Rockstar Games’ co-studio head, Rob Nelson, recently took up an interview about Red Dead Redemption 2. The interview touches on the world of the game feeling real and spacious, and how the team wants the game’s world to be filled with a lot of things to do.
The interview featuring Rob Nelson explored various topics, including Rob explaining player interaction with the protagonist, as well as the overall story in Red Dead Redemption 2, which is said to be as deep as the massive in-game world. The interview comes in by publication site telegraph.co.uk.
Firstly, if you are curious how spacious the world map is in Red Dead Redemption 2, Nelson explained that it is just as spacious as the character you’re playing in the game:
“We have a wide open space, but you’ve got wider open space with the character you’re playing as well.”
Nelson, however, felt to expand on the space regarding the character by stating that…
“We want to go deeper into the whole experience – as wide as we can go – the things you can do with the character, the directions you can take [the protagonist], the choices you can make and how they affect his reaction to the things that are happening to him and his family and his gang; to see how much you can interact with that and what is his capacity for change.”
Furthermore, Nelson explained to the publication site that the team over at Rockstar Games did not want it to feel like the developers are intruding the immersion built around the game’s world and character, but that players can assume the feeling of that character, which in this case is Arthur:
“We are always trying to make these things as immersive as we possibly can but so that you don’t feel us [the developers] in there. You just feel like you’re that character – in this case, it’s Arthur.”
To achieve this “immersive” feeling Nelson explained to the site that cutscenes, gameplay, on-mission, off-mission, and everything else must be blurred along the lines to deliver a world that “feels like it’s one-fully realized whole.”
“I think blurring those lines between cut scenes and gameplay and open world and off mission and on mission and all those things, so that the world just feels like it’s one fully-realised whole.”
Nelson also explained that Arthur is not the player’s avatar, but that the player is Arthur. In other words, players will assume Arthur and pick him up at a specific point in his life and share his decisions and path along the way:
“[Arthur is not the player’s] avatar, he’s him; you pick him up at this point in his life and you share his path with him and we’re constantly playing with the idea of how much of him is him and how much of him is you.”
The “him” and “you” thing being blended together is something that is constantly being played with by Rockstar Games, which is said to add to world building. However, Nelson also claims that an open world filled with things to do and touch and interact with will help out, too:
“This is about world-building always and pushing that as far as we can; but also world filling, making sure that it’s filled with a lot of things to do and touch and interact with.”
Red Dead Redemption 2 is set to debut on October 26th for PS4 and Xbox One. If you want more RDR2 you can look over the following new screenshots:
