Development of Red Dead Redemption

A team of approximately 1,000 people developed Red Dead Redemption over five years. Rockstar Games published the action-adventure game in May 2010 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and in August 2023 for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. A spiritual successor to the 2004 game Red Dead Revolver, its development was led by Rockstar San Diego's core 180-person team, who collaborated with Rockstar's Leeds, New England, North, and Toronto teams to assist development; Rockstar North, developer of the Grand Theft Auto series, consulted in the creation of the open world. After its announcement in 2009, the game was fervently promoted with press showings, cinematic trailers, and viral marketing strategies. Its release date, though subject to several delays, was widely anticipated. The working hours and managerial style of the studio during development was met with public complaints from staff members.

The open world setting constituted much of the development effort; its three main areas each represent iconic features of the American frontier. Key team members conducted field trips to Washington, D.C. to capture a multitude of photographs, and several classic Western films, television shows, and novels were analyzed for research. Rockstar improved its proprietary Rockstar Advanced Game Engine to increase its animation and draw distance rendering capabilities; the team felt the seventh generation of video game consoles were necessary to achieve their ideal vision, having exhausted the use of older hardware on previous projects. The game was envisioned to improve the core mechanics of Red Dead Revolver by scaling it up to the standard of other Rockstar games, maintaining key gameplay elements like the Dead Eye and dueling mechanics but majorly overhauling the experience otherwise.

Red Dead Redemption's 1,500-page script was written in two years. The game's setting in 1911 was chosen to demonstrate the transformation of the old West into a modern civilization. The developers underwent a secretive audition process to cast its characters. Performance capture was used to record the actors' movements, faces, and voices simultaneously. Rod Edge directed the actors' performances in a studio in Santa Monica, California. The game features around 450 characters, and required a large amount of dialogue for the world to feel alive, comparable to Rockstar's previous game Grand Theft Auto IV (2008). Researchers at Rockstar developed a style guide based on real phrases of the time period. Red Dead Redemption features an original score composed over fifteen months by Bill Elm and Woody Jackson, who engaged several other musicians to create approximately 200 tracks.