A new long interview with Rockstar’s Sam and Dan Houser by Vulture has reveal the massive scope and development for the upcoming open world Western game, Red Dead Redemption II.
Work has begun as early as 2011, a year after Red Dead Redemption released. Rough scripts of the story and missions were completed by 2012. The final script for the main story goes over 2,000 pages. Even pedestrians, NPCs of the open world, have about 80 pages of lines.
Over 1,200 actors were employed to do the motion capture work amount up to 2,200 days. 700 of the actors have voiced roles. The result is over 300,000 animations, 500,000 lines of dialogue and even around 70 versions for trailers and TV commercials.
The game is estimated to be 65 hours long, five of which have been cut.
But at what cost? It’s easy to just see how huge the budget Rockstar and parent company Take-Two is spending for the game. But in the interview piece, Dan Houser admitted the team worked 100-hour weeks several times this year.
Around the release of Red Dead Redemption, there was the Rockstar Spouse incident where an open letter speaking on behalf of the wives of Rockstar San Diego employees not happy that their spouses are working 60 hours per week.
Such massive games require such labor and unfortunately this is still the reality of the games industry today.
Dan Houser describes the outcome of all these hard work to be “this seamless, natural-feeling experience in a world that appears real, an interactive homage to the American rural experience. [It’s] a vast four-dimensional mosaic in which the fourth dimension is time, in which the world unfolds around you, dependent on what you do.”
We will know if the effort pays off as Red Dead Redemption II is set for release on October 26th for the PS4 and Xbox One.
Source: Vulture via Gamesindustry.biz