Key team members conducted field trips to Washington, D.C. to capture a multitude of photographs, and several classic Western films, television shows, and novels were analyzed for research.

Red Dead Redemption features an original score composed over fifteen months by Bill Elm and Woody Jackson, who engaged several other musicians to create approximately 200 tracks.

[4] The studio's work on Revolver and Bully (2006) helped the development team understand the important elements of open world games and blending different genres with the core gameplay of its flagship series Grand Theft Auto.

Full development commenced in 2006, following the formation of a core development team led by lead designer and co-writer Christian Cantamessa, technical director Ted Carson, and art directors Josh Bass and Daren Bader; Cantamessa had worked with Rockstar on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004), while Carson, Bass, and Bader had worked on Revolver.

[4] Some staffers from Rockstar Leeds, including studio head Gordon Hall, spent one year in the United States to work on the game on-site.

[30] Houser found "a classical 'we are conquering this wilderness' story" to be less interesting, and the time period had the added benefit of allowing strong images of the West—horses, stagecoaches, and lassoes—alongside modern technology like trains and explosives.

[33] The game's Mexico section was inspired by The Wild Bunch and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), while the action sequences borrowed visual elements from classic shoot-out scenes, including from non-Western films like Heat (1995).

[31] Houser expressed the difficulty in maintaining realism while balancing the game's narrative to avoid feeling both "pompous" and "camp", citing Blazing Saddles (1974) as an example of the latter.

[31] Houser felt the story does not fully represent the racial attitudes commonly associated with the game's era, a choice made by the developers to avoid language that "is insanely offensive to modern ears".

Regarding the game's depiction of violence, the team wanted it to "feel slightly raw and unpleasant"—more like Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian (1985) than Little House on the Prairie (1974–1983)—attempting realism without exaggeration.

[4][35] The American frontier was extensively researched for the game;[35] the team organized field trips to Washington, D.C.,[4] visiting the Library of Congress and the National Archives Building, captured a multitude of photographs, and analyzed various classic Western films, television shows, and novels.

Houser compared the amount of dialogue required to Grand Theft Auto IV and felt the team was "halfway there" with its prior work on San Andreas and Bully.

[34] Several employees across the company worked on different parts of the script, such as the main story and pedestrian dialogue, a process Rockstar began with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002).

[44] The recording crew often referred to scenes from Grand Theft Auto IV during production; Wiethoff pretended to understand before eventually admitting he had not played the game.

[47]: 1:06  When auditioning for Luisa Fortuna, actress Francesca Galeas recalled the role being described as "a Salma Hayek bad ass chick with an accent".

[33] Early in development, the team looked at Grand Theft Auto as the inspiration for the level of enjoyment they wanted to achieve; senior ambient designer Ghyan Koehne found the experience daunting, noting while Grand Theft Auto "had fast cars, helicopters, rocket launchers, and radio stations to listen to", Red Dead Redemption "had a guy on his horse and endless hills with close to nothing in the world".

[33] For much of the game's development, the world was largely barren, lacking the road networks, animals, and foliage that would eventually populate it; the team was motivated by an "understanding of what it was all going to become", knowing the atmosphere they were trying to achieve.

[50] Carson explained the team attempted to achieve realism with every feature of the game, including the horses, lassos, animal ecosystem, and the open world.

[4] In addition, while they felt Revolver was constrained by its level-based structure, the team saw potential in creating a game similar to Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto series, in terms of quality, scope and detail.

[30] The game's Honor system—intended to keep in line with "the idea of morality and notoriety" associated with the West—was a further development of concepts previously explored by Rockstar,[35] intended to provide the player with more choice in their play style.

[52] In appropriating the score to the game's setting, Elm commented the process was initially "daunting", taking a long time to discover how the music was to work in an interactive way.

[52] Shortly after finding a German guitar in Los Angeles with the appropriate sound and "a perfect tremolo", Jackson returned home and wrote the game's main theme.

The three main areas of the game world contain unique ambiences; these are broken down into smaller sounds, such as bugs and animals, which are further refined to reflect the weather and time.

[59] An early trailer for an untitled Western project by Rockstar Games for PlayStation 3 was shown at Sony's E3 conference in May 2005; it was a technology demonstration of RAGE, and theorized to be a sequel to Red Dead Revolver.

[67] In March 2010, Rockstar announced the game would miss its original projected date, pushed back to May 18 in North America and May 21 internationally, citing the "optimal time frame" for release.

[1] Reactions were mixed, with the trailer receiving mostly dislikes on YouTube; some journalists and players appreciated the game becoming available on modern consoles, but lamented the lack of visual and frame rate upgrades, absence of a Windows release, omission of multiplayer, and US$49.99 price point.

[2] Red Dead Redemption received an extensive and expensive marketing campaign,[89] during which Rockstar partnered with several companies and media outlets, including IGN, GameSpot, LoveFilm, Microsoft, and YouTube.

[101] This was followed by "The Women: Sinners, Saints & Survivors" on February 24, focusing on the game's female characters,[102] and the third gameplay video, "Life in the West", on March 17, introducing some open world activities.

[123] Pieces of artwork from the game was painted on a mural in New York City in February 2010,[124] and depicted on NASCAR driver Joey Logano's GameStop car in April and June 2010.

[125][126] On April 12, Rockstar released Red Dead Redemption: Gunslingers in open beta as a Facebook application: a role-playing social game that allowed players to duel their friends.