Why everyone is talking about the video game "Red Dead Redemption 2"

"This game can multiply the video game turnover this year." Questioned by Le Figaro (article fee), Emmanuel Martin, General Delegate of Trade Union of Recreational Software Publishers, do not hide his excitement. This game is Red Dead Redemption 2, developed by the studio Rockstar Games, already at the origin of the famous saga Grand Theft Auto.

Released on Playstation 4 and Xbox One on Friday, October 26, eight and a half years after his first episode, Red Dead Redemption 2 propels the player into the American wild west, in 1899. Manette in hand, we embody Arthur Morgan, an outlaw hunted by bounty hunters and authorities after a robbery went awry. Franceinfo explains why the release of this video game is a real event, comparable to the release of a new Star Wars At the movie theater.

Because this is the first Rockstar Games game since "GTA V"

Released in May 2010, on the previous generation of consoles, the first Red Dead Redemption had pbaded to 13 million copies worldwide. An excellent score, but not surprising on the part of Rockstar Games. The American publisher is indeed a regular commercial cartons, especially with the saga Grand Theft Auto.

The fifth and last episode, GTA V, was released in 2013 and reported to its publisher some $ 6 billion with 100 million copies sold. What to place him in the pantheon of video games, alongside titles like Minecraft and Super Mario Bros.

Since then, Rockstar Games has not released any game for this focus on following Red Dead Redemptionwhich has fueled the expectations of players around the world. Questioned by Le FigaroRomain Renouvin, director of "gaming" of Fnac, says he expects "to a huge success"and for good reason, since RDR 2 established a "historic pre-order record on the site" of the sign.

Because the world of "Red Dead Redemption" promises to be gigantic

Red Dead Redemption 2 is obviously a monumental production. In an interview with the Vulture website (in English)Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser said the game's main story, which would end in about 65 hours of play, was a 2,000-page script. Which clarified that adding the dialogues and missions annexes, all would form "a pile that would be almost 2.5 m high".

To put this content into images, the studio called on 1,200 different actors, 700 of whom took part in recording the 500,000 lines of dialogue written by the writers. In order to record 300,000 game animations, the equivalent of 2,200 days of motion capture (a technique of recording movements using sensors placed on the body) were also necessary.

And to further push the boundaries of what had been produced before, 200 different animal species have been modeled in 3D. Excuse the little.

Because the first reviews are rave

Unlike most studios that feed journalists with copies of their video games in preview for the tests to be released the day of the release, Rockstar Games has the luxury of restricting the list of media having been able to play in advance Red Dead Redemption 2, reports Numerama.

The few media that had access to the game before Friday have in any case missed words to salute the performance of the American studio. The GameInformer site evokes the "the most animated open world ever", GamesVideo.com qualifies the game as"epic, born from the greatest cinematographic masterpieces of its kind", while The Verge believes that the game represents "the culmination of ambitions long sought by the developer".

The Metacritic platform, which aggregates the ratings of various media, gives the Xbox One version of the game the score of 98 out of 100. What propel it in second place tied top rated games on the platform, behind The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, released in 1998 on Nintendo 64.

Because the working conditions of the designers of the game have caused scandal

The only false note in this praise concert came from the co-founder of Rockstar Games himself. In the Vulture interview cited above, Dan Houser indicated with some pride that the game's development teams had to "100-hour workweek" in the last line of production.

This little sentence provoked an uproar over working conditions in the video game world, where many employees complain about the existence of a culture of "crunch", a term used to designate the final sprint of the design, which sometimes has a tendency to drag on and in which teams are forced to greatly exceed the legally regulated working hours.

Former and current employees of Rockstar Games have since testified in the press. On the Kotaku specialist website (in English), a former member of the studio's crew tells the reporter Jason Schreier as well as "a lot of fear at Rockstar: fear of being fired, fear of underperforming, fear of being bawled, fear of a bad game. Fear can be a motivation for some, for others it incites rebellion ".

An old tester from the studio interviewed by The World (article fee) indicated to have worked "from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, six days a week", for a whole year. And no way for him to complain.

We make you understand that you are lucky to be in the video game, mainly because there is an endless list of young naive graduates ready to take your place.A former Rockstar Games testerin the world"

Faced with the scandal, Dan Houser reacted in a statement sent on October 16 to Kotaku. He badures that the anecdote about the 100-hour work weeks only concerned him and his immediate circle, voluntary coscenarists, while swearing "do not require anyone to work in this way". Explanations that did not convince journalist Jason Schreier, who specified on Twitter than "Rockstar is not the only studio where the culture of 'crunch' is present, but is known in the industry to be one of the most severe" in the matter.