Development of Red Dead Redemption 2 began in 2010 as production drew to a close on its predecessor, Red Dead Redemption.[11] It is unclear exactly when development started, some sites like Vulture state that development began in early 2011[12] while others like IGN claim that development started in 2010.[11]
In early 2011, Dan Houser, co-founder of Rockstar Games and head writer for the company, began talking to Rockstar San Diego about a potential follow-up to the first Red Dead Redemption. When Dan Houser was interviewed by Vulture, he said that by late summer of 2011, he had a "broad outline and rough flow of the game defined". By Autumn 2012, many of the game's missions started to shape up, although the scripts for the missions were very rough at the time and weren't completed.
It was at this time that read-throughs of the scripts commenced, this was done via video conference calls with directors of gameplay, art design, and animation from Rockstar offices around the world.
The final script for Red Dead Redemption 2's main story is approximately 2000 pages long. However, with the addition side-content and additional dialogue, Dan Houser estimates that if the pages were stacked, they "would be eight feet high". In cohesion with the script, vast efforts were made to further bring it to life by spending a total of 2200 days on the motion-capture work. This also required vast amounts of actors; a total of 1200 actors were involved in the motion-capture sessions, 700 of them with dialogue.[13]
The first motion-capture sessions commenced in 2013 at Rockstar’s motion capture studio in Bethpage, New York. The majority of the sessions were directed by Edge.
Later in 2015 the renowned composer Woody Jackson was brought in to compose the game's music. "We have 192 interactive mission scores, and we thought about the music constantly from the time we brought in [composer] Woody Jackson in 2015", says Ivan Pavlovich, Rockstar’s music supervisor.
By mid-2017, the acting for Red Dead Redemption 2's story was completed. At this time, the story was approximately 65 hours long, but a 5-hour portion of the game's story was later cut from the game. At one point, the protagonist Arthur Morgan had two love interests, but Dan Houser said: "we decided one of them didn’t work", and scrapped the idea as a result. In fact, whole missions were removed, with the reason being as follows: “they were never going to work technically or be quite slick enough, or they felt superfluous. We removed a mission on a train where you had to deal with bounty hunters, because it was fun at first, but then it wasn’t. This part of the process is always about compromise and horse trading. Everyone always loses bits of the game they love”.
Under 2017 and much of 2018, the game was polished and tested to its full extent. In 2017, work was also started on the online-counterpart of the game: Red Dead Online. Story segments were assembled and additional motion-capture work was done.
It is unknown exactly how many were involved in the development of the game. According to Rockstar's open "Thank You"-letter, a total of 3168 individuals are credited for their involvement in the game.[14] However, this does not include any of the 1200 actors, thus the exact figure can be estimated at around 4368.
As of late 2020, it is unknown whether or not there will be any additional add-ons or updates to the game.
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