Review

Red Dead Redemption 2 review | A seismic achievement

Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One
Red Dead Redemption 2 is out now for PC, PS4 and Xbox One and will also release for Google Stadia on 19 November

As Red Dead Redemption 2 is released on PC, with spectacular graphical overhauls and 60fps available to those with powerful gaming PCs, we present our original review of Rockstar's Western epic

Last night I took a train. And don’t misunderstand me; I mean I took a train. I didn’t steal it, exactly, that’s not the kind of outlaw my Arthur Morgan is in Red Dead Redemption 2. I was on my way back to camp when I saw the dastardly LeMoyne raiders holding up the express. Passengers on the ground, guns waving around. I couldn’t let that pass. So I rode up and shot them down. Just doing my part in a lawless land. When I’m not plundering it myself, anyway.

But, tragically, those LeMoyne swines had murdered the driver. So with the passengers fled and the train abandoned, what else was I to do? I hopped aboard, rang the bell and off I went, rolling through Red Dead Redemption 2’s extraordinary 19th century America. Past the small town of Rhodes, the kind of pop-up settlement with visions of grandeur you see scattered throughout this nascent land, through the soupy mists and swamps of the Bayou Nwa, the whistle screeching as I move through the city Saint Denis; a bustling, smoke-filled bastion of the encroaching civilisation our protagonist Arthur is trying to escape. Dear reader, how I loved sounding that whistle. Chooo-chooo.

For over an hour I thundered through the world on that train. Every now and then I would stop off, hopping down from the train in billowing steam to intervene in a kidnapping, or visit the dilapidated den of thieves of the Van Horn trading post, scrapping with local outlaws in the mud. Me, in my Express of Justice, going wherever that winding track takes me.

It is easy, then, to get distracted in Red Dead Redemption 2. And full disclosure here,  I haven't yet seen the credits roll  despite spending dozens of hours in its world. But 'completion' doesn't feel like the point here, not one bit, with the connections you make roaming the world --exploring it, pushing its systems-- feeling as integral, if not more so, than the game's story beats.

I could have started with any number of anecdotes, but I went with the train because it is the freshest and most present in my mind. A lot of the time that is what playing Red Dead Redemption 2 is like: living in the moment; firing it up, mounting your horse and seeing where you end up. The Western world Rockstar has created is a vivid facilitator of this. It is --and there is no sufficient way of describing it without hyperbole-- unlike anything we have seen before.

Red Dead Redemption 2
This is an altogether different, less honourable, train 'incident'.

The pristine white mountains of the Grizzlies give way to the greenery of the Cumberland Forest, wildlife teeming through the thinning trees as you head out into the plains of the Heartlands, through green meadows and swampland, into Saint Denis; so busy and alien to the swathes of nature that surround it. The weather shifts dramatically, thunderstorms crackling across the plains, downpours giving way to sunshine, rainbows sprouting as awnings drip with the last of the rain.

Rockstar is the master of open-world building, of course, with nothing coming close to Grand Theft Auto V’s urban sprawl until now. Red Dead Redemption 2 feels more of an artistic challenge. You will not find a better facsimile of Los Angeles than GTAV’s Los Santos, but in a sense that world is already defined by artifice. Creating something as natural as Red Dead Redemption 2 is a seismic achievement that, for all the rightful exploration of Rockstar’s apparently challenging work conditions, I hope the developers are deeply proud of.

And to be clear, this isn’t just about how it looks. The interaction within is equally extraordinary.  Squeezing the left trigger with your gun holstered will allow you to interact with any other non-player character in the world, you can greet or antagonise them. Or straight up rob them on the spot. Interactions flow into each other and are placed within context; how Arthur is dressed, if he’s clean or there’s blood on his jacket, if he’s been scrapping in the local saloon (“no more trouble, y’hear”) or has just barged through a door in a sprint rather than walking in calmly.

Red Dead Redemption 2 review
You can customise Arthur's outfit from his hat to his spurs. Hair and facial hair, meanwhile, grows as time passes and can be trimmed at camp or styled at a barber's. This is after a good few game days of hairy neglect.

In shops you can browse individual items on shelves, Arthur dresses appropriately for the weather lest it affects his health and must be kept fed and rested. You can pat or feed your horse, clean it with a brush or by wading through clean water. You can hunt, tracking deer in the wilderness, the quality of the kill determined by your skill. Go fishing. Play poker. Meet strangers for target practice. Rob them if it doesn’t go your way, if you are so inclined.

Each element seems to be afforded the same attention as the big ticket missions. Is this level of detail strictly necessary? Maybe not. But that doesn’t negate its effectiveness; Red Dead Redemption 2 is at pains to never take you out of its world. Even when it needs to do necessarily ‘gamey’ things, it will do so with smart smoke and mirrors or a line of dialogue. Leaving your trusted steed during a mission to mount a stagecoach and having it teleport back to camp? “He’ll find his way home,” says Arthur. Need to ‘reset’ a town a few real-world hours after you have shot the place up in a daring escape from the law? “We killed anybody that would recognise you.” Want to shake the law? Rather than them conveniently forgetting your crimes, you must pay off your own bounty in each state you’ve caused a ruckus.

There is the balancing act a game that is aiming to be as ‘realistic’ as it can, while still providing the fun and streamlined thrills of a blockbuster video game. There is a wealth of systems at work, bedded into a world as seamlessly as possible. It is deft sleight of hand; a magic trick some of our Wild West companions would delight in.

Red Dead Redemption 2
There is a wealth of detail out in the world. This is a small abandoned settlement called Pleasance, there is little here but rundown buildings, but even the headstones here have a story to tell.
Red Dead Redemption 2
While there are always distractions to find, day or night

The upshot is a world that is tremendously easy to lose yourself in. But there is the backbone of a story to keep you moving, of course, and a very good one at that. Arthur is a prominent member of the Dutch van der Linde gang, a ragtag bunch of outlaws and misfits on the lam after a botched job in the town of Blackwater. After an introductory period encased in a snowstorm on the Grizzlies your caravan moves out East in the hope of staying out of trouble, taking up camp on Horseshoe Overlook in the Heartlands. The gang take on jobs in the surrounding area, legitimate and otherwise, but try not to overplay their hand. You can imagine how that turns out; moving on from each encampment with a trail of death and newfound enemies in their wake.

Arthur is a quietly fascinating passenger in all of this. In some ways he is one of the least interesting members of the gang; grizzled, loyal to a fault and a man resigned to his fading place in history as the era of lawlessness in the West begins to die. He allows himself to be swept along in Dutch’s capers all too unquestioningly, an outlook he seems to have in life. “Folks that need shooting I try and shoot ‘em in the back,” he tells a travelling author in a run-down saloon. “Everything else is just bunk.”

In other ways, this makes him the perfect video game protagonist; skilled and malleable, allowing you to mould Arthur as you prefer: thief of honour, ruthless brigand or somewhere in between. It also lets you see the death of the old west through the lens of one of its most dedicated proponents. The interesting thing about Arthur is that he knows he has no place in the onward march of progress, but doesn’t look to stand in its way. This is reflected in a tolerance often ill-matched by the world at large; Dutch and the majority of his gang holds little prejudice, making room for men and women of all colour and creed. There is plenty of bickering and glowering gruffness too, but it is in this motley crew that Red Dead Redemption 2 finds its character; the enigmatic but self-destructive Dutch. Sadie, the wild-eyed widow. The softly spoken Native Charles. Mrs Grimshaw, the camp's de facto boss, keeping everyone in check.

Red Dead Redemption 2
'I would die for this gang': Arthur is loyal to Dutch van der Linde
Red Dead Redemption 2
You will spend time with gang members individually, including new blood Lenny
Red Dead Redemption 2
You can also spend time with gang members in camp; chatting, bickering or playing games like five finger fillet.

It’s classy stuff, on the whole, acted with aplomb and far removed from the modern nihilism of Grand Theft Auto. This is a slower-burn and sadder story, though not without its moments of both levity and brutality, largely played out through Arthur’s interaction with its characters and the world. There are countless kooks to be met out there in saloons and fields; each with a challenge, request or simply there to add further texture to your trip.  If there is fault to be found, it’s that the cast is so plentiful that some of its best characters don’t always get as much screen time as you would like.

While the entire world is open to you from almost the word go, the game’s main story missions tend to cluster around the gang’s shifting location. Similar to all Rockstar open-world games, the missions are activated by key characters marked in gold on the map. Often it is different members of the gang following a lead on some shady business or other; a train robbery or bank heist are never far away, while there are more subtle acts of crime and social subterfuge peppered throughout too. Many of the gang are more equipped to use their brains than their brawn.

The missions are marked by Rockstar’s familiar inventiveness. Many are underpinned by panicked, brutal shooting; and this is probably Rockstar’s best work in the gunplay stakes. They feel like violent spaghetti western shootouts, as they well should. All splintered wood, flying bullets and blood. They can be over in a flash and are a thrill when they appear, but Red Dead Redemption 2 tries to avoid shootouts becoming too much of a crutch within missions, which look to mix up its objectives with some strands taking unexpected turns part-way through.

It tends to keep you on your toes in an otherwise slow-burn game. But most missions look to tie into the world somehow and give you multiple options on approach. One early mission tasked me with robbing an oil wagon for a train heist. I could pinch one while it was out and about, or extract it direct from the local factory. Assaulting the area head-on in the day was basically suicide; guards patrolling everywhere, workers teeming, all ready to witness any naughtiness. So I set up camp nearby, waited until night, snuck over the fence into a quiet, darkened yard and rolled that wagon right on out of there.

Many other missions are best described as team-bonding exercises; a day fishing with the old boys, singing maritime songs on the row home; a drunken night in the local saloon with Lenny; go off hunting with Charles to keep the camp’s food supplies high (you can contribute to the camp to keep morale up; it isn’t mandatory, but you will find yourself doing so anyway).

Red Dead Redemption 2 is not afraid to shift gears, then. Or more accurately, is happy to switch between a gallop and a trot. This is perhaps where the game might find its divisiveness. This is a slow-burning tale, often at odds with the breakneck cycle of constant reward in a lot of modern video games. Its story is lengthy (that 60 hour estimation wasn't kidding) and its most explosive beats are sparingly used.

By its very nature there are long stretches where it can feel the narrative isn’t moving on, as the gang settle and make their moves into the local area. This isn’t a criticism, but fair warning. Red Dead Redemption 2 is the kind of slow west yarn that lets you drink in its world, with plenty of time spent riding across its plains, but those looking for all-action, all-the-time should go in with their eyes open. But when it does kick into gear, the results are spectacular, its big moment delivered with the heft they deserve. As you move around the country and the gang’s predicament shifts, the complexion of both game and narrative can change to a startling degree. It is nothing if not carefully considered.

That consideration makes it the perfect fit for a classic Western, then, but while it is well versed in the cinematic language of Ford and Leone, Red Dead Redemption is no longer a game in thrall to the movies. Instead this is a powerhouse of a video game, one of the finest, built by people at the top of their game and under intense pressure, lest we forget. As it is, they remind us of what games can be, creating a majestic sense of place and time and allowing you to play your role in the way only this medium allows. So, if you’ll excuse me, I have another train to, er, ‘catch’.

License this content