The making of Rockstar GamesRed Dead Redemption 2.
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You cant simply stroll into the Manhattan offices of Rockstar Games.
After youre buzzed inside, youll need to wear a laminated visitors pass to get beyond reception.
Signs warn you not to post anything about your visit on social media.
Outside it, a worker bee looks at me suspiciously and escorts me back to reception.
Youre not supposed to be out here without someone watching you, he says.
Inside this highly secure enclave, one of the worlds most successful writers dwells.
They hardly ever give interviews, and theyve never taken a PR photo together.
And in exchange for that, you give up your whole soul.
On the companys website, they refer to themselves as impressionable idiots on a mission to entertain.
Butthe work sells itself.
(Avatar,the highest-grossing movie ever, earned only a measly $2.8 billion in theaters.)
Even thoughRDR2has been in development for seven years, theres still much to be done.
Im here today to watch an hours worth of game footage.
Its world feels fully realized, as if players could live in it and put down virtual roots.
But I wont know for sure until I play it and they wont let me do that yet.
We have really pushed ourselves as hard as we can.
That was shit, he says.
In mid-September,I talk with Dan Houser for six hours over two days.
Disappointed, Dan left home in England for a months-long solo trip through South America.
In December of that year, he took a walk on a beach in Cartagena, Colombia.
I made a huge mistake.
The police dont start until 10 a.m.
This was 9 a.m. and I was being chased by three hobos wielding machetes and a broken gun.
He ran for a taxi and found an internet cafe.
It was the perfect deus-ex-machina moment, the right email at the right time, says Dan.
If theres an issue, were going to have it out.
And were going to erase the air, and were going to move on from it.
Were not going, Oh, theres an issue, lets just let it go away.
But he wasnt to me.
We always worked ourselves to the bone.
But it wasnt coming from the top down.
Sam and Dan always rolled up their sleeves and they were always there.
They never left us holding the bag.
We all thought we were making badass shit, so it didnt matter how hard we worked.
His knowledge of film is immense, says Khonsari.)
BeforeGrand Theft Auto III,Dan remembers that Take-Two was a hundred million dollars in debt.
It was money we didnt spend but money we had to make back.
That was a real stress.
We made a $300 million profit, and Take-Two has never been in serious trouble since.
Unserious trouble, though, maybe.
Company emails were subpoenaed and Sam was questioned by the FTC.
The scale of this stress always had the air of ludicrousness to me, says Dan.
It always felt like they were trying to find a reason to attack us.
It was so drawn out.
But I wasnt directly in the line of fire.
It took a greater toll on those who were than it did on me.
Angel Studios was rebranded Rockstar San Diego and the game was published in 2004.
Late that summer, he says, he had a broad outline and rough flow of the game defined.
On those calls, Dan, who took some acting classes in school, sometimes performed every role.
The final script forRed Dead Redemption 2s main story was about 2,000 pages.
The polishing, rewrites, and reedits Rockstar does are immense.
We were working 100-hour weeks several times in 2018, Dan says.
The finished game includes 300,000 animations, 500,000 lines of dialogue, and many more lines of code.
Sam and I will both make both make lots of suggestions, as will other members of the team.
In Rockstars demo room, the lights go down and its all game.
In a barn lit only by a flickering lantern, someone dies.
We aint done yet.
(Morgan has his softer side, too; he writes and draws in a journal.)
Says Dan later, The frontier environment and the force of civilization will destroy people like [Arthur].
Hes caught between the nastiness of nature and the brutality of encroaching industrialization in civilization.
He has a feeling that his time may have come and gone.
The gang moves to a snowy hilltop before engaging in a shoot-out near a cabin.
Everywhere you look, you see something that is drawing you toward it.
You hear horse hooves clip-clopping nearby.
You imagine what her life must have been like before she joined the gang.
Game critics always call this being immersed, but immersed almost doesnt do it justice.
(And at $60 for a copy,Red Dead Redemption 2is cheaper than psychedelic drugs.)
The soundtrack helps, too.
Sam was always asking early on, Whats the feel [of the game]?
Changing times, changing friendships, changing places, changes emotionally and geographically.
Dan says for research he consumed hundreds of books and films, but nothing contemporary.
I dont want to be accused of stealing ideas.
Despite its classical influences,Red Dead Redemption 2isnt meant to be just a period piece.
Rockstar has been criticized for the lack of empowered women in its games.
And that goes for men, too.
The burgeoning womens suffrage movement also figures in the story.
They were no longer constrained by society, because there was no society.
Dan Houser has justwalked from his Brooklyn home to the Rockstar offices with Iggy, his two-year-old German shepherd.
He tells Iggy to stay and gives me a tour.
A number of other teams are hidden elsewhere 250 employees on two floors.
And theyre taking over another floor, too.
We had to get the Take-Two executives to leave, as we need to expand, says Dan.
They were once so numerous they obscured his windows.
And then a small amount happens in the dark hours of the night.
And you go, Why did that take all day to get that amount done?
Nonetheless, Dan says, I think rappers really want to do the work right.
We also always had a good experience with pop stars.
But we havent used either significantly for a long time.
He did such a brilliant job of bringing this chief character to life.
The government is coming down on him hard.
Hes losing his rights as an independent king, and hes a gentle soul in that violent world.
[Greene] bought this great depth to [the story].
This part of the process is always about compromise and horse trading.
Everyone always loses bits of the game they love.
On top of the everyday drama of game making, theres been some additional turmoil.
So I dont think its appropriate to talk about that.
But I will say the team has never worked better together than its worked on this game.
Its after 8 and Houser is leaving the office with Iggy.
He knows theres plenty more work to be done.
If you want, you might bypass much of the story with just a tap of the controller.
It can just be mud, blood, and gore.
