It may be difficult to imagine now, but there was a time when people were disappointed that Red Dead Redemption's protagonist, John Marston, would not be leading Rockstar’s 2018 sequel. Arthur Morgan was an unknown, and it was somewhat unthinkable that he could mean more to anyone than the already established Marston.
Rockstar, of course, knew that would be the case. And so, during the production of Red Dead Redemption 2, it put a lot of careful thought into crafting Arthur’s tale, with the aim of ensuring Mr. Morgan could both connect with and reflect players better than even John had. And now, several years later, that same issue has been on Rockstar’s mind while creating GTA 6 protagonists, Jason and Lucia.
“One of the things we are interested in exploring with these games – and it’s something we did probably most consciously on Red Dead Redemption 2 – is the idea of how much of this character is them and how much of it is you, the player?” says Rob Nelson, Rockstar North’s co-studio head.
We spoke with Nelson as part of a recent visit to Rockstar North, and he told us about how important it is for player agency and choices, both “big and small” to permeate through the studio’s stories and the characters at the centre of them.
“For example, Arthur – as we played through Red Dead Redemption 2, sometimes it felt like ‘Why am I listening to Dutch?’ He's clearly crazy,” says Nelson. “You know – ‘Why am I helping these people? I don’t even know them.’
“People would ask us that, and we would say, ‘Well, because Dutch saved you when you were 15 years old, when you didn't know how to read.’ And they say, ‘Me? He Saved Arthur.’ So, we tried to do a couple of things to address this. We added an element to the story where Dutch is the only one who knows where Arthur’s money – and all the gang’s money – is, to try to create a secondary, more player-centric motivation.”
“So, if it was not enough for you as the player to just take Arthur's loyalty to Dutch at face value and go along with it, we'll also try and give you a personal reason as the player to be invested for your own sense of wanting something for you,” Nelson concluded.
One way you could build stronger bonds within the world of Red Dead Redemption 2 was to spend time at camp and talk to each member of the Van Der Linde gang. While a great many games feature conversation between the player’s character and NPCs, RDR2’s dialogue system supported both narrative-driven chats and incidental small talk, the latter of which contributed to the camp’s truly authentic atmosphere. This is something that Rockstar also aims to carry over into GTA 6, with Jason and Lucia’s safehouses across the fictional state of Leonida operating more like the interactable camps of the Wild West than traditional Grand Theft Auto homes have done. It’s a continuation of Red Dead Redemption 2’s commitment to characters leading the studio’s stories.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/gta-6-story-choices-explained
