Originally published at: Red Dead Redemption remaster canceled after poor reception of Grand Theft Auto's | Boing Boing
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I never could get into any GTA but I loved RDR. Stopped playing console games though and never played RDR2
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Aside from a possible FPS boost, RDR2 still holds up very well among today’s standards. However, I realize that when they talk about remastering, they’re most likely referring to the original RDR as well.
In regards to RDR2, as much as I enjoy playing 60+FPS games, 30FPS isn’t a deal breaker for me. It actually makes the game feel more cinematic IMO. I’ve found that simply playing older games on newer hardware (ala PS5 or PC) more often vastly improves the experience by just having shorter load times.
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You can play it on PC, where the experience is as good as your latest hardware upgrade. It’s amazing.
I really wish they’d remaster AND release RDR for PC. The original never landed there.
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I somehow doubt that the negative response to the GTA “remaster” (or whatever that was) had much of an impact, because it was going to be a very different process and outcome. For the GTA games they cheaply outsourced it to a small team who imported the game into a modern engine and otherwise smoothed out the assets, which had… mixed results, glitches and bugs aside. RDR 1 is recent enough that they were going to have to do something similar to the Last of Us remake - coming up with entirely new assets and remaking it in the current version of the engine, which would have been a significant undertaking. Even a new set of console versions of 2 was going to be a significantly more expensive proposition than what they did with the GTA games.
Obviously they decided that either there wasn’t going to be a good enough return on the investment, or they didn’t want to devote that much dev time to these projects (and detract from other projects).
I haven’t owned a console since PS2, and honestly so many years on mouse & keyboard meant my thumb dexterity was always crap, so I could never justify getting a new one.
But after so many years missing out on cool releases I sprung for a Steam Deck. It really fills the gap without investing in a ton of hardware, and it’s really flexible in terms of adding external controls (like M&K) and displays.
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I’m one of those old farts who thinks every game system from the PS3 onward is perfectly capable of rendering high-quality graphics and thus high-definition “remasters” have only negligible impact on how enjoyable any given game is. Seeing my character’s reflection in every droplet of water is less important to me than engaging gameplay.
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RDR 2 was amazing. I got emotional when my horse died.
GTA V was just too unpalatable for me. I’d love to see the technology applied to a Fantasy or Science Fiction setting.
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Just remake Red Dead Redemption for heaven sakes!
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You guys should never have taken either games off the psn store!
If memory serves Red Dead Redemption was supposedly complicated and reedy on the code end, with Rockstar struggling even to get it running properly on the consoles it was developed for. With the added kicker that it was poorly documented as well.
I remember past Rockstar employees commenting that to re-release the game you’d basically have to entirely recode it in the new engine. Or it would never run.
That’s supposedly why it never saw a PC release, and why it never really got a formal release for later consoles. The game is basically only playable via backwards compatibility.
I kinda got the feeling this is why the “remaster” was announced in the first place. RDR2 garnered a huge audience on PC. And the first game was never available on the platform, except streamed via Playstation now. So there wasn’t really a way to sell a copy to all those new fans in PC land.
Curiously RDR was dropped from PS Now last month.
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15 years ago: Everyone hates our games, we must’ve done something wrong.
Now: Everyone hates our game, they must be trolls.
Its not our fault that Rockstars biggest historical legacy was screwed up…by Rockstar. If they choose not to look at the reality, then its their fault.
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Which makes me wonder why they dropped it. They realized they hadn’t properly crunched the numbers for a realistic notion of how long it would take to make? They started doing some work on it and realized it was a bigger undertaking than they had prepared for? Priorities simply shifted?
XBox360 and PS3 emulation on PC is supposedly now good enough to play the original RDR at better-than-native resolutions and speeds. (The original was 30fps at 720p).
Not tried it myself, but then I never did play all the way through RDR back in the day, so perhaps that’ll be a winter game for me.
RDR2 is probably Rockstar’s best ever work to my mind, their attention to detail really pays off. My only complaint was that the main storyline is increasingly depressing, and the game is massive, set aside several months to play through it.
It makes me wonder if it’s been dropped. Especially since they did pull it from Playstation Now very recently.
Screen Rant isn’t exactly the most reliable venue and this is all based on leaks and rumors.
If the state of the source code really was that bad, and really was something that had prevented re-releases. Then it doesn’t seem like they could have been unaware of how big a job it was.
My assumption was they’d just rebuild it in the RDR2 engine and systems.
And I’m not so sure RDR2 was ever really slated for a “next gen upgrade”, something that would basically amount to an uncapped frame rate and maybe a higher rez texture pack. It doesn’t really need that. So if they had considered it I could imagine that being cancelled as pointless. The game still sells strongly as is.
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Oh yeah, definitely, especially if there were issues with the original code. Still, the amount of work required could vary quite a bit depending on what assets needed to be remade (or they decided to remake), they might have realized that, say, a scripting system they used in the first game was no longer compatible with the new engine (and thus even work needed to be redone), etc. And priorities can shift in the company, so something that was all planned out can suddenly be canned, even though nothing has really changed.
If RDR2 is already running on all current consoles, then yeah, a major overhaul wouldn’t make sense - and those higher resolution texture “remasters” are usually pretty pointless.
From what I remember of the comments about the subject, people at Rockstar seem to have known full well that practically nothing was usable. I think the exact line was “recode it from scratch”. And this is loosely out there as the unofficial-official explanation for the lack of a port and previous re-releases.
As far as I know it is. It’s just the existing version of the game running. And apparently already running better. I’m not sure what “next gen” something or other they’d be adding. The existing console versions already support high frame rate and 4k resolutions. Unless it’s tossing some ray tracing in for buzz.
Which is kind of my point about these leaks and how reliable they might be. In a game so recent, what exactly is there to remaster? It already supports the stuff you might add, even if it didn’t that’d basically be a pretty routine patch. They can literally just sell the same disc/download with a different label and it not only works on current consoles, but runs better than it did on the old ones.
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I often wonder that with so-called “remasters” of newer games. But as you say, they sometimes throw in ray tracing (or slightly improved rendering, and/or slightly higher resolution textures) and call it “remastered.” So it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, really.
Most of the more recent ones I’m familiar with are a least a bit older, and tend to add at least the higher resolution and frame rate support. Often enough they seem to be meant to jump over some backwards compatibility hold ups on the console end. They’re basically the sort of compatibility update, pre-packed with the patches re-release that’s been common enough all along. Whether it was a “Game of the Year” package or a “this one for PS3 now”.
A good lot of them seem more geared at having a versionless, always for sale digital download iteration of the game, or a cross platform release. Especially in regards to a lot finally releasing on PC after years and years.
Thing is RDR2 is from a console generation where that’s not a thing. These past two generations were built to be cross compatible by default, it’s already multiplatform game, and the graphics improvements were already built into the game.
I can certainly see them cancelling that. The game is still for sale, and selling well apparently, on current systems. I have trouble seeing why they’d green light any format of remaster. Rather than long promised DLC or a sequel.
Like say a full on, from scratch remake of Red Dead Redemption. A 12 year old game that was until recently. Kinda hard to access for most.
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Same, and same. It was an incredible experience. Nobody here is talking RDR3, though. I guess that’s off the table? How do you outdo 2? (I never played 1, tho… may be I should see if I can get it for our PS4.)
