Red Dead Online
Mission - Il Sovrano
Mission Summary: Retrieve a note indicating the wherabouts of a precious stone from afluent citizens staying in Rhodes
Details: The concept was to have a more open ended mission structure, allowing players to approach it in many ways whether it be guns blazing, creating a distraction, waiting for an oppurtune time, etc.
I created various events that the player could encounter such as one of the targets going to the outhouse for a stealth kill, creating a fire in the barn next door to distract the guards and other citizens, etc.
Once the note retrieved, the players would be tasked to retrieve the note from the Carriage that had various randomized spawn locations.
Legendary Bounty - Sergio Vincenzo
Mission Summary: Find and capture Vincenzo dead or alive. Vincenzo is an expert marksman that has holed himself up on a hill surrounded by his loyal companions that patrol the area.
Details: The goal of this mission was to create a literal uphill battle against a marksman with deadly accuracy. Surrounding the tower location, I placed multiple patrolling guards to cover the area. Any alerts would force the players into a run and gun scenario to reach Sergio Vincenza.
To get the feeling of a fight against an legendary sniper, I had to work with AI and VFX to create a more unique sniper experience than was present in game up till then including glints, increased accuracy, etc.
Throughout the space I had placed explosive assets and had to work with other departments to get the AI to focus on said explosives if the players were closeby.
Mission - Where there’s smoke there’s firewater
Mission Summary: Infiltrate a rival moonshine operation and detroy their operation
Details: This mission was to be in the dead of night and encourage stealth gameplay. Multiple approaches were designed, Stealth, infiltration or guns blazing.
The infiltration involved intercepting a delivery wagon and posing as them to gain entry into the moonshine operation before messing up their night. This in particular was difficult to achieve due to all the moving parts involved with making sure the enemies didn’t alert unexpectedly and that it all felt natural.
Stealth was a bit more straightforward, we placed a number of canoes along the swamp to enable players to come in from the water since the land entries were heavily guarded. and they would alert easily if trying to sneak by.
We also had to work with other asset teams to create destructible moonshine assets and create variations of dynamite that had to be hand placed on the stills
Mission - Where your morals lead you
Mission Summary: A band of killers is loose in Tall Trees. Follow your contact to their leader and take them out
Details: This Mission was both fun and challenging due to the nature of having a mission where you must follow a contact and remain in stealth as a group.
We created a number of small scenarios throughout the path to create interesting opportunities for stealth coop executions. alerting the enemies both spawned enemies nearby as reinforcements and spawned more enemies at the final camp location.
This required a lot of attention to make sure that no moment felt unfair and felt satisfying to execute coop stealth kills
Mission - More than one way to earn a buck
Mission Summary: Storm a Fort and destroy the ammunition
Details: This mission is all centralized in one location, a fort that you’re looking to breach. The key design philosophy was to ensure it felt like storming a fort. to achieve this I had a few key moments:
setting the dynamite on the door - created the moment of anticipation reinforced by the enemy callouts
the Machine Gun spray on breach - An enemy inside starts spraying towards the door to reinforce the “fire at will“ that the enemis would be doing.
Another important aspect is the fire effects when ddestroying the ammo caches. this helped to set the tone both in gameplay and in the final cutscene.
Mission - Banks don’t rob themselves
Mission Summary: Rob a Bank in saint denis and make your escape into the cemetery and get on the leaving train
Details: Bank jobs are fun! Getting this mission to its finished state was challenging due to many of the moving parts that were involved.
The bank teller - had to be scripted in such a way that there was branching behavior based on the player’s actions. In both cases he would need to open the vault but based on if the players were agressive or remained under cover, the AI would change from docile to afraid. this had to also account for changes midway through the interaction
The ambush - we wanted to transition from a carriage to on foot escape partway through the sequence. We set up a cutscene of an ambush that set up that change. The technical aspect of streaming in a sequence in a multiplayer context while being seemless from gameplay to cutscene and back was challenging
Samson’s reappearance - We wanted his reappearance to be cinematic which involved him bursting out of the cemetery door and killing two policemen. getting this in game sequence to look right and trigger correctly was a challenging exercise in timing.
the vault - the vault itself had to be adapted from single player to multiplayer which presented its own challenges.
Adversary Mode - Gun Rush
Mode Summary: Mini Battle royal with a smaller player count
Details: An adaptation of a battle royale mode that featured a smaller area to play in and smaller player count. The concept was to make a version with a smaller playtime while retaining what was interesting about the game type.