It's one of those cute ironies that Rockstar Games, most famous for the virtual cityscapes of the Grand Theft Auto series, would create what many consider its masterpiece when working with the dust and dirt of the wilds. When it launched in 2010, the open-world western Red Dead Redemption was as refreshing as a chill blast of mountain air: a bucolic, melancholy counterpoint to the madcap urban caricature of GTA. And so it's fitting that the sequel, Red Dead Redemption 2, makes its greatest strides in its world.
This is a vast, staggeringly detailed open world. You could get out a virtual ruler to proclaim it Rockstar's biggest yet, or count every single NPC, line of dialogue, rock, tree and outhouse and say it's the developer's densest, but I'll leave all that for someone else. What I will say is that this is Rockstar's broadest canvas since Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, quite possibly even more so, with what no longer feels like a take on a single city or state but practically an entire country.
There are the heights of Amorino, hidden under knee-deep snow, the flats of New Hanover, the bayous of Lemoyne, the opulent metropolis of Saint Denis, and the clipped greens of West Elizabeth. It's a map that offers Rockstar's take on the sights and sounds of late 19th-century New Orleans through to South Carolina, from Indiana to Iowa and plenty more besides - a forged snapshot of an America forever lost that is utterly convincing.
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