10 Things You Didn't Know About Red Dead Redemption

4. All Scenes Had To Be Recorded In One Take

I briefly mentioned earlier that back when RDR was being made, motion capture technology for actors wasn't the best. Well, it's a bit trickier than that, and thanks to interviews following the release of the sequel, the exact limitations of the shoot have now been revealed.

The biggest hurdle to filming the game's cutscenes was that the team didn't have the technology to make any kind of cuts. When recording anything - even our very own YouTube videos - scenes or segments are usually made up of a bunch of different takes stitched together to make one seamless, flowing video. It means you don't have to memorise every part of the scene, and if something is particularly demanding, you can film shorter segments and connect them in post production.

Red Dead Redemption did not benefit from this process though. For this game, scenes had to be filmed in a single take, as there was no way to stop and start. Consequently, all lines had to be memorised and beats hit perfectly, and if someone messed up, they had to start right from the beginning.

Only once that was done could the developers import it into the game and then make specific camera cuts and edits to make the scene more dynamic. Fortunately, this was no longer an issue by the time RDR 2 went into production.