Red Dead Redemption 2 turns three years old today, and it remains the most impressive game I’ve ever played. The best? Well, that’s relative. There are several games from my childhood I’m more fond of, but can anyone really compare Pokemon Blue to Red Dead Redemption 2? Most of the things we discuss in games are similarly relative, similarly subjective, similarly rooted in opinion and feeling and intangible vibes. When I say Red Dead Redemption 2 is the most impressive game I’ve ever played, I don’t think I am being subjective. I think it’s an objective fact.
Of course, few facts are black and white. Even the word ‘impressive’ is subjective - what impresses you might not impress me. The amount of times I’ve tried to show my partner something impressive from the worlds of sports, gaming, or the Terminally Online parts of the internet just to have her smile and nod attests to that. But when we look at what games are capable of, how they tell their stories, how they build their worlds, how they construct a tactile reality in front of us, it’s hard not to be impressed by Red Dead Redemption 2.
Related: It's Time For Grand Theft Auto To Grow Up And Be More Like Red Dead Redemption 2The sheer scale of the game is spectacular, but unlike most big open games, Red Dead Redemption 2 never feels empty. I’ve played the game three times - four if you count a current playthrough I’ll get back to eventually. While there’s a morality system, I’ve always played the game the same way: Arthur is an honorable man right up to the end. Yet I’ve had completely different experiences each time.
That’s because, unlike a lot of games where choice-based mechanics offer us the potential to have different playthroughs, RDR2’s world is so vibrant and bursting with stories that it’s impossible to tell it the same way twice. I spent a good chunk of my first playthrough trying to find the KKK to no avail. In my second, I happened upon them and smirked from the bushes as they set themselves on fire.
Some Strangers are impossible to miss, but others rely on chance and good timing. I still haven’t finished them all - I’m never going to collect those dinosaur bones, sorry - and yet every time I return to Saint Denis I’ve found something fresh. Even doing the same missions in a new order with Arthur at a different point in his life changes the tone. Red Dead Redemption 2 isn’t impressive because it’s so big, but because it’s so full. That’s a distinction many games miss.
Technically, it’s a marvel too. It’s not just photorealistic - it has an incredibly clean open world with few bugs or hiccups you would expect in a game this size, as well as a huge range of environments to explore. In my most recent playthrough, I even fell in love with the snow. Arthur leaves his mark on the world in a variety of ways, both subtle and obvious, but he never feels like the world’s only protagonist. Everyone has a story to tell.
.jpg "Three Years On, Red Dead Redemption 2 Is Still The Most Impressive Game Ever (1)")
There is a rather large elephant in the room, and this elephant’s testicl*s shrink when it gets cold. Rockstar has a notorious crunch culture, and as a result it’s difficult to celebrate these technical feats when you think of the blood, sweat, and cricked necks from sleeping under the desk that went into them. Sure, everyone at Rockstar loves their job and it’s a team effort and it’s all worth it in the end… I know the spiel. I just don’t think anyone should be forcing their team to work 11-hour days, six or seven days a week, to ensure the grass sway is as authentic as possible. To not celebrate what Red Dead Redemption 2 did feels insulting to this effort, but to pretend the game did not come about through crushing, unsustainable team management is to deny reality.
The worst part is it’s not necessary. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart offers a much shorter, more concentrated experience, but I’d put it as second to RDR2 in ‘most technically impressive game’ given how well it uses the power of the PS5. It was made without crunch. Mass Effect 2, easily the best of the Mass Effect games, had the least crunch of any title in the series. To push past limits, it seems like crunch is needed, whether that be in RDR2 or a similarly crunched, similarly impressive offering like The Last of Us Part 2. But is it really needed? Do those limits not exist for a reason, and doesn’t it point to how broken game development’s cycle is that breaking limits is expected?
It’s not the shrinking horse testicl*s I’m impressed by in Red Dead Redemption 2, and it’s not Ellie sliding off her shirt or tossing a rope that impresses me in The Last of Us Part 2. These technical feats become part of the game’s mythos, and that’s why they exist, that’s why developers are pushed so hard to reach them - but they aren’t what we remember. There has to be a middle ground between pushing the limits of storytelling in gaming and pushing the limits of everything in gaming, no matter how much stress it puts on your team.
Red Dead Redemption 2 has one of the best narratives I’ve ever experienced in a game, and it’s even better when you ignore the story and try to write your own. It looks great, and it’s huge, but it’s the simple things that make it special. I imagine a few people will be celebrating it today, and even more in a couple of years when it turns five. Few will be writing about the horse testicl*s.
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