Redesigning Red Dead Redemption II's Menu
/A while back, I posted talking about the UI/UX in Red Dead Redemption II - specifically, I came to the conclusion that, it wasn’t really worth trying to fix or analyse. The decision to eschew UX design in favour of being “realistic” and “cinematic” is one that Rockstar made consciously, and short of redesigning the entire game, there’s not a whole lot that can be done to save it. They made the game they wanted to make, and that meant making a game that actively discourages the player from looking at or interacting with UI, even when that would have made the game easier to understand and interact with.
However as I talked to friends and colleagues and thought about it myself some more, I came to realize that there was one part of the game that I could maybe work with, and that is specifically the game’s Pause Menu. This is a very simple, small part of the game, sequestered away from everything else. A place with similarly atrocious UI/UX design, where we could look at making some improvements without having to worry about how those changes would ripple out and impact all the parts of the game Rockstar actually cared about. It feels like Rockstar doesn’t even want you to actually look at this menu, but all the same I thought I would try my hand at giving it a full makeover, and so that’s what I did.
This project started out as a simple wireframe that I was going to put together in Unity, but it quickly became a full-on prototype, because “it would work so much better if I spent 10 minutes putting some code here”.
You can play the prototype yourself by clicking this handy button! - It works with both keyboard and controller, and is designed to run at 1920x1080.
Additionally, I’ve uploaded a full walkthrough of the very same prototype, giving a quick commentary as to my thoughts on each part of it, and explaining my goals for each part, and why I made the design decisions that I did.
Finally, if you just want to spend 2 minutes giving it a look over without my boring voice, I made a 3 minute version without commentary, just for you!
Video without commentary can be found here
My main goal with this prototype were essentially:
Improve the menu flow: RDR2 has way too many superfluous submenus and convoluted navigation that makes it confusing and tiresome to find the information you’re actually looking for.
Improve communication: RDR2 has a lot of mechanics, and the menus have a lot of noise. The goal was to emphasize the important things better, and group relevant information in a more readable and relevant way.
Create screens that are suited to task: RDR2 has a ton of different screens, but only uses a couple different screen templates and menu flow patterns. While it’s nice to keep things consistent, I wanted to try and make screens that are actually doing their job well, rather than just reusing an existing template just because it exists.
Make it more visually appealing: RDR2’s menu is primarily composed of lists of text with a smattering of thumbnails. I’m no artist, and I didn’t want to mess with the game’s aesthetic too much, but I did want to try and make it a bit more interesting to look at.