“New century’s coming,” Arthur says at one point. The game isn’t exactly subtle about its premise Sometimes, all you need is a simple cup of coffee to create the illusion that this is a real, living place. You might be struck by the way mud builds up on Arthur’s boots on a rainy day or how his beard grows as time progresses. Those small details make the simulation that much more compelling. Except for a few rare instances, everything you’re doing in the game feels right, as if you were actually a bank robber trying to get by in the Old West. There are lots of shootouts and chase sequences, and you’ll kill a lot of police officers.īut the near-obsessive attention to detail, along with a new gameplay structure that centers around a family-like group of outlaws, makes Red Dead Redemption 2 the most convincing open-world game I’ve ever played. It still takes place in a vast, sprawling world, and it still tasks you with committing a lot of crimes in that world in order to progress. In a lot of ways, RDR2 doesn’t actually stray too far from the formula laid down by developer Rockstar with games like Grand Theft Auto V and the original Red Dead Redemption. But it’s the smaller details that set this open-world Western apart. This is a fairly minor feature, admittedly, that doesn’t impact the way Red Dead Redemption 2 plays in any tangible way. You walk around, sipping hot coffee, while people say good morning to you and talk about upcoming jobs.
Early morning is a busy time at the 19th century Wild West camp, with all of the 20 or so members of the gang getting up to start their day. But here, it’s a more interactive experience. In most mainstream games, this would likely trigger a short cutscene where you watch Red Dead’s main character - a charming outlaw named Arthur Morgan - enjoy his morning caffeine rush.
I pull a metal cup out of my satchel, fill it up, and take that all-important first swig to start the day.
I roll out of bed, maybe have a shave if I’m looking particularly grizzled, and then wander over to the campfire where a percolator full of coffee is waiting. Every morning when I wake up in Red Dead Redemption 2, I do the same thing I do in real life: pour myself a cup of coffee.