At the game’s beginning, a botched robbery in the town of Blackwater has deprived the gang of most of their funds and made them the top target of the law as a result. From bands of lawmen, to Pinkerton agents, to the growth of big cities like Saint Denis — the game’s stunning, New Orleans-esque urban setting — Red Dead Redemption 2 puts the Van der Linde gang’s backs against the wall, and seeing their story of survival and preserving their way of life makes for a striking contrast to what we saw from the setting of Red Dead Redemption and its depiction of the “end of the West.”
The marketing for a game starts the second it is announced. The job of marketing is to not only increase awareness of a title, but maintain hype through the game’s release. Shorter marketing cycles are typically more effective because they have a tighter focus. Red Dead Redemption 2 ’s marketing started in late 2016. While it is intermittent, this incredibly long cycle will likely see the game fall off some people’s radar for months before they suddenly remember that it exists. Rockstar is no stranger to long marketing cycles, but that doesn’t change the fact that it could still negatively impact the game’s sales. Red Dead simply isn’t as well known as GTA , so it needs every push it can get to take the gaming Open World Games Money Guide by storm once ag
GameStop stated that the game’s delay would not affect the overall sale of video games in the fall. This could be because the impact of the game has already lessened, meaning that it wouldn’t have been the end-all game many are hyping it up to be. Instead, moving it to the beginning of the year simply moves it out of the way of potentially bigger titles that could steal its sales. The holiday season is incredibly important in the games industry because everyone wants the best new game as a gift. Rockstar could have realized that even that time of year wouldn’t have helped Red Dead in any real way, so moving the game’s release date at least moved it out of the way of other big play
That interaction all starts with Arthur Morgan, the game’s main protagonist, and how players will decide to take on the role of the senior member of the Van der Linde gang, and Dutch’s right-hand man. Having been a part of the gang since childhood, the outlaw life is all that Arthur has known, and most of the trailers leading up to Red Dead Redemption 2 have shown that Arthur isn’t exactly much of a “pleasant” person to be around. However, as Rockstar pointed out to us during the demo, the reason behind this is that Arthur essentially owes his life to Dutch and the gang, and he’s fiercely protective of them as a result. How fiercely his loyalty lies, however, is left up to the player to decide throughout the course of the story.
In the story sections that we played of Red Dead Redemption 2 , it’s already clear that Arthur’s relationships with the members of the Van der Linde gang will play a crucial role across the whole game, on larger and more personal levels. Right at the beginning of the demo, those relationships came into play as Arthur and the gang were preparing to rob a train under the ownership of the oil tycoon Leviticus Cornwall, which started with Arthur assisting Bill Williamson to blow up the train tracks and derail the car. Naturally, after that plan went awry, Arthur and several other members of the gang instead raced to the top of the nearby mountain path to hop on top of the train. In the midst of the action, we saw that Arthur can issue commands to the fellow gang members as they pushed towards the conductor car, making the action feel that much more involved when executing the heist alongside his other fellow gang members.
Unfortunately, the last four major releases from Rockstar Games have all been delayed to some extent. No one really knows if this is simply unchecked hubris or rather that they’re so meticulous about the quality of their games that delaying isn’t only an option, but vital. Rockstar doesn’t simply create new iterations in their existing franchises, they create technical masterpieces that push forward the industry and take hardware to its absolute limits. Will this game be delayed into 2018? Maybe. Will Red Dead Redemption 2 be any worse because of it? Absolutely not. Having your most anticipated game get delayed is a serious bummer, but having it ship as an unpolished product that receives critical backlash would probably feel worse. Here’s hoping Red Dead Redemption 2 releases in 2
When 2 am hits, you’ll know. As long as you’re in the building, a UFO is going to appear right above you, hovering and basking the whole room in green light. Shooting at the flying saucer yields no result, and it will simply leave after a couple of in-game hours, or as soon as you leave the build
While these relationships definitely had their use in these action-heavy segments of the demo, the interactions that Arthur has with the other members of the gang also play out in more narratively-driven ways. While trekking through the mountains with John and Bill in a later story section that we played, I had the option to talk to Bill along the way to learn more about the rival gang camp that we were about to ambush. Staying silent would have been a completely viable option as well, but having those type of options speaks to the ways that Red Dead Redemption 2 is aiming for a more dynamic and natural way for players to interact with its world and characters.