Rockstar is notorious for their secrecy, they revealed Red Dead Redemption 2 at the end of 2016 out of nowhere even though it's reportedly been in development for over half a decade. A year of silence followed with one set of screenshots and now we have a new trailer that gives us a glimpse of our new protagonist, the setting, and the story.
It's still pretty mysterious and we all have a lot of questions but an old leak from several years ago may give us some insight on what we're going to be doing in Red Dead Redemption 2. Many people shrugged the leak off as the game hadn't even been announced at the time but it seems that the former Reddit user was able to accurately give information about the game before we even knew it existed.
The leaker revealed that John Marston is indeed in the game (since it's a prequel) and that the main protagonist goes on the run with his gang after a spy rats them out to the government. The game will see you building up a posse to take on missions and you'll be creating and moving camps throughout the story. There's also some endgame details that are a bit spoilery so progress past the next paragraph at your own caution.
"You play a gang leader named Arthur. The biggest change made to the game is you have a posse. If I remember correctly, the story kind of starts when you find out someone in your outlaw gang is a pinkerton spy. The pinkertons end up having you on the run through most of the game. You acquire lots of members of your gang such as John Marston, Abigail, little Jack, and others. The core mechanic of the game is having to maintain and continuously move your outlaw camp. When you go on a mission you will choose who to take with you, similar to Mass Effect or Dragon Age. The game spans five zones. A directive they keep getting is to make the environments more interactive like Skyrim. Whatever that means."
*POTENTIAL SPOILERS FOR RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 BEYOND THIS POINT*
So, if you're interested in knowing what will be occupying your time after you complete Arthur Morgan's story, we have some details for that as well. Red Dead Redemption 2's ending remains unknown at this point but players will gain control of John Marston after the credits roll, a la Jack Marston in the original game. It'll see John building his ranch in Beecher's Hope, doing various tasks to establish a home for his family.
"There is kind of a game plus like like the last one had. You end up at Beechers Hope and switch control to John Marston. There are then lots of quests etc dealing with building up your ranch. You literally will do x And Z to build a gazebo. I heard someone designed a mini game where you help a mare give birth that had people laughing."
We're unsure if this will remain in the final game but it sounds like they've spent quite some time developing it and fleshing it out. Additionally, it sounds as if there was at some point several years ago there were some issues within Rockstar Games.
"The last I heard, which was a few months ago, the game was kind of stuck in development hell of sorts. Then team kept remaking a vertical slice demo for the leaders of rockstar and they aren't impressed… They didn't find it different enough or innovative enough. Hopefully they got out of that rut.
I've also heard that since gta5 morale at rockstar SD had been bad. Long timers are quitting. Lots of turnover. Lots of frustration."
Obviously, game development is stressful but hearing of long time employees drop in the midst of a game is concerning. It could have something to do with Rockstar veteran Leslie Benzies being seemingly forced out of the company and filing a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the developer/publisher.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is scheduled to release in Spring 2018 on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. You can check out our breakdown of the all-new trailer which revealed weapons, returning characters, and much more by clicking here.
[YouTuber LegacyKillaHD, NeoGAF]
