Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Rob Wiethoff and Robert Duvall were offered the role of voicing John Marston; Wiethoff landed the part, while the others turned it down.
The Plainview oil region in the game is a nod to the character played by Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood (2007). In fact, the man sitting in front of an office in the region looks very similar to the character in the film.
John Marston swears the least of any other playable protagonist in Rockstar's recent mainstream games. He uses the 'F-bomb' only three times in the main story, and it rarely slips out outside the story either.
John Marston shares many similarities with Red Harlow, the protagonist of Red Dead Revolver (2004), such as the location of the scars on his face and the notch in his cowboy hat. The scar on both characters is also shared with the lead of the cult western The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976).
Red Dead Redemption is not considered a direct sequel to the popular arcade shooter Red Dead Revolver (2004), but rather a spiritual spin-off.
The game contains many references to Clint Eastwood's cowboy roles with Sergio Leone: a tombstone inscribed 'The Man with No Name', the achievement 'More than a Fistful' awarded to players who earn more than $10,000 in the game, and the double-crossing scenario in the Nuevo Paraiso missions are among them.
Until Grand Theft Auto V (2013) was released, John Marston, at 38, was the oldest playable protagonist in any Rockstar game.
THE WILHELM SCREAM: It is heard when some enemies die.
John Marston says to Bonnie in the story: 'I had a daughter, but she died.'
Bill Paxton was offered the role of John Marston, but could not accept it due to his contract with the HBO series Big Love (2006). Rob Wiethoff has stated that he was hired because his voice sounded like Paxton's.
Red Dead Redemption is not Rockstar Games' first sandbox game to span two states; however, it is the first game to span two states while also extending into a separate country.
Uncle dies twice, counting the Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare (2010) DLC.
John Marston addresses Bonnie MacFarlane by name only twice throughout the game.
Much of the story is built around John Marston finding three men from his old gang; however, it is possible to complete the story without directly killing any of them.
When Dutch van der Linde says 'We must stop meeting like this' in the final mission, it refers to the final mission of the prequel chapter of Red Dead Redemption II (2018), which also takes place on a mountaintop and in which John Marston takes revenge on Micah Bell.
On October 16, 2016, Rockstar Games strongly hinted on Twitter that a new Red Dead project was on the way, and on October 18, 2016, it officially announced Red Dead Redemption II (2018). The sequel was initially set to release in fall 2017, but on May 22, 2017, Rockstar announced that the game had been delayed to spring 2018, and then to October 26, 2018 (its final release date).
On July 8, 2016, Red Dead Redemption was officially made backward compatible on Xbox One. Although this only meant the Xbox 360 version running on Xbox One, the game showed a performance boost on the new platform, especially in cutscenes, which could sometimes lock at 20 FPS on the original hardware.
Anson Mount, who played Cullen Bohannon in AMC's western series Hell on Wheels (2011), played Red Dead Redemption before filming began to feel what America was like during the settlement period of the West. His character bears a strong resemblance to John Marston. (Cowboys & Indians Magazine, August 2014)
Despite high demand and great commercial success, Red Dead Redemption interestingly never came out on PC. Nearly all other Rockstar games from the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 era, such as Grand Theft Auto IV (2008), Grand Theft Auto V (2013), L.A. Noire (2011) and Max Payne 3 (2012), had PC versions. The PC version was finally released in November 2024, fourteen years after its original release, with PC-specific features such as upgraded graphics, higher resolutions, improved frame rates and DLSS and widescreen support.
The game's music was inspired by the works of Ennio Morricone.
Across Red Dead Redemption I and II, we see Jack Marston (the son of John and Abigail) at four different ages: 4, 12, 16 and 19.
Red Dead Redemption II (2018) takes place 12 years before Red Dead Redemption. In the second game we control a new character, Arthur Morgan, while John Marston and his family become secondary characters.
Bruce MacVittie and Bert Pence were also in the first game.
According to voice actor Steve J. Palmer (before Red Dead Redemption II 2018 was released), the origin of Bill Williamson's behavior in 1911 is rooted in John Marston; he is jealous of John for winning Abigail Roberts' love, but once John leaves, there is no one to rein him in and Bill eventually loses his mind. The second game ignores this and presents Bill as an ambiguously gay (or bisexual) war veteran whose father has dementia, implying that his dislike of Marston and his axe-murderer tendencies may stem from a mix of PTSD, self-hatred and cognitive decline.
Rockstar was expected to make a clear loss on the game, and rumors said it was being made at the last stage only so that Rockstar San Diego could prove it was capable of putting out a good game. Of course, the game made a very healthy profit and even earned a prequel with Red Dead Redemption II (2018).
Jack Marston, at 19, is one of the youngest playable characters in a Rockstar game.
The game's voice cast includes notable entertainment figures such as comedian and Portlandia (2011) co-creator Fred Armisen (the pharmacist), original Black Power Ranger Walter Jones (a local), radio personality Anthony Cumia (Jeb Murphy), and Charlotte Rae (a local), who played Mrs. Garrett on Diff'rent Strokes (1978) and The Facts of Life (1979).
According to Rob Wiethoff (John Marston), when Jack's actor was unavailable, Wiethoff provided motion-capture performance for Jack Marston in the epilogue, particularly in the "Remember My Family" scene.
In much of the pre-release footage, John Marston looked noticeably younger, but the character was aged up in the final game.
The game is considered a spin-off rather than a sequel, as it has no connection to the story or characters of the original Red Dead Revolver (2004).
According to Benjamin Byron Davis (Dutch van der Linde) in interviews after the release of Red Dead Redemption II (2018), every cutscene in the first Red Dead Redemption had to be re-recorded from scratch whenever a new take was needed, because the technology at the time did not allow different takes to be combined. So although the cutscenes use different camera angles as needed, the voice and motion capture always consisted of a single take.
The game files contain voice work for two stranger missions that did not make it into the final game. One appears to be a simple fetch quest in which John Marston must find four lost relics for a Mother Superior. The other was built around John meeting a lonely, grumpy man with dwarfism who asks him to find a friend; John is to find a "giant" to accompany him, but the "giant" ends up killing someone (accidentally or not), and the quest giver asks John to kill his new friend — the player's choice would determine whether John did so.
This was the final acting credit of veteran actor Ross Hagen, who died less than a year before the game's release, in the role of the aging gunslinger Landon Ricketts.
Although the game takes place after Red Dead Redemption II (2018), none of the former gang members mention Dutch van der Linde's right-hand man and that game's protagonist, Arthur Morgan; it is even implied that John Marston was the gang's second-in-command at the time. Yet in Red Dead Redemption II, which is set 12 years earlier in 1899, John is a junior member of the gang and holds no position in its leadership. After Arthur's death, John leaves the gang and builds a new life with his family, but later returns to take revenge on Arthur's killer, Micah.
Only months before release, the game was in such a rough and unplayable state that Rockstar president Sam Houser desperately emailed producer Leslie Benzies to get it working. According to a lawsuit and the emails between them, Sam and Dan Houser were the "ideas men" handling creative direction, while Benzies oversaw programming and development management, and things turned ugly when the Housers tried to continue without Benzies on Red Dead Redemption. Although Benzies saved the day, the frantic development crisis and the resulting tangled pile of code guaranteed that an updated version of the game for PC or eighth-generation consoles would probably never come, because Rockstar did not want to risk a porting disaster like the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV (2008) (the game did, however, receive a polished port for Xbox One, particularly Xbox One Series S/X). Worse still, the crunch demanded of staff to finish the game was so severe that several anonymous spouses of Rockstar San Diego employees wrote a harsh letter accusing Rockstar management of ruining their employees' lives with stress. Although Red Dead Redemption was widely acclaimed and became Rockstar's biggest success outside the Grand Theft Auto series, the experience damaged the working relationship between Benzies and the Housers.
If the player dodges Dutch van der Linde's Maxim machine gun using an invincibility cheat, they can reach him and lasso him. When lassoed, he begins clutching his left side, and if John aims a gun at him, there is a chance Dutch will plead, "Don't do it John." Combined with the wound that suddenly appears in the final cutscene, this implies that the fight and Dutch's fate were different in earlier versions.
According to former Rockstar San Diego designer Dominic Craig, Red Dead Redemption was initially going to be a direct sequel to Red Dead Revolver (2004); Red Harlow was a fugitive after killing Governor Griffin, and the player would control Red's son, who goes looking for his father after being wronged by outlaws. The tone and atmosphere were to be closer to Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), but upper management encouraged the team to make it more like The Wild Bunch (1969) in both plot and atmosphere.
All firearms in the game are based on real Old West and early 20th-century weapons (mostly from the same period): the 'High Power Pistol' is based on the FN Model 1903, which fired the 9x20mm SR Browning cartridge. The 'Cattleman Revolver' is based on the Colt Model 1873 Single Action Army 'Peacemaker', made for the .45 Long Colt. The 'LeMat Revolver' is modeled on the real LeMat Revolver; the real version did not fire cartridges but was a muzzleloader that fired .42 caliber balls from its cylinder and 20-gauge shot from a lower barrel. The 'Semi-Automatic Pistol' is based on the Borchardt C-93, introduced in 1895 and one of the first semi-automatic pistols, which fired the bottlenecked 7.65×25mm Borchardt cartridge. The 'Volcanic Pistol' is based on the Volcanic Repeating Pistol (1855), which fired .31 or .41 caliber bullets and was one of the first weapons to use metallic cartridges - this was twenty years before metallic cartridges became widespread. The 'Double Action Revolver' is based on the Colt New Service (1898-1941), made for various cartridges such as .45 Colt, .45 ACP, .44-40 WCF, .32 ACP, .38 Special, .357 Magnum and .44 Special. The 'Mauser Pistol' is based on the Mauser C96, introduced in 1895 and firing the 7.63×25mm Mauser cartridge. The fully automatic version in the game resembles the Mauser M1932 Schnellfeuer, a selective-fire variant produced in 1932 - since the game is set in 1911, this is an anachronism. The 'Repeating Carbine' is modeled on the Spencer Model 1860 Carbine, which fired the .56-56 Spencer cartridge and was the first metallic-cartridge repeating rifle accepted for military use. The 'Winchester Repeater' is based on the Winchester Model 1894, the first repeating rifle in America to use smokeless powder. It was later made for the .30 WCF (.30-30 Winchester), the world's most popular medium-bore hunting cartridge. The 'Springfield Rifle' is based on the single-shot 1873 Trapdoor Springfield Cavalry Carbine, which fired the .45-70 Government cartridge and was used by the US Army between 1873 and 1884. The 'Bolt Action Rifle' is of Norwegian design and is based on the Springfield Model 1892 Krag-Jørgensen, which was accepted by the US Army and fired the .30-40 Krag cartridge. The 'Henry Repeater' is modeled on the 1860 Henry Rifle, which fired the .44 Henry rimfire cartridge. Its 16-round magazine gave Union troops a major advantage during the Civil War and earned it the nickname 'the rifle you could load on Monday and fire until Sunday'. The 'Rolling Block Rifle' is based on the Remington Rolling Block Sporting Rifle fitted with a Malcolm scope. Released in 1874 and firing the .50-70 cartridge, this rifle was popular among big-game hunters and cavalry units during the Civil War. The 'Evans Repeater' is based on the Evans Repeating Rifle (1873), which fired the .44 Evans Short or Long cartridge. Although it could hold up to 34 rounds thanks to its rotary magazine housed in the stock, it was prone to feeding problems and jams. The 'Buffalo Rifle' is modeled on the single-shot falling-block Sharps Rifle, known for its long-range accuracy. Later models fired powerful cartridges such as the .50-70 and .45-70 Government. The 'Carcano Rifle' is based on the Italian bolt-action Carcano Model 91, which fired the 6.5×52mm Carcano cartridge and was used in both world wars from 1891 onward. The 'Explosive Rifle' is based on the Mauser Model 1918 Tankgewehr, designed at the end of World War I to counter tanks. It fired a powerful 13.2×92mm SR cartridge capable of piercing armor - since it was not developed before 1918, this too is an anachronism.
In the 'The Wronged Woman' stranger mission in Blackwater, a widow mentions that her late husband frequently went to a gambling boat. Although this line still makes sense in the final release due to Blackwater's (off-screen) port activity, pre-release footage reveals that there was at one point an accessible gambling boat during the game's development, and that it was cut before release.
In the online mode featuring characters from Red Dead Revolver (2004), most of the players from Red Dead Revolver reprise their roles; however, Shadow Wolf is voiced by Ryan Johnston rather than Chaske Spencer, and the character has been transformed from the Silent Type into one who mocks and belittles his enemies.
Reports that the game's source code was a mess explained Rockstar's ruling out a PC version; fortunately, this situation was broken with the prequel Red Dead Redemption II (2018).
The game and its Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare (2010) DLC were released for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 on August 17, 2023, more than thirteen years after their original release. This version was criticized for the lack of a Windows version, multiplayer mode and new content. A semi-remastered PC version, including all DLCs, 4K and ultrawide support, DLSS upscaling and performance up to 120 FPS, was later released on October 29, 2024.
The story was originally to be set in the 1870s, immediately after the American Civil War, with John as a Union Army veteran. However, plans were changed to avoid public backlash over the setting. Nevertheless, easter eggs dedicated to the Civil War remained across the map.
Anthony De Longis (Marshal Leigh Johnson) is a martial arts expert particularly skilled with the whip, and has worked as a stuntman and stunt coordinator for decades; he trained Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman for Batman Returns (1992) and Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). However, you would be wrong to think that a western would be the ideal place for De Longis to showcase his skills; Marshal Leigh Johnson never touches a whip.
The voice actor for the popular character Irish is not Irish(!)
Animal Collective recorded a track for the game, but it was not used.
Because Rockstar Games insists on being very secretive about its projects, the actors were not given the full script. They only received specific portions of the script when shooting the scene for the relevant mission.
This enhanced and re-released version of the original game includes the DLC spin-off Undead Nightmare and the contents of the game's Game of the Year Edition.