Red Dead Redemption 2 dev reveals detail "99% of people never saw" that's part of "what makes Rockstar's games so good"
Nov. 5, 2024“They just don’t know it exists, but it does, for the people who just play it a little bit different”
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Red Dead Redemption 2has all sorts of little details that the vast majority of players will never see, and that’s part of what makesRockstar gamesso special, says former Rockstar designer Ben Hinchliffe.
“There’s a moonshine wagon and you’ve got to meet it in the middle, and you’re supposed to ambush it on the bridge. And if you ambush it on the bridge, cool, you get it, I think you’ve got to take it to the professor,” Hinchliffe said. “If you don’t ambush it on the bridge where you’re told to, and you follow it along the road for quite some time, it’ll end up at a bandit camp.”
Hinchliffe went on to describe a scene full of enemy NPCs “doing their animations, the guys get off the wagons, they go to their tent.” He reckoned “99% of people never saw that, because they would ambush the wagon where they were told on the bridge. But again it was that thing of ‘where’s it going, what’s the story behind it, why is it going from here to here?’ So it was always that extra narrative that you have to put in.”
It’s not uncommon for NPCs to have alternate programming for unlikely player interactions, but it’s also true that Rockstar sandboxes are revered for their realism and hyper-interactivity. Hinchliffe said the amount of “‘What ifs?'” in particular is part of “what makes Rockstar’s games so good - all that additional detail and content that they put into everything that players aren’t even aware it’s there. They just don’t know it exists, but it does, for the people who just play it a little bit different.”
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The former GTA 6 designer recently said the open world sequel will “blow people away” and “people will be talking about it for ages” because Rockstar has “raised the bar again”.
After scoring a degree in English from ASU, I worked as a copy editor while freelancing for places like SFX Magazine, Screen Rant, Game Revolution, and MMORPG on the side. Now, as GamesRadar’s west coast Staff Writer, I’m responsible for managing the site’s western regional executive branch, AKA my apartment, and writing about whatever horror game I’m too afraid to finish.
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