It all begins with a cold open?quite literally?that feels heavily inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. That’s something that reverberates throughout Red Dead Redemption 2. Cinematic themes and influences repeatedly come up, but it’s more than just a scene lifted here or a set piece laid out there. These things are ingrained directly into Red Dead Redemption 2’s DNA. Every moment, whether cinematic in nature or a random encounter in the open world, is crafted with that careful touch. Red Dead Redemption 2 raises the bar and sets it in a whole new place that games will be trying to reach for years to come.
Red Dead Redemption 2 has a story to tell, but it doesn’t just have the one story. It’s not just the story of Arthur Morgan. It’s not just the story of the Dutch van der Linde gang. It’s the story of the American frontier in 1899. It’s every single conversation that you overhear or quest that you undertake. The world doesn’t just serve at the whimsy of the player character. The world exists naturally for the player character to fit into immersively. Like any great ensemble film or TV show, while things may center on Arthur, there exists a great many stories outside of his own interests. And perhaps just as important as any scripted narrative the game has to offer are the moments that the player gets to craft for themselves through a natural, living, and breathing open world. The most natural, living,...