Rockstar established themselves as creators of worlds. Grand Theft Auto 3 and San Andreas, in particular, gave players a sprawling city to explore and interact with. Rockstar continued to wow players and critics with their immersive settings and unapologetic storytelling. While I personally never really got into the GTA series I did appreciate what it had to offer. Then Rockstar shook things up, proving they can do more than just modern cities full of crime and chaos with Red Dead Redemption. Providing the opportunity to explore, ride a horse, root-toot-and-shoot, wrangle cattle, rob banks, and yeehaw around the wild west. Receiving praise from critics and players alike, Red Dead Redemption established itself as a juggernaut of open-world sandbox games right next to GTA. Eight years later, Rockstar would revisit the old west with another installment, Red Dead Redemption 2, which boasted more to explore, incredible graphics, and more immersive and alive environments. Originally coming to PS4 and Xbox One, it seemed to deliver on most of its claims. My first foray into this game was in the wake of just finishing both God of War and Spider-Man and first impressions were that the game was sluggish, clunky, and as a result hard to control. A year later, Red Dead Redemption 2 has come to PC. Has time tempered my expectations and/or have aspects of the controls been fixed? Let’s mosey on over and warm ourselves by the PC tower and take a look at what Red Dead Redemption 2 has to offer.
For reference, this is the hardware I’m working with, so user experience can vary greatly depending on what you have installed.
- CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
- RAM: 36855 Mb
I’ll start with what I think most people are coming to this review looking for, performance. On average, I was able to achieve 40-45 frames per second with mostly high settings with some set to ultra. Lowering settings could get me to an average of 48-52, but I would lose a fair amount of visual fidelity. So personal preference was much higher quality settings, with a small loss in frame rate. I did notice that there was frame dropping when I would first start up the game, but as time went on the experience became increasingly stable. I did not experience any of the game crashes and issues with the Rockstar launcher so I don’t have much to report there. In fact, I only ever had the game freeze on me once during my review period. Overall, I had a good experience running the game on my build, though I did notice that there was a noticeable amount of heat radiating from my now 8-year-old machine.
My personal recommendations for smoothing out your Red Dead Redemption 2 experience are:
- Make sure your graphics drivers are up to date.
- If you have a 2+ monitor setup, switch to only 1 active screen. I had fewer frame drops and overall better performance when I did this, even more so when streaming.
- Take the time to experiment with numerous settings. All of those settings are there for a reason. Tinkering with even one setting could be what makes the game run much smoother for your specific build.
- It is a 100+ GB download, so make sure you have plenty of space!
With that established, this game is fantastically beautiful. I never tired from going around and looking at the lush vegetation, wildlife scattering about, the landscapes stretching to the horizon when I was atop mountains, the changing of the time of day, and the sheer number of people that each had their own routines and personalities. The dynamic lighting and weather really make the world feel alive. The thunderstorms, sunrises, and sunsets, in particular, were awe-inspiring moments. Rockstar really pulled out all the stops when building this world, and their hard work certainly paid off. I knew playing on PC was gonna be good but this blew my expectations out of the water even after having played some of the console version last year. From what I’ve seen reported that even the standard low settings on some were still, on a technical level, higher quality than the console versions.
It really is no wonder that I felt that Red Dead Redemption 2 was slow when I first played it, it is a slower game intended to be taken in over time. You are supposed to take your time to stop and hunt, fish, cook, and whatever else you decide you want to do. It invites you to not just play a western set game, it calls you to live the life of an outlaw. You will miss out on half of what this game has to offer if all you do is rush from one story mission to another. Hunting legendary animals, helping various folks on the road, and honestly just simply stopping at the gang camp to interact with people. These seemingly endless options are as much a part of the story as those missions are. The seemingly menial day to day tasks are part of the journey, and if you don’t take some time to just ride your horse around the countryside and go off the beaten trail, you’ll never see some of the greatest things Red Dead Redemption 2 has in store.
In terms of gameplay, Red Dead Redemption allows you to do almost too many things. In my experience, it seemed like Rockstar did a lot to improve the controls. I rarely crashed my horse, and the few times I did it was basically my fault. I felt like I had quite a bit more control over whether or not I wanted to talk to a person or shoot them. Shooting, and the “Dead Eye” felt really satisfying to pull off. Camera control was smooth and easy with the mouse. Even in tight areas, I never had to fight with it. Back to my original comment though, there are controls for movement, gunplay, mini-games, fishing, tracking, and so much more that it can some time to recall how to do certain things. There are quite a few things to keep track of too. Cooking and eating food, keeping weapons cleaned, feeding and cleaning your horse, are among the things you can keep yourself busy with. For some, this will feel tedious, while for others this will add to the immersion. I personally lean towards the tedious side, but not as much as I usually would in these games.
Take note, last I checked, it seems that weapon and health deterioration is attached to frame rate. So you’ll need to clean and repair weapons and eat more often than on console until the issue is fixed.
Red Dead Redemption 2 takes place before the events of the first game, this time following Arthur Morgan, who is a fellow gang member of the first game’s main character, John Marston. Arthur does his best to help the gang recover from a recent blow to their egos and escape from bounty hunters and lawmen. Throughout the narrative, Arthur is frequently called upon to bail his fellow outlaws out of trouble, even those who deliberately seem to cause trouble when explicitly told to lay low. I feel like my reaction to Arthur is similar to the NPCs of the game. It can take a while to break through, but once you do you see there’s a decent amount to him than first impressions can present. You’ll follow Arthur and the rest of the gang as they navigate this precarious chapter of their lives, rebuilding and of course finding new crime to commit to support themselves.
Finally, Red Dead Redemption 2 offers what I can only explain as a soundscape in regards to its audio. Every area is chock full of animal noises, trees rustling in the winds, people talking, horses clopping, water flowing, and everything else in between. Every single character has spoken dialogue that is well recorded and acted. The music perfectly captures the mood of scenes and situations while still fitting into the western genre. Some songs have made it into my listening rotation.
Red Dead Redemption 2 breaks the rules of the games I tend to enjoy. Lower on my preference list are both life simulators and open world, yet I found myself thoroughly engrossed in what was offered. The story and its characters felt real, and the world I was asked to live in also felt real. Being an outlaw at the end of the old west is apparently just the spin on both those genres I needed to invest. I’m not even close to done exploring and interacting with this game, and of course, with the game coming to PC I’ve barely scratched the surface on the shenanigans that can be accomplished!
Find more information about Red Dead Redemption 2 on the official website. A digital PC copy was provided for the purpose of review.
For more review content from me, I’ve gotten to dive deep into two awesome titles, The Outer Worlds and Disco Elysium.
