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From the first moments of “Red Dead Redemption 2,” as your horse leaves deep tracks in the snow and your character braces against the biting cold, you’ll realize you’re in for something special.
“Red Dead Redemption 2” is the latest game from “Grand Theft Auto” developer Rockstar Games, and it achieves an unprecedented level of detail in everything from its stunning graphics to a world packed with things to do to the little things that make its characters come to life.
You play as Arthur Morgan, the right-hand man to Dutch, who’s the charismatic and idealistic leader of a Robin Hood-like gang that pledges to only steal from the bad guys, a promise they mostly keep.
You’re dropped into the beautifully rendered American west with a landscape that ranges from plains, badlands, craggy mountains, dense forest, farmlands, swampy plantations and dusty towns. The “Red Dead Redemption” series explores the final years of the wild west as electricity, industry and the law are marking the end of the outlaw era.
Arthur, Dutch and the gang are fresh off a heist gone wrong, hiding from the law in the snow-covered mountains and in pursuit of the one last big score that can get them farther west.
In the many hours you’ll spend with “Red Dead Redemption 2” you’ll be treated to some of the standard western tropes like bank robberies, train robberies, stagecoach robberies and shootouts with other gangs. You’ll also randomly run into other side missions and characters that offer even more activities and things to do as you explore the world on your horse.
One of the most startling changes in “Red Dead Redemption 2” from earlier Rockstar games like the masterpiece “Red Dead Redemption” or any of the games in the “Grand Theft Auto” series is just how deliberate the developers have made the gameplay. That translates to realistic animations and button presses for just about every single action: opening a cabinet, picking up a can of badorted biscuits, patting your horse.
At first, the animations feel painfully slow, but it eventually starts to make sense within the greater game.
Some of my favorite moments in “Red Dead Redemption 2” are not the big action set pieces like the train robberies, but in the quieter moments where the game slows down and shows off just how masterful developer Rockstar is when it comes to developing its characters and world around them.
After you and your gang escape from the snowy mountains, you set up camp outside a little muddy town where the vast open world and its many opportunities finally expands out in front of you. It’s not a particularly nice set up, but it’s such an improvement over the bitter conditions of the game’s first few hours that the gang feels like celebrating.
Upon returning from a mission, I found them singing, dancing, playing cards and drinking in the warm glow of camp fires. It was in that moment that I began to understand the intention behind the meticulous design of the game.
What Rockstar has accomplished here is not just an excellently accomplished simulation of the final years of the wild west, but it’s succeeded in making a world and characters that are worth investing in.
At first, my instinct was just to rush right to Arthur’s tent to sleep through to the morning and get on my way, but I instead stopped to walk around the camp and soak in the little interactions going on: Some of the men telling stories around a fire, the women playing cards or the small group of people dancing to the music playing on Dutch’s phonograph. It’s hard not to start caring about the characters.
The detail extends far beyond the gang, too, to everyday interactions, building a sense of consequence that’s so rare in video games, especially from the developer behind the violent fantasy fulfillment of “Grand Theft Auto.”
The depth and variety of game that Rockstar has put together in “Red Dead Redemption 2” is truly amazing, and it’ll continue to surprise you many, many hours into its lengthy main story.
Matt Buxton is a freelance writer and gamer. He can be reached at [email protected].
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