Contents page 1 — The human being has this landscape made page 2 And the less prominent Studio employees toil On a page

read Slowly, the view is free on a green valley between the hills, you see a town in front of you, lights flickering in the gathering darkness of early Evening. To do this, you hear the faint sounds of a guitar, a sound follows hesitantly the other, they combine to create a fragile melody.

So you as a player of Red Dead Redemption 2 in front of one of the seemingly endless natural panoramas, in the video game. You will be amazed what you see and hear. And assumes to be the chance of a living nature here is very close. It is in the middle caught in an open game world that knows no rules and no boundaries: the Wild West of America in the year of 1899 in all its glory. You are looking at it with the eyes of the main character Arthur Morgan, one of those bandits, their time runs out. The Wild West is civilized, and the industrialization will also change its huge landscapes.

The world of this video game is, of course, an invention. Eight years of hard work by a total of around 2,000 people took it to their creation. Nothing is random here, everything is programmed by the staff of the U.S. game studios Rockstar Games.

“We have started with the reality,” says Rob Nelson, Co-Studio head of Rockstar North and producer of Red Dead Redemption 2. To build the game world, would have wanted the developers to the locations in the United States, where there is still Wilderness. Thousands of pictures were made there and later in 3-D Scans of the Vegetation is transformed, which was then recreated in the game. The use of artificial intelligence or so-called procedural technology has been tried for the automated programming of the landscapes of Red Dead Redemption 2. “However, we have found that nothing feels as real as what is created by Hand,” says Nelson.

The narrative takes the player to the Hand –

to build Such a world, it was as difficult to monkey at the same time a painting and a sculpture, by the the players then later in three dimensions can move, says Nelson: “the eyes of The players are framed.” Thus, the producer assumes that reference points were set in the open world of Red Dead Redemption 2 so that the players always have something interesting in view. The town with the flickering lights has been strategically placed.

The untamed nature of the Wild West is of course only the starting point from which the Narration starts. “A story is important. But a story that stands outside the world, is a bad story,” says Nelson. One of the challenges was to combine the Vast open game world with the Narrowing of a narrative and to make the Transition between the two as seamlessly as possible.

Ludonarrative dissonance, the Problem is: The built-in Narration like something from the players, but the world beckons, the to do something completely different. For example, standing around and merely observe the nature. To reduce this dissonance, they have incorporated different mechanisms in the game, says Nelson: “There are moments, as you visit the story short and reminds you that it still exists.” For example, if a member of the bandits-riding Gang, the protagonist of Arthur over, while the player is actually busy to explore the big, wide world. “Hey, we miss you already in our Camp,” says this character then. And mean: There’s a story, and wants to continue to be told.

planted like any tree, aware of every point of interest has been strategically placed in Red Dead Redemption 2, the accompaniment is well thought out music, down to the individual handle on the guitar. For the Soundtrack, Woody Jackson, the session musician scene in Los Angeles comes from and there is a recording Studio operates. Jackson has already composed the Soundtrack for the first Red-Dead-Redemption-part and the of Grand Theft Auto 5 (2013), the latest sequel to the other blockbuster game from Rockstar Games.