The development team conducted extensive research, including field trips to Washington, D.C. Rockstar improved its proprietary game engine to increase its technological capabilities. The game's development lasted over five years, and it became one of the most expensive video games ever made. An online multiplayer mode is included with the game, allowing up to 16 players to engage in both cooperative and competitive gameplay in a recreation of the single-player setting. The game makes use of a morality system, by which the player's actions in the game affect their character's levels of honor and fame and how other characters respond to the player. Gunfights emphasize a gunslinger gameplay mechanic called 'Dead Eye' that allows players to mark multiple shooting targets on enemies in slow motion.

The player may freely roam in its interactive open world, a fictionalized version of the Western United States and Northern Mexico, primarily by horseback and on foot. The game is played from a third-person perspective. Having no other choice, Marston sets out to bring three members of his former gang to justice. Red Dead Redemption is set during the decline of the American frontier in the year 1911 and follows John Marston, a former outlaw whose wife and son are taken hostage by the government in ransom for his services as a hired gun.

A successor to 2004's Red Dead Revolver, it is the second game in the Red Dead series. Red Dead Redemption is a 2010 action-adventure game developed by Rockstar San Diego and published by Rockstar Games.

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