Video game development is a mysterious process that most players never get to witness. We experience the polished final product without seeing the countless iterations, experiments, and changes that happen behind closed doors. Case in point, Red Dead Redemption.
A former Rockstar Games developer has pulled back the curtain on the game’s creation. The screenshots reveal a significantly different look from the version that launched in 2010 and became one of the most beloved games of all time.
Jason Muck, who worked as an environment artist at Rockstar during the game’s production, published the images on his portfolio website ArtStation. From weapons and vehicles to environmental props, Muck contributed to building the world that kickstarted what eventually became one of the best-selling franchises on PlayStation.
According to his portfolio description, the artist helped bring to life the countless objects that populated the game world and made it feel authentic and lived-in, including a minimap that looked substantially different during development. Instead of the clean, streamlined design that made it into the final game, the early version featured a much thicker circular border with considerably more texture and visual depth. The development version used a particular style for markers and indicators that was later replaced with something more simplified and easier to read at a glance.
Also, in the early screenshots, structures in the background appear to lack textures entirely, showing up as basic geometric shapes. The differences become even more apparent in additional images that show various interface elements.
These might seem like minor adjustments, but they demonstrate the meticulous attention to detail that Rockstar puts into its titles. Knowing now that the team was willing to completely redesign even small interface elements shows the commitment to quality that defined the project, and eventually, the franchise.
Rockstar is notoriously secretive about its development processes, and glimpses behind the scenes are extremely uncommon. The company carefully controls what information reaches the public, typically sharing only official trailers, screenshots, and promotional materials that show games in their most polished state.
Developers who have worked on Rockstar projects generally don’t share their in-development work publicly. There have been a few exceptions over the years, but such instances remain unusual, and they don’t often stay online.
Surprisingly, these aren’t recent images. They were first uploaded two years ago. Very few people noticed or discussed them until recently, when a user named sebbellic01 brought them to attention on the GTA Forums.
With that said, this will be one of the few instances where we’ll hear something substantial about Red Dead Redemption until the foreseeable future. At the moment, Rockstar is hard at work on GTA 6. Although based on the recent rumors and reports, it’s also preparing to release Red Dead Redemption 2 on modern platforms, particularly the Nintendo Switch 2.
