Rob Wiethoff, the man who plays John Marston in Red Dead Redemption, is finally playing the game for the first time ever, live streaming the PC version of the RPG for our entertainment. As part of that, he has revealed why John seems to be shouting every time he's riding with someone on horseback, even if they're right next to him.
"We did performance capture for this game too, but during moments like this, when you're riding with someone, riding and talking, this was actually recorded in a sound booth," Wiethoff explains.
Now, I know Weithoff is the actor for John, but it's uncanny how much he just naturally sounds like him. I always assumed he was putting on a voice when he was actually working on John, but now I think that's just how he talks.
"What I have seen on here, which is so funny, is that John is screaming at people, for no reason sometimes [...] I remember them saying, 'You have to say your lines in a way that they would definitely be heard even if you are riding at a full gallop next to a freight train in a thunderstorm.' So just really scream them out loud because you definitely want the other person to hear you."
As an open world game with dynamic weather and day and night cycles, there really could be times when that exact scenario was happening, so John would need to be shouting to be heard. But it doesn't make much sense for him to be screaming when you're trotting next to someone on a nice sunny day.
"But that was before [Rockstar] had the technology they have now, where if you're within a certain distance, the game knows it somehow and it will use the quieter version," Wiethoff says. "So in the second game we recorded everything twice, in this game we just did it once.
John Marston John Marstoningfrom r/reddeadredemption
As well as regaling us with tales of how the game was made, it turns out Weitoff's a real-life cowboy, because he shoots a hat out of the air without dead eye in the tutorial level for the game's iconic mechanic.
"Come on, throw it!" he shouts just before a character tosses their hat in the air. Then, without using dead eye like he's supposed to, he simply aims up and shoots the thing. "Oh ho hooooo, I thought I missed it," he shouts excitedly. Maybe the loudness in the first game isn't actually due to technical reasons after all.
After that trip down memory lane, check out our list of the best retro games of all time.
