more interesting, more creatively, you know, diverse.
- You said that Red Dead Redemption 2, in your opinion, is the best thing you've ever
done. I think there's a strong case to be made that it's the greatest game of all
time. What are the elements that make that game truly great, do you think?
- I think you had an incredibly strong team working together that was
very experienced that had basically been in place since somewhere between 2001 and
2006. So it was a long, experienced team. I think we got to
spend a smaller group of us working on it from day one,
coming up with some wacky ideas that we
got to embed in the game. And then we kind had to follow through
with. But I think it was helpful that we got to be very creative before it
had a full team on it. I think that the cowboy setting is great because it
gives a sort of mythic seriousness that sometimes doing stuff in
a contemporary setting doesn't allow. You know, I think the closest we got to that kind of
seriousness was GTA IV, but it just can't... Once you're setting things in the modern world, they're
too frenetic. You can't get some of that slightly, you know, operatic feel that I
love. That some people think is maybe a little over the top, but I, you know, I
love this kind of, you know, people searching for meaning—
...within, amongst the violence. I think that the West and all of the themes
around the West really lend themselves to that. So I think that, and then the gunplay
was fantastic, and the horses were incredible. So I think you had this
combination of technical know-how, a very, very strong team, and really strong material.
very, very strong team, and really strong material.
- Where did you have to go in your mind, maybe philosophically, maybe
spiritually, to be able to create the RDR world? Of course, it was
based on Red Dead Revolver, but that's—
- Yes
- —that's a fundamentally different. I mean, that leap
into the great mythic story that was Red Dead Redemption one.
And then even more so, Red Dead Redemption two. That was unlike anything
you, or maybe anyone, has ever created in video games.
- Thank you.
- So, like, what drugs were involved?
- No drugs.
- Okay.
- No. Stopped the drugs long before.
- Okay.
- That's why I did all that work. Had nothing else to do. So yeah, open world video
games were very good for my mental health in that way. Kept me
busy. But Red, so Red—
Dead, I'll tell, I'll give you my version. Now the games are made by big teams.
So, but I will give you my human interest version of the story from
my perspective only. We made Red Dead Revolver,
decided that, or finished Red Dead Revolver that had been a Capcom game. And they didn't
want to finish it, so we finished it. And they released it in Japan and we released it in the US
in, I think, 2004. And decided we would start work on
an open-world cowboy game for PS3.
Didn't think too much more about it, and that was when we did a bunch of other stuff to work on.
And slowly, 2005, 2006, the game started to come to life. I began
to meet with the lead designer, Christian Cantamessa, and thrash out a few
ideas and story ideas for the game, and began to think about some stuff. And
start thinking about, well, what works for an open-world game? What works for a cowboy game?
And again, I was being lazy or procrastinating.
- Can we just on a small tangent, when you mentioned you take notes
when you're being lazy. What do those notes look like? Are they like doodles?
- They look like either a yellow pad—
—or a BlackBerry in those days, or an iPhone in these
days. I'll write the subject matter and then just email myself a note.
Here's a good idea. Here's a good idea. Or it might almost be scribbling on a pad.
And then I'll assemble, if they're done digitally, then I'll do, I'll
assemble them into one long Word file. And then I'll look at them and
go, you know, "Here's an idea, here's an idea, here's an idea."
See if it comes to anything. See if I now aggregate them together and then read through them.
If there's anything coherent there. You know, something about a character like this, or that.
This would be a funny line. This is a line for the main character. Actually make the main
character work like this. You know, what about this relationship?
As you start to just play around with, "What about if we start in that
place, go to that place?" Start just to play around with all of the different bits and
pieces. And we began to flesh out
some flow for the start of the game. And this idea you'd start in dusty
American West, which meant we didn't have to make too many trees, and then go to
Mexico, and then come back. And we had a sort of loose
flow. And I was really scared of writing any actual dialogue. And I didn't
have a clue how to go about it. And
I kept... It'll come, it'll come. And I kept... because I could postpone it for
ages because we were doing GTA IV. And I kept worrying about it.
My work was wrapped on GTA IV, but the game wasn't out yet.
And we'd done a bunch of the marketing stuff, and had a little window when I wasn't doing much else.
And I took a week with my then girlfriend, now
wife, who was heavily pregnant with our first child, and we went up
to a house upstate and sat there. Well, she, she, she
sat there, either cooking for me or watching TV or reading. And I just went and
sat in the room all day, every day. And just sat there and stared at the computer and
tried to think about, "How can I do this so that it doesn't sound
ridiculous?" How can you write in a cowboy
idiom that feels both slightly contemporary but also
gives the game this sort of life and this weight that I want it to have, and think we can
get away with? And
after about three days, it just started to come. And then suddenly I wrote about
nine, 10 scenes in the next couple of days. And
after that, I knew I had it. And it was a bit... I don't know if that's why there was so much
about a character caring about his family, because I was just beginning the
process of having a family.
- Oh.
- So I don't know if that-
I don't know to what extent that bled in there, but I think it bled in there to some extent.
- So that was part of creating the 360-degree characters.
- I think so.
- Here's this man that is
capable, is involved in a lot of violence, who also cares about his family.
- He's grown up and he's trying to step away from that and be a man, be
a grown-up. And can he get away from it? And when he can't get away from
it, what's he willing to do to save his family?
And that was, I felt, starting to get some idea. I mean, she, well,
She hadn't given birth yet, but I was beginning to grapple with the ideas of, "I'm
gonna become a parent." So I hope some of that... And obviously, then I didn't,
probably didn't write any more for six months. So later on we had a child. But certainly for that
first bit, I think some of that began to bleed in there.
- ...you got the feeling that you can actually do it. It's true, it's...
It could have very easily been ridiculous and
not believable, the dialogue between convoys.
- Yes.
- And, yes, I mean, there's probably so much work went into
making it feel real and believable. And, and, like, that...
Like a Shakespearean type of drama, but not the cheesy kind.
- Well, just wanted it to feel when they spoke. I
mean, I, I, I love dialogue. I'm always, you know, I love the sound of
words, but just wanted to feel like when they sounded, it didn't sound cheesy,
it didn't sound ridiculous. You wanted to hear them speak more. It didn't make you
cringe awfully when they spoke. That was the... At some level that was all the goal
was, and then they felt like this guy was gonna go on this life and
death odyssey and you cared about him. You had to care about his wife and
child that he left behind, even though you didn't know them.
- When did you know how you were going to end Red Dead Redemption One?
- I remember I did a meeting with Christian, the
designer. I can't remember what year. Probably some point
late 2008, early 2009, and we were discussing the last bit and,
and, and said, "I think he's gotta die." And he
leapt on the idea and went, "That's... Yes, yes. No, no, wait, no, it can't work.
Games can't work like that. It can't work if he's dead." You know, began to think through,
well, if we... Just technically it doesn't work because you have to be able to finish all the stuff
up, and then began to think through, "Actually, I think we can make it work if we do it this
way." And so he then really pushed for that idea,
and it seemed to... I was like, "Ah," and I was still torn. I thought it
was clever narratively but I was torn if it was gonna work
technically as a piece of game design, but I think it did.
- Yeah, and spoiler alert, of course, how do we tell the
story of that? Well, so he goes through a lot. He does
all the... John does all the dirty work of hunting down his old gang and he
finally is able to go home and be with his family,
be on the ranch, and then the government betrays him and
sends troops to kill him. And there is dialogue. I mean, that just,
I think the two times I shed a tear in video game history for me is that dialogue.
I think John talking to his wife,
if I vaguely remember. I think he said, "I love you."
But he said very little. He didn't... He made it seem like he's going to see
her and his son shortly. That dialogue was
masterfully done, like a definition of like less is more. It was just so crisp, that
and... And, of course, the other one is again, from memory, Arthur riding
his horse and the music is playing. It's very hard not to shed
a tear during that. Anyway, the dialogue of John talking to his wife
at the end when he's in a barn and is about to walk out.
to face certain death. Do you remember writing that?
- Oh, yeah. Yeah. But it just... Again, I went...
The actor was so good and we've already seen a bunch of his work by then.
He had such a good... He was so good at reading those lines that I knew he
could give us... that you could feel at that point, like-
…I think those lines are best when they're really short and punchy. So I knew—
- Got it.
- I knew he'd be able to make that line sound good.
- So you were imagining his voice. You were just-
- And I think all of those actors on Red Dead
Redemption One were so strong that they really brought that game to life. If
them and Rod, the director, hadn't done such a good job, it would have
sounded cheesy as hell.
- You've said that the ending of RDR1 is one of the best things you've been a part of
creating. Why is that ending so powerful to you? What does it represent?
- I think because for the story to work, just from a technical
challenge, for the story to work, he had to
die. But for a game to work, it felt like a challenge to
make him die. It was probably the
fourth, fifth, or sixth open-world game I'd worked on, and
I'd spent all these years before that working out how these stories worked.
How to make them work technically, how to make them feel right, how they interacted
with the open-form gameplay as best I could.
And suddenly we're going to break one of our golden rules, which was, at the
end of the game, you're freeing the character to go and wrap up all the side stories, to play
forever. You're not going to be able to do that in this game because the guy's going to be dead, and we're going to have
you play as a different character, and the narrative is going to
be compelling enough, if we've done a good job, where you're not going to care about that.
Or you're going to be upset that he's dead, but you can actually have this
emotional moment.
So I think it was a big risk from a technical perspective for us to do that, and then
it worked. So I think that was something that was very…
full of fear, and it worked out okay.
And I think people were really upset and angry at us for doing it because they didn't think it was going to happen, but
I think they also had that kind of experience you're describing, which is that kind of creative
moment where, you know, a transcendent moment with characters in a piece of fiction, which is
what we've always aspired to giving people.
- I mean, it's incredible because I don't think… I don't remember a single video game that has
done that before.
- Well, I would like to have, at the end of GTA IV, killed Niko, but you couldn't do
it. You know, the game doesn't work like that. So it was this thing where we
hadn't done it, thought about doing it, hadn't done it, and then going, "Let's
do it. Let's take the risk and do it. We can't do it. Let's try." And it worked.
- Yeah, what about the decision with the son? You know,
John gives so much effort to make sure that Jack doesn't end up
in a life of violence. I mean, it's very Godfather-like. It's—
…he's dragged back into it through revenge.
- That was also, the game still had to work as a game. Whether that was the right
ending, 100% the best ending from a pure storytelling perspective, I don't know.
But I know that we had to make the game work.
- Oh, interesting.
- So it was... I think it kind of worked in that way where Jack can't
escape, but I always also wanted a version of it where Jack did
escape, but that wasn't... Both were interesting to me.
- Can you just dig in a little deeper? What do you mean about for the game to work?
It's such a direct... It's like Kubrick talking about for this movie to work,
it has to have... From my perspective, I just think about the story. What's the technical
aspect for the game to work?
- It's just the mechanical experience is you have an
avatar you control, and you know, the games don't really end.
You have to be able to wander around the world and do stuff.
So at the end of the game, you have to be able to wander around with your
fairly limited set of
features, which is you can run up to someone and punch them or shoot them or
rob them, or talk to them. And that's
kind of... or jump on a horse or do all this other
stuff. In order for the game still to be fun and people to get this full
360-degree experience with it, they had to, if they
wanted to 100% the game as opposed to just finishing the story, you have to have an
avatar to do that stuff with. So that was the sort of challenge of Jack's
character, wrapping up the story as Jack.
- Oh, there's real power for the avatar to end, the finiteness.
- Yeah. Both the Red Deads, you obviously change avatars.
Which we did, and then did it again. I think there's something interesting about that
moment when you change from one character to another, because they are you and they're not
you, you know, and then suddenly you're someone else.
- Mm-hmm. I mean, I was really shaken by that
experience, but it's a beautiful experience. It's like an unforgettable
experience. What else can video games possibly reach
for? You know, to create that experience,
that's what great films do, that's what great, great books do.
- It's that. I mean, it's that and the world building in games. I think the experience of being in this
fake place and then taking on these narrative
adventures, when that combines, you've got the amazing experience.
- So who do you think is the best character you've ever created in RDR?
So to me, I think definitively Arthur from Red Dead Redemption
2 is the best character ever created in video games ever.
- Thank you.
- I think there's not even close. I mean, John will be the se-, which is hilarious
to say, but those are... John will
be a close second, but Arthur is definitively. And you've talked about in that
interview, you said that a lot of video games
work on the same premise, that you start as a weak person and
end up as a strong superhero. But what if you start as a
tough guy, someone who already is very strong, someone that's
emotionally confident of his place in the world? Arthur's journey is not about
becoming a superhero because he's almost one at the start, but
it's about an intellectual rollercoaster when his worldview gets
taken apart. So it's very different than the normal journey of a character.
- Yeah, in a game...
- In a game
- ... in order to reverse it.
So there were a couple other themes that matched that. So they're guys from the Wild
West, but they're being pushed ever further east.
So it's almost like an anti-Western.
An Eastern. You're traveling east. You're traveling into civilization. And I
don't think I would've been grappling with those ideas earlier in my career,
'cause it was so, you know, this idea of getting a different kind of
strength and different kind of weakness was interesting.
- What about the component of mortality, of a character facing his own mortality over a
prolonged period? Sort of just the, the, the, the
prospect of like, real sort of fear of death, realization of death.
- Yeah. I thought that was really-
- as part of the story.
- really a fun thing to play with. John dies in Red Dead 1,
I wanted to top that with Red Dead 2, or do that in a
different way. And so the idea that John's death is fairly sudden, and
so if he's got this long, drawn-out death, then I'd always
been obsessed by TB. As diseases go, it's a great literary device.
You know, 'cause it is this long, drawn-out, slow death, but in which you are also getting weaker.
And my grandfather actually had TB before they invented
antibiotics and was sent to a sanatorium just after he
was... just after he'd had his child, my father,
and survived, but only three of them out of like 35 survived. So I was always,
captivated by TB as an illness. It
felt like it was an interesting thing to play around with
as an idea, this guy getting weaker who felt like he was immortal
and essentially was immortal. He was the protagonist in a video game, he could not die, and
suddenly he is becoming mortal. You know, but that
helps him see stuff. I thought that was a different way of doing a lead
character in a game.
- Yeah. Do you think it's the greatest character you've ever created?
- I think he's the best
lead character. You know, the lead characters are different from the side characters,
and I think he's the most rounded and works the best. I kind of...
Him and Nico are the two I like, you know. They were the two most ambitious.
So for me, it's always sort of a toss-up, you know? But then I
loved all the stuff, like the art team did such an
amazing job. It was their idea with the journal and that kind of...
The way that all the features worked into Arthur's character, I thought that
was really... He was really rounded, he worked in lots of different ways really well.
I loved his flawed relationship with his old
girlfriend, things like that. All the side... You know, the bits that turned up around
him.
- So you also like the side characters. You like the flavor
- Yeah, of course.
- of the full cast. What are some of the favorites you've created?
I'm sure the one you're currently working on-
Nigel, that's a... You called him a side character.
- Well, he's not a protagonist. He's like a god, not a character.
So he's not... Him, I'm enjoying. I love Dutch.
You know, it was partly because we wrote a few lines for him
for the first game, and the actor did such a
such an amazing job that when he spoke, it just came to me
all of their backstory, which I'd been playing around with by that point anyway a little bit in my
head. But I knew it was his bigger gangster from then. I sort of saw exactly who he
was. And so that was... That felt like... He felt like a living character to me.
- And we should say that Dutch is kind of like, maybe a little bit of a godlike figure-
in both of the Red Dead Redemption games. He's the leader of the gang.
And there's a father-son relationship with Dutch, with, uh,
I mean, with Arthur, with John. There's a family feeling to the
gang. They explore all of those dynamics, and then the feeling of
betrayal and Arthur facing tuberculosis.
You're going against the family, going against the father-
because he is transforming his sense of the
world, of morality, of all those kinds of things. So all the kind of very
Shakespearean drama is right there. And Dutch is
a prominent godlike figure through all of that. Also
flawed himself. Also a man of good and evil in that,
framework that they're operating under.
- And he's just drowning in his ego at the end.
You know, his ego gets the better of him. I think he's a... But there was
something flawed but beautiful in his idealism when he was younger, and that's
mostly off-camera. And then just so you know, always been
as an individual, I've always been very susceptible to charming people.
And he's charming. So I was kind of... I can see how people get captivated.
by charming people. And the idea here was a very charming person,
and the road's run out for him.
- I personally am afraid of how much I love human beings,
and how susceptible I am to charm and charisma.
'Cause it can cloud your judgment about human nature.
- Completely. And that's what's happened with him. And it ended up
clouding his judgment about himself. He kind of fell for his own rubbish.
- Yeah, but also it clouded Arthur's judgment.
- Oh, completely. Arthur was completely, you know, platonically in
love with him. He was worshiping him. He'd given up his power to him. And then I think for
Arthur, the journey is retaking that
power in the moment of dying. You know, and that's what the whole... that's why
I thought that was really interesting.
- Yeah, it's truly tragic for Arthur to be
losing his identity, lifelong identity, and
sense of belonging, and losing his life at the same
time. In facing mortality, he is realizing that he's not all of it has been a lie.
- But he gets to do some... Well, it depends on what choices you make.
But he gets to do some good. And so he gets his moment of redemption.
- Just a little bit. But realizing...
your whole life you've been living not a good life. You've been not a good man.
- Isn't that what we're all afraid of?
- I guess it's never too late to change your ways.
- Hope not. I mean, that's...
- So, the biggest, most important, primary question, central to the
reason we're talking today, the number one question from the
Internet, it is so ridiculous, but I must ask. Have you seen Gavin?
Who is Gavin? So, for more context, there's a guy named Nigel in Red Dead
Redemption 2 who's frantically searching for a mystery man named Gavin
throughout the game. This has become one of the biggest mysteries amongst
the interwebs, the RDR fan base. So, the theories
include, theory one is it's a split personality disorder. Nigel
himself is Gavin. So, the evidence for this theory is the letter that has some
evidence that may be due to trauma, this split
personality disorder was created. This Gavin was created inside Nigel's
mind. Theory two is Gavin is dead, and Nigel's simply in denial.
Theory three is that it's
just a troll, and Rockstar intentionally created an unsolvable mystery
to drive players crazy. I also heard theory four is
Gavin is the Strange Man. So, there's this
fascinating character, the Strange Man, this supernatural character that has a
presence in RDR1 and a little bit in RDR2 also. But yeah. So which theory
is closest to the truth?
- Not three or four. In my mind, somewhere
between one and two. I just loved the way he
shouted, "Gavin." It just amused me. So at some level, it
probably is trolling in that we didn't want it to be a totally clear mystery.
You wanted it to have a little bit of adventure to it.
but it was meant to be ... Without ever fully being
explained that Gavin's not there anymore. Gavin's either gone
home, Gavin's left him, Gavin's... And we were going to keep
exploring that idea. That he was going to reappear in some way or other.
- Did you have any idea how much imagination, excitement, and curiosity
that little interaction would inspire in people?
- Yes and no. You could never know what people are going to find amusing
in these big games, and a lot of it comes down to acting as well. The guy was just funny when
he said "Gavin." It was just funny.
You know? But there was a ped in Red Dead Redemption one that everyone was obsessed
by, and I really wasn't expecting that. So we try to put a few
characters in. I mean, Gavin was supposed to be amusing. I thought he was amusing.
But you never know what people are going to get obsessed by. There are other characters
I think are funny, and people don't even notice them, you know, or they see them in a completely
different way.
- Did you have a part in writing the letter?
- Yeah. I can't remember if I wrote it or... Either I wrote it or Mike
wrote it, or we both wrote it. I really can't remember, to be honest with you. But yeah, I certainly would have edited
it, and Mike might have written it, or I might have written it. I really can't remember.
- It's so fascinating because that little piece of writing— of course, you have thousands of
pages-
- Yeah.
- ...but that little piece of writing gets analyzed.
- Oh, but we certainly talked about it in depth, and if Mike was here,
I'd ask him. He might remember. I can't really... And we do so many of those things.
And I loved the use of letters in Red Dead to tell all these weird
backstories. And some became very clear and some were still
a little kind of opaque. But I think the general vibe was there was no
Gavin. Either there was no Gavin or he'd long since left. So it's kind
of a split personality, you know, and then we were going to over subsequent
games provide more information.
- So in some sense, you yourself don't quite know. You kind of have
an idea, like which way do you lean more, theory
one or two? Is he dead, and Nigel's in
denial, or is there real communication going inside his head?
- No, Gavin existed. So it wasn't that he was a split personality, and the only thing we hadn't really decided was in a future game
No, Gavin existed. So it wasn't that he was a split personality, and the only thing we hadn't really decided was in a future game
were we going to reveal that Gavin was dead, or was Gavin going to turn up having
long since abandoned this maniac. That was what we were still playing around
with. I think the idea was that he was never going to meet... He was never going to meet
Gavin in this game.
- I mean, it's just fascinating because you have to think about all of that.
You have to write all of that. You have to have those discussions. You have to have those debates.
- And it has to feel fresh.
Like, what we've done before. Constantly looking as you do. You know, I
think I've done, you know, somewhere between 15 and 20 of these games. Got to do stuff
that's new. It can't repeat itself too much.
- I mean, we also live in the age of the internet. Just, like, you
realize there are millions of people worrying about where and who Gavin is.
- Thank God.
- It's like-
- It's great, yeah.
- It's fascinating that they're having... Is, think about people reading, like,
James Joyce or something and thinking about the character, like, breaking apart
Ulysses and thinking about, like, arguing about
different interpretations of it. And to me, that in itself is also beautiful.
- Yeah. We want the side mysteries to be solvable up to a point, but you still
want these discussions.
- Yeah, the mystery.
- You know, and you want as long as it feels tonally appropriate for
this whole big sort of shaggy dog story experience you're
making. Which Gavin was just about, and he was so weird, and he just
was intrinsically... there was just something funny about an English person screaming,
"Gavin." I don't know why.
- Yeah. Some of that humor, there's... there's certain in Red Dead
Redemption there's humor, but there's a lot of it in Grand Theft Auto-
...and what... It's hard to put into words.
why that's funny, why it becomes a meme, why it becomes viral,
'cause it's just funny.
- Yeah, I know why I think it's funny, but you... what you can't... What I'm not good at doing at
least is going, "This thing will become really popular online and
this other thing won't." You can create this bunch of, you know, fifty different
side things that people might get captivated by, and you just do not know what
they're going to respond to.
- How do you know when something's funny? Is it... you just feel it?
- I know what I think is funny. It's, you know, it makes-
- You just Google it or you just-
- ...like just 'cause it's ridiculous as well.
That was just... There's nothing funny about a dude shouting, "Gavin," a lot.
He just said it in a funny way... I just thought it might be funny-
It was great... and he just said it in such a funny way-
...and then it just became funny. Like, we often have those side characters
and they're not that funny, and I think they're going to be hysterical, and then you put them in the
game, and they're fine, but they're not amazing.
That guy just brought that stuff to life.
- Yeah. And his backstory too. I mean, Londoner and not... yeah, that...
- Yeah, I think that was what... you know, just that it... there's something sometimes fun, you know, in...
an English person saying the name Gavin is quite funny. I don't know why.
- So, about the Strange Man, AKA, the Man in Black... Is there some
element with Michael and the therapist in Grand Theft Auto V? Like, who is the Strange
Man?
- Well, the Strange Man was again... was, was, was
someone we came up with quickly. It... we made Red Dead 1,
and we... well, were making Red Dead 1, and
we'd made this... we felt quite compelling story and quite
interesting open world. But... and we'd already made a bunch of
Grand Theft Autos, obviously, but unfortunately, we'd taken out the machine guns 'cause it was
a cowboy game, apart from the big fixed position ones. And we'd taken out the
cars, and we'd taken out the city and large numbers of pedestrians. So we
essentially had a game about a dude riding a horse...
...around the desert. And it was quite... and it was quite boring.
And so we then started filling it with content, and we filled it with these...
and having to improvise. And we filled it with these things we call random events that would be
these sort of motion-capture moments that you could interact with. And it...
they were, they were... the designers did an amazing job with those. They were really fun.
But there was not enough of them. And then we felt we needed more story 'cause the story was perhaps a
little short. So we kind of quite late in development
started putting in almost like these RPG-type content where you go and meet
someone. And the way we thought of them was they were like short stories. So you go and meet
someone, they'd set you a slow problem, like go and collect me 15
bunches of flowers. And when you came back, it would resolve your story.
And so then, you know, one would go, "Go get them for my bride," and you come back and the bride's dead.
You know, to... We tried to make them like these short stories with a sting in the
tail. And
he came out... as I was trying to come up with ideas for those, as just this
weird character. And then we built him a bit into the story,
where he would unlock as you worked your way through and be a
commentary on what you were doing. So he was meant to be a kind of
manifestation of your,
you know, shadow, your karma, the devil, somewhere, you know, just
saw the world. And then we built out his backstory over time
and decided, you know... And so in Red Dead 2, you could interact with him again and...
or not really interact with him. But he was there and he was meant to be, you know, something I
suppose any creative is scared of, an artist who's kind of
sold his soul to the devil. And that slowly revealed itself.
- There is a connection between the main character and
the... Is it like a Jungian shadow type of situation?
- Well, it's sort of, because he knows what you're up to. The connection is...
what's never really made clear is, does he know this about everybody?
Like, is he following you, or is he able, because of the pact he's made
with evil forces, able to do this for everybody? I don't think we
necessarily ever clarify that. He's certainly able to do it for you.
- I mean, there's, sort of narrative-wise, there are techniques to reveal a kind of
self-reflection analysis of the main character's thoughts. That's why I
brought up the therapist with Michael. That was a really powerful,
interesting thing to do in a video game. Like, I, I
don't think I've seen... That's such a cool... I mean, there's a Sopranos element
there, with the therapist.
- A little bit, yeah.
- I really love an opportunity for a character to just
self-reflect through that technique.
- But it also changed depending on what you'd done.
- Yes.
- So it was, it was sort of slightly... It wasn't as interactive as it could be,
but it was slightly interactive, or slightly responsive to what you'd done.
So it felt it was still valid video game content, 'cause it was living, up to a point.
And I just thought the character, Dr. Friedlander, was just funny, 'cause he was awful.
So it was like LA. You're in therapy. It's very LA. But it's also very LA, he
wants to write a book and betray you.
Which felt like a good, a good twist. It felt like a Grand Theft Auto
therapist. But just like the idea of making the player in a game,
and games are intrinsically kind of physical, and, you know, you...
you walk, you punch things, you run around, you drive cars, you shoot people,
whatever. There are these kind of physical fantasies. Trying to put them into a
slightly more reflective or metaphysical state for a moment, I think can be really
fun.
- I think, to me, one of the most surprising things about Red Dead Redemption, about
video games, that Red Dead Redemption showed is how much
value for storytelling is insanely specific, intricate details.
In the story, but also visually. It just added to the feeling that the world is
real. So I have to ask, what are some of your, um,
favorite insanely specific, intricate details in RDR? I can give you some
options. The internet's favorite is horse testicles shrinking in cold weather.
testicles shrinking in cold weather.
- Yep. Those guys did an amazing job on those.
- I mean, I just... And there must've been a meeting, and there must've been engineers
and graphics designers.
- It was just, I think just artists.
- Artists
- Modelers, I think. I don't think it was that hard.
- Okay.
- Enough of that pun.
- Thank you for that. Arthur's hair and beard grow in real time.
So, gun maintenance matters. Firearms get dirty and perform worse over
time. Animal carcasses decompose realistically.
- They feel like they do.
- That's still extremely rare in video games. That, the temporal aspect.
- Yes. Yeah.
- That permeates through time. You know, NPCs remembering you.
- That's
the best. I mean, that's the thing I love. Playing around with a lot of stuff
in the new games around that, 'cause I think it's super interesting. Okay?
- It's really powerful, right?
- To make them... Yeah, really interesting. I think it just gives a...
it's a really fun way of giving you kind of narrative content
that is also systemic and procedural.
- Yeah. Is it technically really difficult to do for the
game, for the game to feel like it remembers you? You know?
- Um, I think with modern tech it's not that hard, but there's a
lot of stuff you need to track to make it interesting.
- Yeah, to have a memory.
So that's really powerful. The mud physics. So Arthur's boots get
muddy and leave actual tracks. I mean, that's just incredible. Really, really
incredible.
- You know, we made a dusty game. Red Dead 1 is a super dusty game. Make, you know, the
problem with
cowboys is that if you've tried to make a Greatest Hits of the Cowboy game, and
then you've got to make a sequel, you've got to come up with different geography.
So that's why the game starts in the snow. So we wanted a game that had snow and mud,
because those were things you hadn't really seen in Red Dead 1. And then the challenge is how do you make
mud good in a game? And the guys did an amazing job.
- I mean, the snowstorm that starts the game,
RDR2, I don't remember the last time I've experienced anything
like it, but you felt it. I don't know how the hell you do that. It's not just
graphics, it's everything. Everything together. I suppose some of the
dialogue is really important to that.
- Also the acting. They feel cold.
- Yeah, that's right.
- And they feel desperate. There was that feeling of sort of
- Yes
- exodus. Like you're running away from something, that gives the game energy at the
start.
- And it was at night. Oh man, it was just masterfully done.
- And there was a big group of them. The other cont-
- Yes.
- You know, first game, you start off as a lone wolf. Suddenly you're in this big group.
So it felt very different.
- In Arthur's body, bullet wounds persist. So that, that temporal consistency-
...that's really important. Underweight Arthur looks gone, and
overweight Arthur gets a gut.
And a fuller face. Again, those decisions that you make
reveal themselves in the game across time. And they're consistent.
I don't know. I did not see many games do that. It must be difficult to
do, but to give that level of care to the details in
that way across time and for specific
graphical representations of things is incredible.
- Yeah. I mean, I guess-
- Do you have favorites where you were first like, "This is amazing?"
- I think all of it. I think the way the whole... To me, the thing that I would care about most
was the way the whole thing sat together. You know, the fact that each of
those, they all feel like they belong together with each
other. You made this cohesive, very, you know,
quote-unquote, "realistic" for a video game experience, and all the details
feel like they mesh.
- Well, for me, everything about the horse.
For a lot of people. Testicle shrinking included.