Mike Bantick
Thursday, 17 December 2009 02:53
Entertainment
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iTWire has been given an extensive preview of the new open-world game from Rockstar San Diego. Red Dead Redemption is the follow-up to 2004’s Red Dead Revolver and returns the Grand Theft Auto developer to the Wild West. Featuring seamless random events and on-the-go honour decisions, players can craft their own ten-gallon adventure.
The Rockstar office in Australia is a neat cool clean comfortable environment, but once the preview demo for Red Dead Revolver springs to life on the large screen, there is a certain level of dusty grit that seems to permeate the room.
In 2004 Rockstar released Red Dead Revolver, a game it picked up from CAPCOM via Angel Studios that was originally slated to be an on-rails wild-west themed shooter. Instead the game was turned into an open-world mission based western, where the myths of the era came to life.
With the follow-up, Red Dead Redemption (RDR) has allowed Rockstar San Diego studio the chance to craft this experience from the ground up, this time with a more authentic approach to frontier life.
Using a refined version of the Rage graphics engine for displaying distant horizons, large vistas and wonderful sunset’s featuring rays of light diffusing through volumetric clouds.
Apart from the visuals, which we will touch on later, RDR sports the Euphoria Physics and NPC reaction engine, as seen in other Rockstar games as well as titles such as Lucas Art’s Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. In RDR however, Euphoria encompasses not only humans but also the wild life within the game. Everything from horses to bunnies will create an eco-system on their own accord. Different breeds of horse will behave and perform in a variety of ways, and buzzards will circle the sky, attracted to the aftermath of any gun-fight.
RDR takes place at the turn of the 20th century, Mexico is in civil war and the freedoms of the wild-west are beginning to be reined in by civilisation. John Marston, is the sedate moving protagonist of the game – according to Rockstar: Marston’s a partially reformed outlaw who, after years as a career criminal in a notoriously brutal gang, sought a more peaceful life for himself and his new family. Three years later, and John’s life is completely pulled apart when agents from The Bureau – what will go on to become the FBI – arrive with a horrific ultimatum – thus forming the catalyst for Red Dead Redemption’s dark and epic story.
Working under the instruction of the government, The Bureau were proving just as ruthless, lawless and evil as the gangs they were paid to hunt down. In Red Dead Redemption the line between good and evil, right and wrong is completely obliterated.
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