5/5 ★ – soulfulgamer19's review of Red Dead Redemption II.

First off, don’t read this and go play it if you haven’t so you can experience it blind and without any spoilers. With that out of the way, I humbly maintain the following — Red Dead Redemption 2 is the greatest piece of interactive art I have ever experienced. Full stop. My wife bought me a GameStop gift card for my birthday and I bought a used copy last summer. I played for about 10 hours over the next month, beating Chapter 1 and half of Chapter 2. At that point, I thought the game was overly slow, hyper realistic to the point of boredom, and too indulgent for its own good. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The game would worm its way back into my brain despite my many issues with it. Why did I care so much? It turns out that all that immersion made me sincerely invested in the world and the characters. I felt what Arthur was going through because I walked in his shoes. I shaved his beard. I cleaned his gun. I skinned his animals. I talked to his friends. I brushed my horse. I helped strangers with their requests. I chose to be a good person or a bad person. In short, the unprecedented immersion in Red Dead Redemption 2 made the world feel REAL. I cared about Arthur Morgan and everything he did because it felt like MY story. This hyper realism, once you accept it, helps RDR2 transcend its medium from merely a game to more like living a second life. Once you buy into its world, playing RDR2 becomes an all-consuming and addicting experience. My wife would often tease me that I was “in the metaverse” when playing because I talked about the events as if they were real, whether it was taking a bath or helping strangers or picking clothes from the store. I’d often switch to first person mode for even more immersion. I beat the game over the next 7 weeks, with a total playtime of around 80 hours. I usually never do side quests in other games, but in RDR2 I completed nearly every single one. Why? Because I loved inhabiting the world and role-playing as Arthur Morgan. You are rewarded for this effort too because the quality and depth of the side quests is astounding. My favorite series of side quests was helping Albert Mason the photographer. The exchanges they had were just so wholesome and let you appreciate the natural beauty of the world from a different perspective. The most harrowing side quest was “The Iniquities of History.” My God. You help a destitute old man retrieve his ledger from his abandoned home, but slowly learn through environmental clues that he was a loyal worker, a good soldier, and a slave trader. The slow unveiling of these facts showed me the power of interactive media to make me unwittingly empathize with a man I consider evil, re-examine the unforgiving moral absolutism of hindsight, and introspect on my own would-be iniquities in a future history. It is this level of writing that makes me compare RDR2 not to other games, but to a TV series like The Wire, or great literature like The Grapes of Wrath. The game is novelistic in that it focuses on the details of daily life and uses this realistic portrayal to explore timeless themes and say something meaningful about society. Just some of these themes are: the inevitable decline of the outlaw way of life, the perhaps regrettable rise of “civilization,” and the imperative to try and seek redemption despite one’s sordid past and inescapable fate. Protagonist Arthur Morgan is so relatable because he is a fundamentally good man who is just trying to see the world clearly. He doesn’t necessarily share the lofty utopianism of Dutch. He is just a lost kid who got caught up with a bad group of people and won’t leave them because of loyalty. In this way, Arthur reminds me of Karna from The Mahabharata. Deep in his heart, Arthur knows there is a better way, but he tragically cannot live to experience it himself. Arthur is diagnosed with a terminal illness, and knowledge of his imminent death convinces him to try and atone for his past and right the wrongs he has committed. As the player, you have the choice to actually follow through on this, by deciding to help people or not. If you do, then at the end of Arthur’s journey, a montage plays of him riding his horse overlaid with grateful snippets of dialogue from the strangers you have chosen to help along the way. Arthur’s final act in the story is to sacrifice himself so that John Marston can live in peace with his family, an opportunity Arthur never had. This yearning against fate to do good, this is Arthur’s “redemption.” This is emphasized by Arthur’s epitaph which reads, “Blessed Are Those Who Hunger And Thirst For Righteousness." The power of seeing your past actions show up in the montage dialogue and witnessing your choice to save Marston is indescribable. You feel the redemption yourself because it is yours too. Arthur’s passing made me feel empty and hollow and I put the game down for a week before I tackled the epilogue. Later on, the epilogue shattered any expectations I had that it would be a waste time. It made me cry again (this time with happiness) when I saw John propose to Abigail on the rowboat. All of these story sequences are supported by stirring music from major artists like D’Angelo, Willy Nelson, Nas (!), and Woody Jackson’s transcendent soundtrack. The most pioneering feature of RDR2 though is the visuals. There is simply no better looking game on the 8th generation of consoles. The facial animations, motion capture, and acting quality is phenomenal and impresses upon you that this is a cinema-level endeavor worthy of serious consideration. Most of all, the depiction of nature is breathtakingly beautiful. I had never before used photo mode on my PS4 but I probably took over 100 photos to cherish its stunning vistas. Almost every frame is a painting you could screenshot and hang on a wall. The magic is in the details, whether it’s the way your footprints imprint on the mud or the way the the sunbeams shine through leaves or make someone’s earlobes glow. Nature is so beautiful in this game that it actually made me better appreciate nature in real life. I would play and think “Wow, this dirt path is beautiful” but then I’d go outside for a run and look on the ground and see that the dirt path was even more beautiful in reality, making me appreciate it all the more. The game’s detailed depiction of plants also made me genuinely care to learn about the herbs that Arthur can pick up and study. All of this beauty again serves the overall goal of immersion and enhances your emotional attachment to the world. Through all of these aspects, Red Dead Redemption 2 surpasses cinema to me in that it has basically invented a new way to use immersion as a storytelling device. By creating the closest thing we have ever seen to a “living, breathing world,” the world feels so real that the player can inhabit the main character and experience the story firsthand. To me, this seems like the ultimate realization of the role-playing experience and the evaporation of the “fourth wall” between cinema and viewer. RDR2 is therefore more than a game or a movie, but a synthesis and superior version of both. I almost feel bad using the word “game” to describe RDR2. It is so much more. I hope and expect other games to surpass RDR2 (especially ones made by Rockstar) but the foundation laid here has ushered in a new era of what the medium is capable of. For that, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a profoundly important piece of art, an emotional tour de force, and a groundbreaking masterpiece. I am so happy I pushed myself to keep playing.