Hildegarde, 1 year ago

Calling it 8 years is disingenuous.

The phase of development that began after RDR1’s release would have been pre-production where a small group of senior staff lay the groundwork for the game.

The vast majority of rockstar’s staff were still working on GTAV until release. Most of the team didn’t start work on RDR2 until the release of GTAV.

It was 5 years between GTAV and their next game RDR2. 5 years of work by most of the staff. It is reasonable to call it 5 years.

Pre-production is done well in advance at studios like this. Most of those 3 years would likely have been waiting for the main team to finish the last game.