My god, I didn't think they'd do it. At least not all official, like. I always figured that Rockstar would just silently move on from Red Dead without so much as saying a word, but instead they have officially declared their utmost failure to make anything out of RDR's post launch support and have now devoted all spare resources to the recently confirmed Grand Theft Auto Six. (As though we needed confirmation that Grand Theft Auto Six was coming.) So that means no more online content, no single player DLC that some people genuinely believed was coming for some strange reason, (it's like they thought this was a game made by any other modern company ever) and no Undead Nightmare style re-release; which I predicted myself. RDR2 is a game that launched as it was and stubbornly refused to evolve or adapt to the long changed world around her until it was forcibly put out to pasture. Which is... damn, if that isn't a perfect microcosm of the Van Der Linde gang's story, I don't know what is.
Now to be clear, this is not a move from Rockstar to devote all of their resources into GTA 6. That wouldn't do. No, instead they're literally just gutting the RDR Online team because GTA Online can enjoy that same rampant support that they've had since launch. As someone who has played a lot of both GTA Online and Red Dead Online; this is pretty much the sucky-est of all endings. GTA Online, the game which has lived through it's high point and cleanly jumped the shark an eon ago, gets to live on and Red Dead Online; the game which felt like it was just starting to form a vaguely coherent idea of where it wanted to go in life, is abandoned. Heck, we never even got to finish the main storyline which the online mode launched with in order to avenge some dead woman's husband or some such; they seriously couldn't throw a chain of story missions together for us as a going away present? Damn, I think Rockstar might actually hate it's Red Dead fans.
Not that such would be a shock for any fan to learn, what with the way we've been treated by Rockstar. From the beginning it felt like Rockstar simply weren't happy with how we choose to play their game (nerfing their own log-in chain bonus to cut earn rates to ribbons), struggled to figure out new ways to monetise and keep the world fresh with activities (defaulting to selling an add-on pack to an already released job for an extra flat fee) and held no interest in weathering the hard times in order to make it to the smooth plains. (They'd make horrible frontier's men.) Because let's be honest; Rockstar's biggest competitor was really themselves with the massively successful and forever growing GTA Online ecosystem. And that success has blinded them to what it feels like to be a normal developer who has to work to make their systems tick with the audience and who aren't rewarded for everything they do, especially the mistakes. (Oh, to have the capacity to fail upwards!)
And to rub salt into the wound, this failed venture to try and make 'GTA Online 2' out of Red Dead consumed the team so totally that they never even considered a proper revamp re-release of their game like what Rockstar used to do before their infinite money tree reached full maturity. Remember 'Episodes From Liberty City'? How cool was half of that? How about their impromptu but increadibly fun wild west zombie game? What could the creative heads at Rockstar pulled out of their wide-brim hats if they'd allowed themselves to channel those levels of resources and shrewd minds? Another globetrotting success, no doubt! But would it have maximised the 'heavy success for minimal work' model? Mmm... perhaps not. Guess that made the idea long doomed and dead on arrival, huh.
What gets me is the fact that rather obviously, the Rockstar developers totally ran out of ideas when it came to building this online world, despite hardly even starting to lay their first foundations. There was no 'lawmen' mode added the game to counteract the 'bounty hunter' profession, no gang-themed mission threads following any of the fleshed out groups from the main campaign, or even some basic ranch-hand jobs for those that want to be boring. Why not? Aren't as Read Dead 2 fans best known for liking the boring? It just astounds me that it seems Rockstar literally had no plan when it came to working with this mode, despite knowing how much that very problem hindered the early growth of GTA Online. Isn't 'learning from you own mistakes' an increadibly key fundamental tenet of adulthood? Have GTA devs still to learn how to grow up?
Oh and make absolutely no mistake about the way that Rockstar has framed this, almost trying to make it sound like the Red Dead Online infrastructure has reached it's long destined conclusion; this was a failure on the developer's end. Remember, they literally wrote a main narrative of missions that they never got around to concluding, and the only major single-themed update the team ever released was the Moonshinerers expansion. Such an expansion did prove, however, that there was potential in this mode if only the team had the creativity to exploit it. Instead they'll save all of that for the easier to work with Online world of GTA Online. Just throw in some casinos, make a deal with Dr Dre, and call it all a day.
So from here it very much seems that the world is going to have to wait until GTA 6 for the death of GTA Online; providing that Rockstar even remembers what 'risk-taking' is at that point. For all we know they might just bite the bullet and try to run 'GTA Online' and what I can only assume will be 'GTA Online 2' simultaneously so as to not risk losing any active players in the transition. For all the whining that people make about Skyrim being an old game that keeps getting it's rerelase, at least Bethesda let that game shine on it's merits instead of trying to reimagine it so often that the original premise is unrecognisable. You know that the next GTA Online update is about uncovering some super secret criminal conspiracy? Shouldn't we be running the conspiracy? Who are the good guys and bad buys anymore? Or GTA Online just an MMO?
And so until the grand and proud return of Red Dead for Redemption 3; a game in which I can only assume you play as a farmer who's crops grow in real time, GTA's horse riding cousin is good as laid to rest. The technological achievements of Red Dead Redemption 2 will go untested by the team who will instead focus on ol' faithful and the Red Dead community can mourn their abandoned game to a crowd of dead and listless ears. I will not hide how disappointed I am in the lack of drive from one of the most storied developers of the industry, but thus is increasingly standard in an industry ruled by monetisation fetishism. Maybe the next Red Dead Redemption can affix all of us with a money IV to fund the development time and make it worthwhile for Rockstar. Just cut to the chase, ya know?
No comments:
Post a Comment