Never a development studio looking to take the easy path, Rockstar Games is roaming into the gameplay wilderness with its next big game, Red Dead Redemption. Their team at Rockstar San Diego is daring not just to make a Western, a genre which has had few, if any blockbuster games, but do so without ignoring the rhythms of life in the great outdoors. It's not the easiest way to situate a game, to keep it interesting and fun.

But, with luck, based on what representatives of the company recently showed Kotaku in New York, we'll have a good if harrowing time out there. Don't mind the quiet. It's not meant to last.

Rockstar wasn't allowing hands-on time with Red Dead Redemption yet, but their reps did play the game in front of me, showcasing how reformed outlaw protagonist John Marston can venture across the game's three expansive regions. His adventure is set circa 1910, when the Wild West was all but tamed and the government was encroaching on all sides. The places where Marston goes are the remains of the fringe: a Mexican area called Nuevo Parasio and the U.S.-set New Austin and West Elizabeth.

We mostly stayed away from storyline missions in this demo, braving the dynamic events that are built to keep life interesting off the critical path.

The Rockstar reps had Marston ride his horse, boasting of the attention to detail in its physique and gait (see today's first-in-a-series developer videos for more on that and other Redemption features). With his horse he could ride the plains and use maps to search for treasure. Those maps aren't very game-like. They illustrate landmarks you'll have to be sharp enough to spot for yourself in Marston's world. He could hunt animals and skin them for pelts that could be traded in at town. He could pick flowers, as I requested he do, to give to a doctor to make into medicine. None of this seemed like instant fun. All of it seemed like tonally proper role-play. Maybe this is what it was like out there, back then.

There's action in those hills. The animals exist in an ecosystem. Coyotes, unfriendly animals, walk up to Marston while he's resting near his pitched tent. Bears roam too, though we didn't spot one. Rockstar offered a list of animals that act within the game's ecology: bears, cougars, wolves, snakes, armadillos, rabbits. After the reps had Marston kill a man, vultures appeared overhead. Good for target practice.

There's crime in the virtual west. We found a man being held up by bandits. Marston killed them. He could be nice to the man who was robbed — or rob him himself. The choice affects Marston's honor ranking, which affects the flow of the game. So does a rise in Marston's fame stat, which only goes up and makes more missions available.

Sometimes criminals have run away. Marston lassoed one — an escaped convict — whom he found. He had a choice to tie the man up or kill him, bring him back dead or alive. We chose alive. Didn't matter. The lawman in pursuit shot our roped-up prize.

We looked at a town in the game, one that flowed with dynamic and uniquely rendered characters that Rockstar says move through their day naturally. That fishmonger working his area won't stand there at night. The ladies of the night might show up there instead.

Marston can cause problems in the city and get a wanted rating for his troubles. It shows up in the upper-right corner of the screen, not in GTA-style stars but as a big word "Wanted." It fills with red signifying that the surounding area is not safe for him to remain. The law attacked and Marston had to stand and fight. Or run. The red in the Wanted meter drains as he leaves the area, and does so more quickly if the player was smart enough to have Marston commit his crimes while wearing a bandana over his mouth — and then shed it later. Those techniques help Marston escape a proximity alert for his Wanted status, but a bounty on his head remains until he pays it offer or wins a pardon letter for good deeds and turns it in. Rockstar reps said bounty hunters would come after Marston if the bounty got too high.

The game auto-saves and has regenerative health. Both features are designed to allow a long venture into the wild to not be too punishing. Your horse can die, though. And new horses can be gained.

We ventured further into the wild and found a town under attack. The sheriff needed help. Men needed to be killed. Marston used his guns and the one returning element from Red Dead Revolver — to which this game has no narrative connection — "Dead Eye" slow-motion sharpshooting.

I didn't touch the game and I couldn't assess how far off Red Dead Redemption's path we really went. But where we went did look like the wild. Where we went looked like it flowed with the slower, less predictable pace of the beautiful but dangerous untamed west.

This game is vast, but in it, there are signs of many ways to have fun, to live and fight in the rhythm of a man on a vanishing frontier. That's a path Rockstar seems to be treading down with success so far. Sometimes it's quiet out there. But, no, it seems, not for long.

Red Dead Redemption is set for release on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in April 2010.

Not that the History Channel can't paint a picture of the Old West just as well with some grainy-voiced fellow walking you through the environment. I just feel the need to restrain myself and not yell stuff like "Yee-haw, woo doggie" because history deserves more respect than I learned from growing up in Texas.

Anyway, here's the trailer:

Trailer title: "Gameplay Series: The Introduction"

According to the Rockstar announcement, fans will vote for one of three sets of cowboy gear, with the winning set made available exclusively to GameStop preorder customers. Once the game is released, players will unlock the special outfit via a series of challenges, and once unlocked the clothing will uniquely affect how the citizens of the game world treat the hero, John Marston.

"We're privileged to have fans that are just as passionate about our games as we are," said Alex Moulle-Berteaux, head of marketing for Rockstar Games. "Having fans choose their own pre-order bonus is a unique way to let them be a part of Red Dead Redemption."

Generally an announcement of this sort would come complete with pictures of the various costumes you have to choose from, but Rockstar works in mysterious ways. They are not like us. Stay tuned for more on the clothing choices and their effects in January.

Here's the new trailer for Red Dead Redemption, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 western sequel, slated for April 2010.

A company rep confirmed that the action in this trailer, as is Rockstar Games tradition, is composed of in-game, in-engine graphics. Nothing pre-rendered.

As you can see above, Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption - sequel to Red Dead Revolver, one of the last generation's most under-appreciated games - will be out on April 27, 2010.

At present, it's due for 360 and PS3. PC owners could keep wishing, but after Rockstar's shoddy port of GTAIV, it may be better to just pick it up on console.

No idea when in April. If I'd known, I wouldn't have had to circle the entire month now, would I? Just that it's coming sometime between April 1 and April 30.

My Morricone soundtracks are stacked in a neat pile, ordered alphabetically, ready to go.

Taking place the entire month of November, Movember uses the moustache as a symbol to highlight important health issues affecting men, specifically prostate cancer. Think of it as our pink ribbon. Rockstar is a proud sponsor of Movember, and wants to give one lucky moustache growing man a chance to score an appearance in its Red Dead Revolver follow-up, Red Dead Redemption. All you have to do is grow a moustache during the month of Movember, starting from a clean shave, and submit your results to Rockstar in picture form. They'll choose the most impressive of the lot and render him as a character in Red Dead Redemption.

I suppose women probably shouldn't apply. I mean, some women certainly could, but I very much doubt they'd want to.

Visit the official Movember website for more information on how you can participate in helping raise awareness of men's health issues with your face, and head over to Rockstar's official contest page for official rules.

Just remember - your moustache will never be this epic, but it's the thought that counts.

Red Dead Redemption [Official Site via Dtoid]

Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick said during an earnings call today that Mafia II, Red Dead Redemption, BioShock 2 and Max Payne 3 would all be shipping sometime between February and June of 2010. That's a pretty packed schedule, but it's not like Take-Two has much choice.

Some of those games were pushed back from originally planned 2009 releases, joining the ever crowded Q1 and Q2 of next year. Take-Two gave a looser release window for some of those games back in July. At the time, Take-Two execs blamed a softer economy and development issues.

But Zelnick sounded confident that all four heavy hitters would ship in that five month window.

Rockstar Games, developer of two of the slipped titles that now have more firm sounding release plans, has had a little trouble making its dates this generation, with similar slips on Midnight Club Los Angeles and Grand Theft Auto IV.

Publisher Take Two announced its revised release slate during a call with investors on Monday afternoon, timed to elaborate on news of the BioShock 2 delay.

The company "currently plan[s] to release all four titles in the first half of calendar 2010," company CEO Ben Feder told investors. He included the caveat that the company always strives to find the "optimal" time to release their titles.

The publisher also has announced games for the second half of the year, though he declined to name what they will be. Speculation among investment analysts is that one of those late 2010 titles could be a new Grand Theft Auto, given the development patterns of franchise development studio Rockstar. When asked directly by analysits on the call if a new GTA was coming late in 2010, Feder and Take Two chairman Strauss Zelnick declined to confirm, deny or offer any specifics.

The plan to release four big sequels in the first half of 2010 is a byproduct of Take Two's expressed desire to maintain a standard of high quality for its games, a claim also used to justify GTA IV's push from its original fall 2007 release window to spring of 2008.

But Zelnick also said that the BioShock 2 push was also partially due to a softness at U.S. retail, where the company is seeing orders for new titles come in lower than expected and where, he said, the number of high-quality titles may crowd the marketplace. While that may be the case, early 2010 is beginning to look crowded as well with the Take Two foursome joining God of War III, Dante's Inferno, Mass Effect 2 and several other games slated for early next year.

One analyst asked if BioShock 2's delay could be blamed on the PS3 version of the game or on its series-first online components. "The pushback of BioShock 2 is related to development overall," Zelnick said. "I certainly wouldn't want to pinpoint it to any one platform or any one feature because that's not the case."

That four-year-old teaser for what is now called Red Dead Redemption is hardly indicative of what the final product plans to offer. It was meant more to "evoke a feeling" of what the sequel to Red Dead Revolver would be, to let fans of the original know that it was in the works in some capacity.

Sure, the teaser trailer highlighted what one would expect from a Western-themed shooter—vast expanses of land, cowboys and riflemen, dry, desolate towns—and those things appear to be present in Red Dead Redemption. But things have changed considerably since those initial concepts, making the second Red Dead game a different beast from the first.

The first, potentially most noticeable difference is the change in cast, which now features John Marston, a "partially" reformed outlaw, in the starring role. His wild west adventures take place about 50 years later than the events in Red Dead Revolver, set during the early, pre-industrialized 20th century.

Marston's motivation for his adventures in Red Dead Redemption comes courtesy of The Bureau, a pre-FBI institution that offers the former career criminal a "horrific ultimatum." Rockstar's keeping the details of the plot close to its chest at this point, but we're expecting the game's story to play a crucial part in Redemption, perhaps more so than any other Rockstar game.

Perhaps more radically different a change is the open-world nature of Red Dead Redemption. The game feels more inline with the rest of Rockstar Games' products, like Grand Theft Auto and Bully, letting Marston run wild across three massive territories: the Frontier, Mexico, and the North.

Expect in each of those locales to see pockets of civilization, from makeshift settlements to bustling towns with banks, pharmacists and local law enforcement.

Traveling between these towns and cities illustrates one of the most interesting aspects of Red Dead Redemption, its "dynamic event system." When Marston's traveling, whether on horseback or via stagecoach, he'll run into dynamically generated scenarios, including ambushes from thieves, police arrests, even attacks from mountain lions.

There's definitely some "wild" in Red Dead Redemption's wild west, as a working ecosystem that includes vultures, bears, cougars, wolves, snakes, armadillos, and rabbits will interact with itself—and with John. During our hands-off demo, Marston was riding through the brush when an unfortunate mountain lion attack occurred just off our protagonist's path. On the bright side, it didn't happen to Marston, but a non-player character traveling nearby.

Players will run into a mix of characters, some friendly, some foe, as they move through the game's vast open world. These unpaved paths between towns may have looked a little too heavily traveled during our eyes-on time, but the opportunities to stave off stagecoach robberies and intervene in arrests looked to add nice variety to the story driven missions.

The first mission we got to spectate was a simple rescue mission, a hostage exchange that went wrong. Not too surprised, as everyone involved in the hand-off showed up heavily armed; but as Marston and crew shot their way through a sea of kidnapping bandits, Redemption's gunplay shone. The slow motion "Dead Eye" system of lining up shots in "bullet time" is back and Rockstar reps made good use of the mechanic to fill enemies full of holes, rescuing the kidnapped Bonnie.

In two other story driven missions, Marston accompanied a shady Merchant in a stagecoach chase and helped escort a steam train from a group of marauders on horseback. Both showed off the intense action and "Dead Eye" laden gunplay—with Marston shooting bandits and sometimes their horses to stave off attacks—that should make for memorable chase sequences throughout the game.

Those chases were a solid showcase for the Euphoria powered physics engine. As enemies and their rides were taken down by gunfire, they're ragdoll bodies crumpled and tumbled dynamically, making the impact of killing oncoming bandits that much more realistic.

We also got a peek at some of Red Dead Redemption's money making opportunities, which include gambling, hunting down wildlife, and the game of knife skills, "Five Finger Fillet." That mini-game is probably familiar to anyone who has seen the movie Aliens, as players will need to rhythmically tap the controller to guide an onscreen knife between each finger splayed upon a wooden table. As the "Five Finger Fillet" wagers increase, so does the difficulty, making it trickier to stay on beat and keep Marston from slicing open a finger.

The open world Red Dead Redemption shares a lot with its more popular Rockstar sibling, Grand Theft Auto, including a familiar control scheme, map interface, as well as a changing weather system and 24-hour day/night cycles.

What it doesn't have is a health meter. Rockstar San Diego has adopted the wait and heal system, indicating when the player is about to die with a flush of red on screen. Your horse's vitality, however, is displayed on screen.

Based on what I saw, I'm excited to see how Red Dead Redemption turns out. I'm not normally a fan of dusty Westerns, but really like what Rockstar had to show in our brief eyes-on time with the game. I'm even more excited to see what becomes of the game's promised multiplayer mode and look forward to going hands on with the title.

Both titles were slated for a somewhat vague Fall release, but have been delayed today to, at the earliest, November 1, 2009. Take-Two has re-scheduled the pair of games for a release in the first half of its fiscal 2010, which runs from November 1 to April 30.

Yes, that means you might not see either of these titles until next calendar year. With the publisher's second half of 2009 getting a little bit more crowded, thanks to the confirmed arrivals of Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony, Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City and BioShock 2.

Take-Two's official reason for the bump was "to allow additional development time for the titles and to maximize their full potential in terms of the quality of the player experience and market performance." Say, that reminds me. We got a peek at Red Dead Redemption not too long ago and will be able to tell you more about the Western-themed adventure later this week.

Speaking with IGN, Rockstar's Dan Houser has revealed that, unlike the first game, this title will have a lot more in common with the Grand Theft Auto series, as it takes place in an open, sprawling world split across three territories: traditional Western turf, northern Mexico and then a "modern" town (the game being set at the turn of the 20th century).

Indeed, it seems the only thing carrying over from the original will (it's got no story links to the first game, and stars a new "hero") be its greatest gameplay asset, the "deadeye" quickdraw mechanic, though how this will be tweaked and/or modified for the sequel remains to be seen.

Houser reserves some of his most glowing praise for the scope of the game world, though. "The sense of scale, and the sense of riding across these big areas and exploring these weird corners of the map, that is part of the experience, just as much as having the shootouts and part of the story and adventure. The act of seeing these beautiful views and discovering them for yourself and feeling like it's enormous and I can go over there and see what's up that hill and see for miles in the distance, that is part of the beauty and fun of the game."

There's plenty more info on the game's inspiration, as well as its story, at the link below.

Red Dead Redemption: A Man and His Horse [IGN]

IGN was allowed to post the Red Dead Redemption trailer a few days early, which is a common sort of occurance but still makes Rockstar's releasing the trailer today a great deal less exciting. Once something hits the internet, it belongs to the internet. Still, early posting doesn't make the trailer any less impressive, especially considering it's composed entirely of actual gameplay footage, so we figured we post it for the five or six of you who didn't catch it via one of the many different places it has appeared between then and now.

No, I'm not accusing Rockstar San Diego of ripping off The Good, the Bad & the Ugly. But the style here does seem somewhat inspired by Clint Eastwood's freeze-frame pose at the end of the film. McWhertor's right, revelations like this are of interest to Red Dead Devotees, especially if it hints at a gritty, spaghetti-western tone many want to see in this game.

So revelations as simple as Red Dead Redemption's box art are going to be of interest to fans of the first. The box presentation is decidedly different from that of the first game, released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, but in-keeping with the style of some of Rockstars' other high-profile releases. It may not have been given the same marketing attention, but not every game is Grand Theft Auto IV.

I happen to like it quite a bit, even if the game is heavy on the attention-grabbing red, black, and white color scheme (which we recently learned has been possibly overused by the video game industry).

But Rockstar definitely does its Red Dead Redemption box art stylishly. And I'd probably pick it up off the shelf. You?