Red Dead Redemption 2

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a Western action-adventure game developed and published by Rockstar Games. It is the third game in the Red Dead series and serves as a prequel to Red Dead Redemption from 2010. The game launched on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in October 2018, followed by Windows and Stadia versions in November 2019.

The story takes place in 1899 in a fictionalized version of the United States, at a time when the era of the Wild West is drawing to a close. Players follow Arthur Morgan, an outlaw and longtime member of the Van der Linde gang. After a robbery in the town of Blackwater goes wrong, the gang is forced to run, pursued by federal agents, bounty hunters, and rival gangs, while tensions inside the group grow. The world spans five fictional states, with landscapes that range from snowy mountains and plains to bayous, plantations, and desert, and settlements that include Valentine, Rhodes, Strawberry, and the city of Saint Denis.

Players can switch between first-person and third-person views and roam the open world freely between story missions. Activities include gunfights, robberies, hunting, horseback riding, and talking with non-player characters. Horses are the main way to get around, and riders build a bond with a horse over time by feeding, cleaning, and caring for it. An Honor system tracks whether the player’s choices and deeds are good or bad, and a bounty system decides how lawmen and bounty hunters respond to crimes. Side activities include dueling, bounty hunting, collecting, and card and table games such as poker and dominoes.

Alongside the single-player story, the game includes Red Dead Online, a multiplayer mode in which up to 32 players can explore the world and take part in cooperative and competitive activities with a custom character. It began as a public beta in November 2018 and was later released as a standalone product in December 2020. Special and Ultimate Editions of the game were also offered, and a companion app for Android and iOS lets players view a map, catalogs, and journals on a second screen.

Development lasted more than eight years and involved Rockstar’s studios working together as a single team, making it one of the most expensive video games ever produced. The release was delayed twice before the game arrived in October 2018. Red Dead Redemption 2 received widespread critical acclaim for its story, characters, open world, visuals, music, and attention to detail, though some critics found fault with its controls and focus on realism. It won more than 175 Game of the Year awards and has shipped over 87 million copies, making it one of the best-selling video games of all time.