Developers Foresight / Red Dead Redemption

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Red Dead Redemption

• You can jump off from a second-story balcony or window onto your horse and ride it out of town.
• There is an achievement for dropping a hog-tied woman in the way of a train.
• John (and subsequently Jack) has multiple unique battle taunts for each of the twenty (and completely optional) bounty targets. Jack also has a full set of dialog recorded for each Stranger mission if you wait until the endgame to complete them. The one exception to this is I Know You. If you somehow manage to not do this mission before John dies, it won't count against getting a 100% Completion achievement/trophy.
• All three games use an anachronistic Molotov Cocktail as a weapon, thanks to Rule of Cool. However, since the 1930s incidents that gave them their names haven't happened yet, they're simply "Fire Bottles".
• Non Player Characters react differently depending on where they are shot. Headshots (obviously) and shots in the back usually kill instantly. Shooting arms often results in the victim dropping their gun. Shooting them in the leg causes them to fall over and they gain a limp, and shooting the other leg cripples them entirely. Shoot them in the waist, and they'll slowly bleed out as they try to crawl away after you severed their spine.
• The shopkeepers of each region pay extra for loot not native to that region; for example, bear parts are much more valuable in Nuevo Paradiso, while Bobcats are best sold in New Austin. In addition, while you can just sell everything to a general store, Medical shops pay extra for flowers and Tailors pay extra for animal pelts.
• Tamed horses who don't know you (when they appear in pens and corrals) will quite rightly shy away from you when you approach.

Red Dead Redemption 2

• Sprinting into a saloon will cause Arthur to loudly slam the doors open. What makes it a Foresight moment isn't this, but the fact that doing so will startle everyone in the saloon and cause them to stop what they're doing and stare at you in surprise before they go back to what they were doing.
• Hip-firing animations will change depending on the proximity of the target to you. If they're within arms reach, the player may just pistol-whip the target rather than wasting ammunition.
• Single-action guns need to be either reloaded or the hammer has to be pulled back between shots, which is done by pressing the shoot button between shots. Revolvers allow fanning the hammer, allowing several shots in quick succession. Guns also deteriorate over time, either from soot from firing or via being submerged in water, snow, or mud for extended periods. You have to either purchase gun oil or have a gunsmith clean them to revert their stats to max if this happens. According to Rockstar, some gun-related realism had to be dialed back to keep the game fun; said "gun-related realism" is likely due to the extensive dismantling and reassembly process needed to properly clean them.
• You cannot ride the horses of other gang members. Dutch’s horse will actually kick you if you get too close to it.
  • Despite this, he has Dummied Out lines that imply he would have been able to do this.
• Your horse will occasionally take a crap, they will react to hidden snakes, and their testicles react to the temperature. Also, if you spook a horse by walking beside or behind it, or walk up to a horse that doesn't know you, it can kick you.
  • Arthur’s comments while grooming or soothing his horse change depending on the sex of the horse.
• Animals you've killed will start to rot, with the weapon you use to kill them and the shot location affecting the pelt's value. Dead animals you carry bleed on Arthur, altering NPC reactions to Arthur. The rate at which animal carcasses begin to rot is affected by the temperature: slower in cold/snowy areas, faster in hot areas.
• The environment actively affects Arthur's appearance. Water, mud, snow, and blood can accumulate on his hair and clothes, eventually drying and fading away. Arthur's skin bruises from being punched, bullet holes and cut/slash marks appear on his character model, and he gets sweaty from exertion.
• Arthur also needs to eat and sleep or he'll eventually become fatigued, which affects the regeneration of both health and stamina, and causes him to become dizzy. His posture will also change.
• Your clothing also affects Arthur's health depending on the region, as wearing heavy clothes in the desert or light clothes in the snow and cold actually affect gameplay.
• NPCs having a discussion may mention Arthur in their discussion if he comes close. The interaction system takes the previous lines into account, so you can first greet, then antagonize, and finally apologize to someone in the same conversation. Following an NPC long enough will eventually cause them to get freaked out about you stalking them and run for it.
• As mentioned above, Arthur's appearance affects how NPCs react to him. If he looks like a hobo covered in blood, some people may refuse interacting with him; if he carries someone's charred corpse around, people will be audibly appalled. If he is dressed like a gentleman, people are more likely to be nicer to him.
  • Towards the end of Chapter 5, if Arthur gets near the place where Sadie is while other NPCs are around (sometimes sitting on the ground), a cutscene will trigger into "A Fork in the Road" when he starts having an uncontrollable coughing fit; while that's happening, NPCs will freak out and/or get up from their sitting spots and run for their lives. It's as if they knew that his tuberculosis has progressed into active state and didn't want themselves to get infected while they are near him.
  • Gang members will also react to Arthur's appearance or actions in camp at times. If the player constantly antagonizes everyone, certain members may knock Arthur out and throw him out of camp for a bit. He also may illicit negative reactions if he brings dead animals into the camp, with the most notable example being a skunk.
• Killing someone may cause their loved ones to come after you later, and committing a crime in a city causes its inhabitants to not trust you for a few weeks, even if you leave and come back. If alerted, the law won't instantly try to kill Arthur for small crimes, instead giving him a stern warning and, if the crime is severe enough, ordering him to leave the town for a while.
• You can encounter opossums in-game. Yes, they can play dead. The real foresight is that if you approach an opossum that's doing so, you will be given the prompt to pick it up/skin it, just like you would with a real dead animal. Of course, attempting to do either does nothing. Hell, Rockstar even made the 9th Master Hunter Challenge this to show it off.
• Occasionally, at camp, Arthur can sing along to the music. He can continue to sing while walking around – even if he doesn’t know all the words.
• Whistling for your horse too much in a short amount of time will actually cause you to run out of breath. Additionally, Arthur will sometimes curse in frustration if his horse is out of whistling range.
  Arthur: Not again!
• Arthur and later John has unique lines if he tries to fire a gun that has no ammo left, even though that's highly unlikely to happen in game.^note These lines will only play if a weapon is completely out of ammo, both loaded and reserve. The player will automatically reload weapons when the magazine is empty, and between how much ammo the player can carry and how easily it can be restocked, the player will very rarely, if ever, run out of reserve ammo. And that's not even taking alternate ammo types into account.
  Arthur: Shit, I'm out!/Damn, I'm out of bullets!/Out of damn bullets!
  John: That ain't good!/There goes the ammunition!/Out of bullets again!
• The grapple move differs depending on the context; there are separate animations depending on if you're in front or behind the target, when running it turns into a tackle, and if the tackle is performed on shallow enough water, instead of the normal grab Arthur instead pushes the victim's head underwater and starts drowning them.
• The last mission from Henri Lemieux gives you the option to either spare or kill Jean Marc Mercier. If you kill him, you'll have to dump his corpse off into the nearby swamp. Come back a day or two later at that same spot and fish there and there's a chance you'll snag up a severed arm, which Arthur remarks is Jean Marc's.
• If you return a bounty target alive, you'll usually have a chance to watch the target be hanged the next day. You can then try to rescue the target by shooting the rope and the surrounding lawmen. If you're quick enough, you can actually save them, and can sometimes get unique dialogue from the targets in return.
• There are two variants of each non-story related journal entry depending on which part of the game they are found. Namely, John has his own should you miss any before entering the epilogue chapters. And going with John's self-description as "semi-literate", his descriptions are much simpler than Arthur's and his drawings are poorly made. Rockstar also went the extra step and made Arthur entries for the content you can only find in New Austin, a state Arthur never canonically enters in the game. (Though this may also be a case of What Could Have Been.)
  • Similarly, some stranger missions play different versions of their cutscenes depending on when they happen. Arthur has 2 variants, healthy and sick. John also has 2, one for completely new strangers and one where John tells them about Arthur's death for the situation where Arthur met the stranger first. That said, some stranger missions also don't acknowledge Arthur's illness or the change in protagonists, and like in I there are a few which be only played as either Arthur or John.
  • There's even one journal entry for a Stranger mission that takes into account starting it as Arthur and finishing it as John. Arthur gets the person's name wrong (it's a French name that Arthur doesn't know how to spell), and John leaves a note making fun of his misspelling.
• If you rob Algie Davison before Strauss sends you to collect his debt, then the house will be abandoned and you can take the debt money without any trouble. In fact, many missions can be slightly different if you've been to the area; raid a shack full of bandits in freeroam, and a few hours later you may go on a mission to raid the same shack with one of the gang. When they tell you where the place is, Arthur will say he's been there before.
• Seamus takes stolen wagons off your hands and pays you for them. However, if you steal a train and drop it off near his barn at Emerald Ranch, he will have unique dialogue. Unlike most dialogue, it’s given as a direction.
  Seamus: That’s of no value to me! Bring me something I can actually sell.
• An early Strauss mission takes Arthur to a man named Wróbel, whose possessions include an unique, antique pocket watch. If the clock is grabbed during the mission, it's put into the donation box alongside other items once you return the debt. If you don't even find it, it despawns after the mission. However, if you open the desk the clock is stored in but don't take it and collect the debt with other means, once you've returned the debt you can come back and grab the clock. This is entirely intentional, as the clock has its own description in the satchel and can even be equipped as your main clock.
• If you decide to kill all the army men instead of surrendering and jumping off the bridge in in "Favored Sons", a sniper far away from Dutch and Arthur's location will shoot you, failing the mission. It is impossible to kill this sniper, no matter how fast your deadeye is, or how many bullets you put into him.
• Towards the end of "American Venom", during the standoff where Micah has Sadie as his hostage, killing either Dutch or Micah will result in the other immediately killing John. However, if John has invincibility though a cheat code, killing Dutch will result in Micah tossing Sadie to the ground and killing her execution-style; killing Micah will result in Dutch expressing disappointment, with Sadie succumbing to her wounds after Micah's death (both scenes will result in mission failure).
• If Arthur takes too long to get the oil wagon from Cornwall Kerosene & Tar for the Lemoyne Train robbery, John will end up getting it himself and comment on Arthur not doing so.
• Attempting to ride your horse when it has low health and stamina will cause the horse to be visibly shaky-legged and weak from the effort.
• If you use a high-calibre rifle on small game then the corpse will be near-worthless to a butcher or trapper because frankly, the shot obliterated the body.
• Injuries are realistically depicted: if a wolf mauls him then his forearms will be covered in gashes and bit marks, and if he is shot then bloody bullet holes will appear on his clothes. Arthur can gain or lose weight according to how much he eats, with corresponding effects on performance (for example if he is overweight then he will gain stamina more slowly but gain a little more resistance to gunshot wounds). Finally, his stamina changes depending on what he is wearing and the weather; wearing a heavy sheepskin jacket in the hot, swampy Louisiana-esque Lemoyne territory or only light clothing on a cold mountaintop will adversely affect stamina gain.
• NPCs will also react differently if the player tries to have a conversation with them with a gun drawn.
• If you give your horse an ill-fitting name (i.e: naming a male horse a feminine name or vice-versa), the stable owner will make a unique comment on this.
• Lawmen will not try to kill the player for petty crimes, in some cases merely giving him a stern telling off and an order to leave town for a while.
• Lawmen will wait for a fistfight to get over before asking you to move along.
• If Arthur manages to glitch into New Austin and wanders into Tumbleweed, the law enforcement there will immediately attack him, due to recognizing him as one of the Van der Linde gang members who participated in the Blackwater Massacre.
  • Somewhat related, each town sheriff has probably Dummied Out lines specifically calling out Arthur by name. The foresight is that this includes Oswald Dunbar and Sam Freeman - the sheriffs of Blackwater and Tumbleweed respectively, both towns that Arthur never visits during the story's events.
• If you get drunk after the events of A Quiet Time, Arthur may start shouting for Lenny again, with a dose of Oh, No... Not Again!. If you decide to do this after Lenny has been killed in Saint Denis, Arthur will stop himself midway through and sigh in sadness instead.
• Kill cams are impacted by your honor. If you play honorably, the camera on a kill replay will focus on Arthur. If you’re dishonorable, it’ll focus on the kill, and represent it in a gorier way. The less honor you have, the less visible Arthur will be in the background of the camera view.
• Several missions have dialogue change according to your honor rank, or things you have done. As an example, in a mission from the epilogue Sadie will describe several things about New Austin, and your character's response to each will differ depending on whether you've already visited the places or people she mentions. She'll even be impressed if you've seen all of them. Other missions will have characters have special reactions to things you wouldn't expect, such as in one (pretty hectic and fast paced) mission where Charles will remark "Thanks, you saved me the trouble" if you happen to kill the one guy he's scripted to kill before he gets the chance to - you need to be pretty fast to do so, and he likely won't be the one you're targeting.
• If you remain away from camp for long periods of time, Dutch will send a member of the gang to look for you and ensure that you haven't died. Similarly, Dutch himself will antagonize Arthur if he decides to hang around camp and not do anything.
• While helping Penelope Braithwaite escape from her family, she'll have some unique dialogue if you take her by the outhouse Gertrude Braithwaite is locked in. Penelope will mention that Gertrude is mentally ill, and that the family thought keeping her on the property would be better than sending her to a sanitarium. Penelope says she'll do what she can from Boston to help Gertrude, which Arthur finds unlikely. Gertrude, for her part, will simply call Penelope a "bitch."
• If Arthur doesn't intervene to save Charles Châtenay from the aggressive husband during their second meeting, a unique cutscene will play that has the latter give up on trying to get revenge on the former, and leave the scene angrily. Arthur and Charles will then have a different conversation in regards to Arthur not helping and Charles' knack for getting into trouble.
• When starting the Riverboat mission, Trelawny will disapprove of your choice of outfit before taking you to get a new suit. If Arthur is already relatively well dressed, his reaction is more incredulous as he asks why, prompting Trelawny to state that his suit "is not fit for the purpose at hand".
• During the gang's first foray into Valentine early in the game, Arthur has to rescue Karen from an eager man attempting to rape her. When the whole group reunites shortly afterward, Karen's comments about the situation will vary depending on if Arthur killed the man or merely knocked him out.
  • Lilly Millet will have a similar reaction depending on whether Arthur chooses to knock out or murder her boyfriend Cooper.
• When reading the catalogue at a gunsmith, you have the option to "view" guns that you haven't purchased yet. This will make the shop owner in question place the weapon on the table, after which they will discuss what they think of the weapon in question. The foresight comes in when each gunsmith has lines discussing the Semi-Automatic and Mauser Pistols, even though only two of the game's five gunsmiths sell them in singleplayer^note the ones in Valentine and Saint Denis, if you're wondering - in Online, these two guns can be purchased from every gunsmith. But what is definitely a shining example of Developer's Foresight is that each gunsmith has lines discussing the Cattleman Revolver and the Carbine Repeater - even though it's impossible to view these two weapons, as they are given to the player from the very beginning of the game in both singleplayer and Online, and the player is unable to view guns they already own^note In singleplayer, the Sawed-off Shotgun is also given to the player very early on, but the player has to buy it in Online. PC players only found this out via looking through the game's files.
• While all shopkeeps respawn after being killed, Herbert Moon is the only one who acknowledges his own death, with his head wrapped in bandages if you blew it off, and the specific line "as long as [my] America lives, I live!", as if he resurrected himself with the sheer power of racism. This is partially justified by his mysterious deal with the Strange Man, but it's mostly a teasing way for Rockstar to acknowledge that, yes, they knew you couldn't resist killing the old bastard the instant you saw him again.
• If one pauses the game and enters camera mode during Arthur's battle with Micah in the "Go with John" ending, you can actually see Dutch watching the two of them from the top of the mountain. His horse can also be seen in the wooded background if you look close enough.
• Capturing the Saint Denis vampire alive and taking him inside the miniature church in Lakay (the only church in the game with an interior) will cause him to die instantly upon being placed on the ground. Apparently he's a real enough vampire that hallowed ground will cause him to die!
• Arthur can normally only carry animal carcasses that are below a certain size (if they're any larger, you'll need to skin them in the wilderness and carry off their meat and pelts), but there are game mods that can allow the player to carry larger animals, like bears and alligators. Rockstar apparently anticipated this: if you carry a large animal into camp, the members of the gang have unique dialogue acknowledging it.
• When you go to contribute money to the gang's till, there's no required minimum donation—so there's nothing preventing you from donating just one cent. If you do, Dutch will chide Arthur for being stingy.
• If you kill too many civilians while in free roam, word of your deeds will eventually reach the rest of the gang, and Susan will give Arthur a stern lecture (while Dutch may chastise him for risking unwanted attention from the authorities). Conversely: if you go out of your way to help enough strangers, Micah and/or Bill will eventually mock Arthur for "going soft".
• If Arthur is drunk while escorting Mary away from her father, he'll act much more dismissively towards her, and flat-out admit that he's under the influence.
• During the Saint Denis chapter of the game, Arthur gets pickpocketed by a street urchin and has to chase him through the city. Though it's intentionally made very difficult, it is possible to catch the kid, with a unique cutscene playing of him being forced to give Arthur's belongings back.
• When Arthur is sent to collect Chick Matthews' debt, there will be some unique dialogue if Arthur immediately threatens him at gunpoint.
  Chick Matthews: I don't know anything about a debt!
  Arthur: I didn't mention the debt, Chick Matthews!

Red Dead Redemption Online

• During Red Ben Clempson's Legendary Bounty, if Red Ben is captured alive and taken to Yellow Bill, the one legged informant that gives you Ben's location at the beginning of the mission, there will be some unique dialogue where Ben calls him a traitor, and threatens to come back to take Bill's other leg.