Man's Sky), Rockstar Games set out to make their Open World different from any other. With Red Dead Redemption 2 they want to create the deepest, most detailed, believable and interactive Open World they have ever built. Everybody and everything needs to be believable, from the Barkeeper of the local saloon, to the pebble that descends a slope or tiny frogs hopping around. Small details, big difference.

 

- Rockstar's philosophy is that players in their open worlds are increasingly likely to lose themselves, distracted from their real tasks, but not torn from the gaming experience. Barrier-free games, you could say.

 

- If you set up your own personal camp in a dangerous area (for example near groups of people that don't like guests in their area), you will experience very different situations than before, because you are just in the wrong place, even if you thought you have been everywhere and seen everything

 

- Next to smaller buildings like a barn (that is in the building process on first sight, but will be finished when you come back later), villages and even towns will change over time

 

- If you complete a mission (for example with your gang members), you will see them returning to their daily schedule instead of just disappearing or walking nowhere with no specific destination. Every major character exists in the world, not just in missions. This is inspired by Michaels house and the life of his family, you could see your family in-game, not just in missions. In Red Dead Redemption 2 they are expanding on this idea.

 

- The transition from free-roam open world gameplay to mission and cutscenes will be even more fluent and seamless than in GTAV. All types of missions, cutscenes and the general open world should feel like organic parts of the same thing, there is no clear distinction between them like in other games.

 

- NPCs are unpredictable and believable in their actions and reactions, they have different temperaments. There will be shy people, who will give you their money without you even drawing a gun but also more aggressive people that will immediately attack you if you just antagonize them also without you drawing a gun. Some confident NPCs may ride just past you and ignore you, if you try to rob them. Some may shoot you, while others will first threaten to harm you. R* wants you to feel like you never know how this certain NPC will interact with you and with that R* wants to encourage you to test out different playstyles. You can be an honorable thief or a violent psycopath and the world will react accordingly, but you just never really know how they will react.

 

- R* doesn't want to call the world of Red Dead Redemption 2 a sandbox. Because in a sandbox, you can do whatever you want. Sure, R* wants to give you a lot of freedom, in their Open World you can do whatever you want, but only as long as it makes sense for Arthur, his story and the world itself. Nothing should break the immersion.

 

- There will be no "checklists-type of missions" like in Ubisoft games or Mass Efffect Andromeda. R* doesn't think in categories like 'content' and 'prefabricated content', they want to blur the lines between everything the player does in order to increase immersion. R* doesn't necessarily want you to know when you are doing a main or a side mission or when you are interacting with a main character or just an NPC, but they will inform you in a very subtle way about it.

 

- There will be many optional things to do, but R* wants them to be just as high-quality, engaging and fun as the main missions and you should feel like you never know what to expect. This will cater to all kinds of players: Those who want to rush the main story and those who want to do everything and still have a great experience.

 

- "Random sh*t that doesn't fit the context will not happen [in RDR2]": Random encounters aren't really random, there is a certain system in place that ensures those encounters make sense in terms of how far the players have progressed in the story, what they are currently doing and where they are heading to. The changing surroundings and random encounters provide content for the players that makes them loose themselves in the world in a very organic way and naturally provide gameplay for them (in contrast to the very forced 'checklists-sidequests' in other games).

 

- The areas in the game not only feel different because of the looks but also because of the different gameplay-mechanics only possible in that area (like different animations for traversing different terrain and flora or different objects to interact with). Since animations influence how connected you feel with the world, R* focuses on making them as believable and fluent as possible in every situation. For example there is an animation for Arthur stowing his weapons, which he had previously strapped on his back, in the halter of the saddle. And there are different skinning animations for different animals.

 

- Things you should do in the missions can be done in the open world: For example in Trailer #2 we see Arthur pushing a bank manager through the door. You can do exactly that with every other NPC in free-roam.

 

- The world is as realistic as possible, as long as it is still fun

 

- Even outside of missions and cutscenes you can listen in on conversations in your gangs camp - or approach them more closely so that the other outlaws can include Arthur in their chat. The camp, the atmosphere and the conversations should change noticeably in the course of the story.

 

- Instead of slaughtering animals (that are degraded to polygon objects) without hesitation, in order to be able to craft a larger wallet, the creatures in Rockstar's western game are living beings with - simulated - feelings. This should always be aware of the players when they press the trigger or let the arrow zoom. To kill animals quickly without much suffering you need to take your time to learn the right techniques.

 

- If you commit a crime and the lawmen have a hunch that you are the offender, they will first talk to you instead of shooting you instantly, and you can talk yourself out of the situation

 

- You can modify your weapons to enhance their stats

 

Fun little tidbits about the Rockstar North Studio

 

"We traveled to Edinburgh to visit Rob Nelson at Rockstar North, which he heads as co-studio head. Here, just below City Hill, Arthur's Seat, adjacent to the beautiful Old Town, a large part of the nearly 300-member team is working on Red Dead Redemption 2, while the rest continues to focus on content for GTA Online.

 

First, we are astonished when we enter the former publishing house where the studio is located through a security gate. Because of Rockstar's propensity for secrecy, we had almost expected an old Scottish dungeon with no windows, in whose dark security the game was created. But that may not be the best place to ponder playful freedom.

Rockstar knows that too. And so we put our foot not in a dark cave, but in a sunlit building with glass back wall, on the three floors are fully open-plan offices. The studio looks almost like a small shopping mall due to the huge area in the middle of the building, where glass showcases, among other things, present prizes and merchandise items.

Just as sunny is our first look at Red Dead Redemption 2, which we get in a presentation room with a thick sound system and a giant TV."

 

Small details about the 40min demo

 

"You can see the small waves caused by the current and white foaming spray on isolated rocks. On the shore, the thick smoke of a campfire winds up in the air as a gray pillar, not far from where we make out a small figure, which probably fishes on the rocky riverbank. Birds roam over the blue sky whose dense cloud formations hide behind a snow-capped mountain chain that dominates our view of the horizon.

 

We feel the urge to stay here for a moment, to absorb all the details , because there are a lot, thanks to the excellent draw distance. It's hard to believe that we're getting Red Dead Redemption 2 live on a regular PlayStation 4, not the pro model."

 

Rob Nelson quotes

 

"It's the feeling of being in this place. The feeling that this place lives and waits for you to return, and that you lose yourself in it as you do. Everything, really everything has to meet a certain standard, it has to be coherent, so that nothing pulls you out of the experience of being the person who wears these boots."

 

"I think people like the freedom to do what they want, when they want it, and take on a completely different role. So I do not think the open worlds will go away."

 

"How the horse slips down a slope, or how you yourself slip down a slope or climb it up, or how to wade through mud or slip past planters - all this is important, and we want to expand that further. Because you feel more connected to the world"

 

Size isn't everything: "A GTA map is perceived quite differently, because you can race at 130 kilometers per hour or even fly. Here you are on foot or on horseback - so the players want to ride a big map, but not always for ever. So they want a fast-travel function, and so on. You have to find the right balance and make sure that the world stays visually interesting. There's always something interesting to see, something to chase or someplace to go."

The world itself is supposed to be as big as possible, according to Nelson, but "this is not our focus this time. We want to give the game experience a depth that has never been before. We want you to go out into this world, but also into it, into the cities and the buildings, which are now much more detailed than ever. Down to individual cabinets that can be opened to take things out."

 

"Also very important are the stories we want to tell. The scene and the nature of the narrative go hand in hand and develop together, because the place supports the mood and vice versa.

The Environment team came up with new forest recipes, which trees should be there, which flowers. The vegetation is very important for the mood of the game."

 

"We build everything by hand. There are no procedural things that appear here, sometimes there."

 

"As in the first Red Dead Redemption, it should sometimes feel like the whole world wants to collar you as if you were not the god who fools around. Sometimes we want to keep you going, surprise you. Then you suddenly see a bear or a bandit gang. With this idea we play around all the time - you want to do something, but then you are distracted and lost in the world. That's the exact opposite of checklists, your environment is simply changing. We play around with it, and if too little happens, we steer against it. And if too much happens at the same time, we'll have to turn it down. We like to do missions, but it's not supposed to feel like playing two different games - a sandbox and a roller coaster ride in the amusement park. That should all be one."

 

"There are several such places in the game that are changing. We want the world to change tangibly over time. The same applies to the cities and settlements, which change over the course of the day. People do not just walk around aimlessly, there are no groups that are forever together. They all follow regular daily routines. The bartender, the sheriff, the auctioneer, the doctor, and other city dwellers - they all follow specific schedules. Then there are pedestrians who walk in and out, hang out somewhere and follow their own routines. So the saloon is fuller at night than at 7 in the morning when only a few drunks are lying around. To populate the areas so that they feel credible and coherent - that was an important goal for this game."

 

"We do not have a character switch this time. It was fun and working in GTA 5. But this is Arthur's story and journey, and I think we have pretty convincing reasons to want to stay with him and see how all his relationships change from the beginning over time. The game is about a gang who is harassed and hunted until it falls apart. How does he deal with it? How does he react to Dutch's transformation from gang leader to someone who believes he is more than a that? How do you think he should react to all of this? I think seeing how players influence Arthur's reactions to the events around him in their own way is more exciting than getting into the roles of other characters. It's about Arthur's journey with this gang. And for that to feel realistic and credible, the player must believe that he really lives with this gang. And we as developers have to bite into the bullet, take on the work and create the camp. It took a team about the size of the entire team for the single-player missions to manage the camp and all the daily routines."

 

Regarding the quest to bring Pearson the gangs cook more meat: "It should not feel like it would be necessary to collect food and provide annoying mandatory services. Otherwise we would be back to the checklist idea. Instead, we want to appeal to those players who want a richer gaming experience, and they'll get a reward for it."

 

"In the last Red Dead, you could plunder corpses, and I've noticed that you do that a lot. You also pick many plants. Whenever you do that, the camera angle changes, you can see a small movie. Over and over again. After a while it feels weird. We wanted to do it all without a change of perspective, without a fixed camera perspective.

But we have exaggerated the realism and in the end we were at the point, where you could even pick off single petals. As we have noticed: We would like it to be realistic, but not too realistic. Just like reloading revolvers, we thought about reloading single bullets hyperrealistically. Everyone thought at first that would be great, but then we realized that it takes forever and is not fun."

 

Referring to blasted fauna that leaves behind inferior remains: "We can not stop a player from throwing dynamite when he's having a bad day. But we can stop him from skinning the beast afterwards."

 

"In GTA 5, it's kind of strange to walk through a realistic, modern city, pull out an AK-47, and do not bother anyone. If you aim at the passers-by, they panic, but if you carry the weapon around, it does not matter. Here, 100 years earlier in a dusty city, that's less of a problem. But they react differently if you carry the rifle instead of having it in the holster."

 

Referring to NPCs reacting to corpses on the ground: "In our previous games, they just rode by and did not see what had just happened. Now they see it and ride slower, say 'sh*t' or run away. When they have witnessed the crime, they alert the law enforcers, who then come and investigate the crime. And if I'm still there as a player, they ask me and I can try to talk myself out of the situation. Or not."

 

"The gang needs money to achieve its goals. But in the open world, of course, you can work on your own and accumulate a fortune that you do not share with the rest of the gang. For example, to get clothes, equip the horse, buy new weapons ... all that. Of course you can also donate to the camp to expand certain sections. This does not only do the rest of the gang a favor, but ultimately also yourself. So you can take along certain things with you with each visit. In addition, the morale of the troop increases, and they may want to do more things with you, and you unlock new content."

 

"We fundamentally revised the shootings. We hope to deliver the best Gunplay so far. The feeling, the speed and the connection with the weapons is just something completely different. Looking back, Dead Eye was good but not perfect. We just had to revise it. We wanted to keep the basic idea of slowing down the time and marking the goals. It should feel familiar in the head, but be much more comfortable to control. The variance in weapons is very important to us. Single-action weapons and double-action revolvers, repeaters and regular rifles. Features such as cock and shoot, reload, recharge time, range, accuracy. Combat action, and normal movement in the world, are two fundamentally different modes, hopefully not perceived but felt."

Edited August 8, 2018 by TheExecutor10