Like the grandfatherly capitalist John Hammond in Jurassic Park, Rockstar Games has a reputation for sparing no expense. The company waited a decade to follow up Grand Theft Auto 5 and took almost eight years to work up to Red Dead Redemption 2. The result is games that are often a cut above anything else produced at such a large scale.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is as detailed an open-world game as any studio has made, and most sandbox games released in 2023 would have a hard time competing with the sheer wealth of activities on offer in GTA 5. The studio has come under fire for crunch in the past and the argument its leadership has made is that when you make games this big and complex, you have to work harder and longer. The Rockstar name is synonymous with quality, after all.
Which is what makes the company’s approach to rereleasing its older games so puzzling. In 2021, Rockstar worked with Grove Street Games to develop Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition. It was anything but. The release, which remastered GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas for modern consoles, was an unmitigated disaster, rejected by critics and fans.
Though it added some useful features, like mid-mission checkpoints and improved combat, many of the attempted “improvements” made the collected games worse, with some bizarre character models, ruinously bad rain effects, rampant technical issues, missing songs on the iconic soundtracks, and extended draw distances — a quality-of-life "upgrade" that made the games feel smaller than they did as originally released. In modernizing the aesthetic, Rockstar and Grove Street removed the filters that gave the original games their iconic looks. Instead of looking like improved versions of older games, they looked like bottom-of-the-barrel modern games.
After that debacle, it’s strange how Rockstar is approaching Red Dead Redemption. Though it likely won’t be anywhere near as disastrous, Rockstar’s decision to just port the 13 year old game to PS4 and Switch (still not PC) for near full price ($49.99, the same price Assassin’s Creed Mirage is going for) with no improvements is bizarrely low effort. Red Dead Redemption is one of Rockstar’s crown jewels. The open-world western has frequently made best game of all time lists, and only makes those lists less often now because its sequel improved upon it significantly. The GTA trilogy is just as revered, and Grand Theft Auto 3 is one of the most foundational games of the century. Why isn’t Rockstar spending a little extra effort and money to communicate that message to a new generation of players?
There’s nothing wrong with Rockstar remastering the Grand Theft Auto trilogy or opting not to remaster Red Dead Redemption. In theory, having those games on modern consoles is enough. But, in practice, the company’s GTA remaster was inferior to the ports already available on modern consoles, and replaced those versions. After the backlash, Rockstar made the old versions available again, but it was a bizarre choice in the first place. And, when it makes the decision to sell an unchanged version of Red Dead Redemption for $50, it’s clear the company hasn’t learned its lesson.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was, by Rockstar's estimation, the largest launch for any entertainment product in history at the time of its release, and Grand Theft Auto 5 has been a money making machine for a decade. Rockstar has the money to do this right. But, for some reason, it just isn’t willing to put in the effort.