Red Dead Online has been a bit of a non-entity this year, contrary to our hopes anyway. The MMO-ish version of Red Dead Redemption 2 has sagged in beta with minimal hype compared to its money-making cousin GTAO. But it sounds as if Rockstar has a big shift in the works.
“Later this summer, the world will evolve again with the introduction of specialist roles – unique paths of progression, each providing their own experience with tailored gameplay elements and benefits that will allow players to become even more deeply connected to their character and the choices they make as they inhabit the world of Red Dead Online,” the company says. “This fundamental change points to the long term future of Red Dead Online – a world where players coexist in an uneasy peace, choosing to band together or striking out alone, fighting to survive in a world full of threats and opportunities as they build a life for themselves on the frontier.”
Three of those roles are previewed in a new dev blog: the bounty hunter, trader, and collector. The studio’s also promising “substantial, across the board changes” for “combat and movement to allow for a more responsive control system that still feels natural, plus more damage reduction for defensive players (that’s the PvP/PvE playstyle).
Rockstar made headlines for other reasons this week too: A report from a UK-based tax watchdog group, TaxWatch, accused the company of paying nothing in taxes while pulling in an estimated $5B in operating profit (hauled back to execs in the US, of course) and then having the stones to claim $42M in tax credits. MOP apparently paid more taxes than Rockstar did last year. Welcome to the worst timeline.
