10 Behind-the-Scenes Facts About the Development of Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cut Content You’re Hearing for the First Time (Part One)

Whether it’s designing playable virtual characters, team members, or even non-playable characters scattered throughout the world, well-designed characters that reflect the player’s feelings are one of the things that elevate good games to greatness. Red Dead 2 stands out with one of the best teams in the industry’s history, whether it’s Sadie Adler’s harsh behavior and her refusal to play by the rules, Lenny Summers’ contemplation of cultural expansion outside the bubble the gang is trying to live in, or Susan Grimshaw’s instinct towards caring for and protecting the camp, all make up some unforgettable moments in the game.

On the other hand, Arthur is easily the best-written protagonist in Rockstar’s history, along with the strong performance of voice actor Roger Clark, he is able to achieve all the emotional rhythms that the narrative designers wanted while also being believable when it comes to player actions.

Red Dead Redemption 2 can be described as the crown jewel of Rockstar Games when it comes to realism, excitement, deep dramatic storytelling, and unforgettable charismatic characters. To deliver a work of art with such creativity and precision, work is not usually done on the chapters and stages we saw in the 2018 release only, but vast content is developed that doesn’t all make it to the final product due to continuous modifications and changes during development, and now let’s take a look at some of the cut content from the American West masterpiece that will remain timeless in the history of game industry.

New Austin

New Austin itself was a very delayed addition in the development of RDR2 and one of the clearest parts of cut content is that Arthur Morgan was originally supposed to be able to explore New Austin in its 1899 version, this seems to have been deleted due to time constraints.

Arthur has unique dialogue when interacting with non-playable characters in New Austin, and his journal entries and even some screenshots of Arthur’s menu in New Austin are shown.

Due to the extent of this delayed deletion, the New Austin we were able to explore in 1907 is actually a 1899 version (which is why there are no graves in North America dated after 1899), causing many continuity issues with RDR1, a 1907 version was planned even though older/modern versions of store owners were already designed, not all of them were used.

Arthur Morgan’s Face

Arthur’s face changed a lot during development, his face and beard became bulkier, his eyes looked more dead, and in general he appeared more fierce and less resembling Roger Clark as much as the final version, there was also an early artistic design of Arthur Morgan that was very different from the Arthur we got in the end.

Clothing

There are 127 unused outfits in RDR2 files and it seems that RDR2 was originally planned to use a clothing system similar to RDR1 with preset settings to choose from, Arthur’s hair and beard also changed with the outfit you choose.

The deleted clothing includes pirate outfit, RDR2 cover outfit, Van Horn outfit, Legend of the West outfit, and early artistic design of Arthur’s character, the original Arthur jacket was also supposed to be much darker.

Chapter 1 Redesign Before Launch

Chapter 1 was completely redesigned late in development, originally intended to be a much longer introduction to the RDR2 game, the redo caused a complete redesign of most of the northern areas of the map. This led to changes in mountain locations in the middle of development, a large part of the area was redesigned and this led to the cutting of the Tempest Rim area, where Colter’s chapter events originally took place, and it was completely closed despite it being almost finished as an exploreable area (it can only be accessed in the game through a technical glitch).

Non-Playable Character Models

There are a very large number of non-playable characters and different versions that were not included in the game even though they look finished, like these large individuals shown in the images, who did not make their way into the final game.