Development of Red Dead Redemption 2

Did You Know?

• Woody Jackson composed roughly 60 hours of music for the game, though not every track made the final product; the game has 192 interactive mission tracks.
• The game's online multiplayer mode, Red Dead Online, opened its beta in November 2018 and ended in May 2019.
• The Windows version featured new bounties, weapons and hideouts, which were released on PlayStation 4 in December 2019 and Xbox One in January 2020.

History and overview

Work on Red Dead Redemption 2 started not long after the first game came out in 2010. While making that original title, Rockstar Games got internal suggestions for a follow-up, and the concept of a story centered on a gang was too appealing to pass up. Dan Houser, the Vice President of Creativity, along with a core group of developers, shaped the game's concept. In early 2011, Houser talked with Rockstar San Diego about the characters and visual style.

By the middle of that year, the team had a basic plan, and by late 2012, rough versions of the script were finished. Houser then read through the script during video calls with animation, art, and gameplay directors from all of Rockstar's global studios. Realizing that separate studios wouldn't work well, Rockstar combined them into one large team, simply called Rockstar Games, with 1,600 developers; around 2,000 people in total worked on the project.

Rob Nelson, head of Rockstar North, led that 650-person studio and joined the full-time production effort in the second half of development.

Story and setting

The original game centered on protecting family at any cost, but its prequel instead depicts the collapse of a family unit within the Van der Linde gang. The developers wanted to show why this group disintegrated, a topic the first game often referenced. Art director Josh Bass at Rockstar San Diego noted that gang leader Dutch van der Linde’s influence hung heavily over the original story. Like its predecessor, this game takes place as the American frontier fades and the world grows too advanced for the gang.

Aaron Garbut, Rockstar North’s director of art, explained that the studio sought to portray a broad cross-section of American life in 1899, a nation rapidly industrializing and soon to turn its attention globally. The team worked to faithfully depict the era, highlighting divides between wealthy and poor citizens and between settled civilization and untamed wilderness. Writer Dan Houser intended the gang’s retreat from society to stand in direct contrast to the game’s peaceful beginning.

The first chapter served as a way to refresh the setting, placing cowboys in a harsh snowstorm. This opening was reworked due to its considerable length, as Houser considered it the most critical part of the story. Designer Nelson believed the conclusion was appropriate for the game, given the events of the original title.

Character development

Recording for Red Dead Redemption 2 kicked off in 2013 and stretched across 2,200 days. A total of 1,200 actors were involved, with 700 of them sharing 500,000 lines of spoken dialogue. Alongside standard motion capture, Rockstar employed a face camera to capture facial expressions for later animation, using roughly 60 to 70 cameras. The motion capture stages were built to match the exact dimensions of the game world, and a monitor showed actors and crew a previsualization of the scene.

The team aimed for a varied cast inside the Van der Linde gang. Senior creative writer Michael Unsworth said the large ensemble helped shape the story and made the narrative more layered. Writers focused on each character’s backstory, exploring their lives before joining the gang and why they stayed. Unsworth described the gang as a “family” that gives people “a sense of belonging and purpose,” and he stressed that understanding each character’s story and their bond with Arthur was key to the plot.

Some characters were removed during development because their personalities didn’t contribute to the narrative. Dialogue from the first game, where Dutch is called a fair leader, gave the team a foundation for building such a diverse group.

Technical and gameplay development

Red Dead Redemption 2 was Rockstar's first title built from the ground up for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The studio had already explored the consoles' capabilities while bringing Grand Theft Auto V over from the previous generation. Once the team understood the hardware's limits, they pinpointed key areas to improve, including global lighting, atmospheric effects, and post-processing. Thanks to the extra memory, the game could handle roughly ten times more animations than Grand Theft Auto V. Where that earlier game needed dense crowds in urban settings, Red Dead Redemption 2 called for smaller towns filled with characters who felt distinct. Technical director Phil Hooker noted that the sheer number of animations needed for each character's reactions surpassed anything Rockstar had attempted before.

To make human and animal behavior more convincing, Rockstar completely rebuilt its animation system. Enemy AI received a wide variety of animations to keep combat looking natural. The developers also focused on subtle movements to enhance the world's realism. For the first time in 17 years, the studio upgraded the Euphoria physics engine and completely rewrote its AI system. Horse animation received special attention to help players bond with their mounts. The team filmed real horses in Scotland for reference. The horse's AI was designed to prioritize self-preservation, steering clear of obstacles and cliffs. Senior animator Jason Barnes brought his dog Einstein to the motion capture studio every day. Einstein, who had service training and was used to waiting patiently, helped test dog-sized motion capture suits and eventually played the role of the gang's stray dog, Cain.