Red Dead Redemption

[Money99]

Re: Red Dead Redemption

Same here. Is this coming late in the fall?

I think in October some time.

[Flawless]

Re: Red Dead Redemption

Wonder if they have any plans for anything online.

The IGN preview mentions there will be multiplayer, but Rockstar provided no details to them.

[Flawless]

Re: Red Dead Redemption

IGN: Five Reasons to Love Red Dead Redemption

The Wide Open West
Though Rockstar gets the credit for spawning the open-world craze, at this point I've seen all the metropolises I can handle. It is, in all honesty, starting to feel a little "been there, done that." But a wide open West is quite a different beast. For the most part, videogame Westerns have been shackled to linear level design that focused on stylish gunplay, but lacked the atmospheric elements of the Wild West. If Rockstar nails the landscape and social aspects of its three Western locales (the frontier, Old Mexico and the Northern territories), then exploration is going to be something very unique and exciting as compared to other open-world games.

In a way, the West was like the world of Fallout. It's a place of isolation. But unlike Bethesda's dystopian world, the West is moving from a savage place towards one of civility (or at least refined savagery). Red Dead's story takes place at the turn of the century, as the West is confronted with the birth of modern industry. The setting is only going to help create the proper sense of desperation that swept across the outlaws of the Old West in its final years. In some ways, the themes may be very similar to those of GTA IV. Hopefully Rockstar can pull it off.

I'd Like a Side of Spaghetti with My Western
I've seen my fair share of Westerns, but no subset of the genre appealed to me more than Spaghetti Westerns. It's a perfect fit for a game, because the exaggerated style of these films allows for hats to be shot off an enemy's head and the gun blown out of their hand. The stories in these movies doesn't suffer. Clint Eastwood's "Man with No Name" trilogy is a perfect example of three classic Western tales filled with betrayal, surprises, villainy and anti-heroism. I'd be prett shocked to learn that these films (and others like them) didn't have a major influence of the Grand Theft Auto series as a whole, let alone Red Dead Redemption. And yes, with the Deadeye Mode (aka bullet time) you can target just about anything on an enemy.

Natural Motion Horses
Red Dead Redemption may be set in the West, but its technology shares a lot with GTA IV. As with the latest GTA title, Redemption uses Rockstar's RAGE engine and Natural Motion's amazing Euphoria technology. What's that all mean? No pre-canned animations. And the ability for the body to react to bullets and other unexpected collisions. One of my biggest problems with past videogame Westerns were the horses. They never looked quite right and riding them always seemed unnatural. But with Euphoria, the horses will move a react to changes in the terrain and collisions. Riders will be thrown by sudden stops and characters should tumble off horses more organically than the pre-determined animations of the past. Let's just hope legs can get caught in stirrups and wounded enemies will be dragged behind their rides.

Duels
There's not much I can say about one on one gunfights, since Rockstar hasn't shown that off to anybody. So I can't exactly say I love what they are doing (maybe I will, but who the heck knows how a duel will work). Still, I am excited about the very prospect of duels when you consider that the previously mentioned technology and the Spaghetti Western aspects should make for some really cool moments. The real trick will be if Rockstar can nail the high level of tension the precedes just about every duel in movie history.

Notoriety
Red Dead Redemption doesn't feature a traditional morality system like Fallout. To my knowledge, you won't have the option to be the good (Gary Cooper), the bad (Deadwood's Swearengen) or the morally ambiguous (Eastwood's Blondie). The story is going to drive you where you need to go without the kind of branching paths seen in some other games. That's fine by me. What is interesting is how the wanted level works.

You can be evil if you want. Go shoot up a whole damned town if it makes you happy. But the worse you are, the more heavily the law will come down on you. Wanted posters will appear in town, posses will be formed. And unlike GTA IV, where getting free of the search radius resets your wanted level, in Red Dead Redemption, people have longer memories. Shot up a bunch of churchgoers? Head back to that same town soon after and people are going to remember your face. Bad things are going to happen.

While it's going to take a very long play test to see how well the notoriety system works, what I know about it so far sounds very promising. And for the record, everyone wants to be the Man with No Name. So if Red Dead Redemption keeps your character's morality in the grey, more power to Rockstar.

[Money99]

Re: Red Dead Redemption

I love the Noterity part. That's what I want from GTA. If you cause some major poop-storm you should be remembered for a long time and always have issues in that area.

[Flawless]

Re: Red Dead Redemption

Part one of an interview with Dan Houser

The game world Rockstar is constructing is supposed to be massive, in a way that could be one of the largest worlds the company has yet created. Achieving this kind of scale was of critical importance for the type of game the company wanted Redemption to be. "The sense of scale, and the sense of riding across these big areas and exploring these weird corners of the map, that is part of the experience, just as much as having the shootouts and part of the story and adventure. The act of seeing these beautiful views and discovering them for yourself and feeling like it's enormous and I can go over there and see what's up that hill and see for miles in the distance, that is part of the beauty and fun of the game."

With such a gigantic game world, it's been a unique challenge for Rockstar to fill in all that space with exciting content. "That, I think, has been a major part of the development experience for us. We knew we wanted to have a story and missions that drove that story, but without some of the things we've got at our disposal in a game based in a school or a game based in a city, figuring out in this rural environment how you made a game that was fun and turn that into a strength, that was a big part of the design process. We've made the countryside nice and wild. If this is what the countryside was really like I would find it terrifying. Lots and lots of things are being set up to happen around you in a very organic way, be it wild animals to interact with or wild characters to interact with. There's constantly stuff to see and engage with or just watch engage with itself."

While exploring you might see an NPC spontaneously rob another, then in the middle of the act a mountain lion might pounce on the criminal. Rockstar is saying hundreds and hundreds of possible interactions like this are being infused into the world to make it seem more lively and authentic. "It doesn't feel...triggered…There's stuff you'll never see again with the way things interact…We want to constantly surprise the player and make them interested in the world they are traversing just the same as if it was a city-based game."

When these types of situations do pop up, Rockstar wants to give players a choice in the matter in pursuit of a reward. Should you act as the villain or hero, and ultimately how does that affect how the world views Marston in Redemption? "You can pick and choose if you want to get involved, and if you do, how you want to get involved…You accomplish the action, you get the reward, and it impacts your underlying statistics in terms of how much people like you. If you go around robbing loads of people, then people will start setting up posses and putting up wanted posters for you and make it harder for you to wander through built up areas…In certain areas missions might get shut off until you start to behave more normally if it starts to feel ridiculous. If you're shooting up an area you can't go work for the Marshall immediately because it would feel absurd…You'd have to wait for their hatred for you to die down a little bit.

[ezekiel55]

Re: Red Dead Redemption

I cant wait for this game...reading the Houser interview, it seems like Rockstar is capturing the Wild West I've always imagined playing in.

Doesnt hurt that I consider the GTA 4 my favorite next gen game and they seem to be borrowing heavily from that...Natural Motion was something I was hoping would be included and am happy they've decided to bring that tech.

[Flawless]

Re: Red Dead Redemption

Part two of the interview with Dan Houser

These primary missions will be fairly lengthy, so much so that Rockstar is implementing restart checkpoints in some so that if you should fail, you don't have to repeat the entire challenge over again. "Some of them have long rides in them, and we've tried to make them as fun and as interesting as we could manage, but you may not wish to repeat it so you won't have to. I think in terms of missions there's slightly less than in a GTA game but they're longer in length."

Take, for example, the hunting system, which the game tracks and scores. "I think there's 40 animals you can hunt, various levels of them, which I think has got to be a very large number for a non-hunting game." So what do you get for taking down animals in the wilderness? "More money and then you get an outfit once you've killed everything. You get various rewards to your appearance once you reach the various tiers of achieving the various sets of things you can do one of which is hunting."

The lasso carried around by the game's playable character, John Marston, ties into part of this system. "You actually spend some portion of the early game lassoing cattle and wild horses that you can tame. Obviously you can use it on people, so you can hog tie people and throw them on the back of your horse. Supposing I've done a side job as a bounty hunter and you're the guy I'm being set after and I see you and as you run off I can send the lasso over you, hog tie you, and throw you on the back of the horse and ride you into town." Houser mentioned if you snag a wild horse and don't manipulate the lasso properly, you can wind up getting dragged behind the animal as it runs away.

Once you have moved through the world, unlocked every area and completed the story then, what's the plan for an endgame in Red Dead Redemption? "There is…hopefully an interesting twist with all of that compared to what we've done in the past. But I can't tell you that just yet because that wouldn't be fair. But we're trying to make it fun to keep playing after you finish the story and then after you get to 100 percent on all of the stats and other things you can do."

There'll be multiplayer as well. "Charging around on horses and stagecoaches and trains, shooting each other in a multiplayer world. It's pretty epic, but it's not finalized to talk about in any more detail than that. We're still learning a lot as we learn how to do multiplayer games successfully. We definitely feel there's something really fun about third-person multiplayer games, just as we feel there's something really fun with third-person single-player games…Even between GTA IV and the Lost and Damned we made quite a leap forward in how the games were structured and how they played and I think we're looking to do that again with everything we do going forward."

New Screens

[Wet Bandit]

Re: Red Dead Redemption

This game was completely off my radar until recently, but now I'm cautiously optimistic. Could be a lot of fun.

[Uhfan]

Re: Red Dead Redemption

Wow this is one is on my radar big time.

[Lordcledus]

Re: Red Dead Redemption

Games sounds absolutely sick. Day one purchase for me. Hopefully we see some gameplay at e3 or sooner.

[moose1619]

Re: Red Dead Redemption

Lasso and hog tie = spider man in the old west, love it!

[Brandwin]

Re: Red Dead Redemption

Game wasn't on my radar either, but this sounds amazing.

[RedheadKingpin]

Re: Red Dead Redemption

I love the Noterity part. That's what I want from GTA. If you cause some major poop-storm you should be remembered for a long time and always have issues in that area.

It looks like it's shaping up just like we wanted it to.

[bowdown2shadi]

Re: Red Dead Redemption

LOVED Red Dead Revolver! Awesome!

Ditto.

Multiplayer was fun too.

[Money99]

Re: Red Dead Redemption

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/Review/1...emption.aspx/1

The gun-play seems accurate and balanced, while still retaining a lot of western flavour. The pistol is great for short-ranged work, while you can aim over the iron-sights of the Winchester to pick off targets further away. In fact, we saw one poor bastard get clipped in the leg as he crossed the peak of a roof to fire down on us. He clasped his leg in pain, only to fall over and then roll off - still clasping the gunshot leg.

As we worked our way through town, we saw him limping off into the sunset.

The open world is full of bandits, posses and lawmen, all going about their business. You might come across man hanging from a tree, a broken down carriage or a herd of wild horses - each will have its own natural place in the landscape, and you'll have the ability to interact with all of it. In fact, if you'd stumbled across the hanging at an earlier point, you can even step in to save the poor guy.

As if this game wasn't already first-day buy material.
Can't wait for E3 to hear more.