Red Dead Redemption 2 is still cinematic, brutal and better looking than a lot of brand new games. CMoney went back to Arthur's camp and came out even more excited for GTA VI.
Verdict Play It Now
The day Rockstar finally dropped Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look on Netflix, I did the only thing that made sense. I went back to the game that started this whole next level of Rockstar. Red Dead Redemption 2.
I loaded up a save I didn’t even remember, and within about ten seconds I was asking the same question I asked back in 2018. How does this look so good? This game came out on the Xbox One generation. It is 2026. And it still looks like it’s from the future.
Watch the RAW IMPRESSIONS
Red Dead Redemption 2 RAW IMPRESSIONS: Still a Masterpiece, and It Makes GTA VI Look Even ScarierRed Dead Redemption 2 is legitimately one of the greatest games ever created.
CMoney, OnPoint 4 Gamers
Back in the saddle
If you somehow missed it, Red Dead Redemption 2 is Rockstar’s open world western. It’s 1899, the Wild West is dying, and you play as Arthur Morgan, a hardened enforcer in Dutch van der Linde’s gang of outlaws. The law is closing in, the money is drying up, and the gang is trying to hold together while the world changes around them. It launched on Xbox One on October 26, 2018, got the full Xbox One X treatment, and hit PC a year later.
My save dropped me at dawn by the water, mist rolling off the surface, Arthur standing there like a painting. I barely moved and I was already floored. Then a snake slid across the shore, and of course I picked it up and brought it along. That’s Red Dead. The world is just there, alive, doing its thing whether you’re paying attention or not.
And the sound. I need people to understand the sound in this game. Birds, water, wind, hooves, the crunch of the ground under your boots. It’s so perfect that it pulls you in before anything even happens.
Camp life is the secret weapon
Head back to camp and you see what makes this game different from everything else. It’s completely seamless. There’s no menu screen between you and the story. You just walk up to people and life happens.
Leopold Strauss, the gang’s money man, hands Arthur a list of locals who owe the gang. He calls it banking. Arthur calls it what it is, because he’s the one handing out the beatings. In one short conversation you understand exactly how this gang survives and exactly how Arthur feels about it. Then Molly corners you to ask how Dutch really seems, because she loves him and something is clearly off. And John Marston, the hero of the first Red Dead Redemption, is just walking around camp saying good evening like it’s nothing.
The voice acting is perfect. I mean that. Every character sounds like a real person with a real history, and that is why the story still lands so hard all these years later. Rockstar nailed everything here.
An honest mistake
Then Uncle shows up with a tip. A supply wagon carrying payroll, nearly unguarded, easy pickings. Arthur doesn’t buy it, so he agrees only if Uncle rides along too. Bill and Charles get dragged in, and off you go. Masks up at the crossroads, stop the wagon, keep it quiet and clean.
Except the driver works for Cornwall Kerosene & Tar. Leviticus Cornwall’s money. Close to a thousand dollars in the back, and about two seconds later the whole countryside is full of Cornwall’s men.
This is where Red Dead turns into a movie. You’re riding hard with the gang, bullets flying, horses at full speed, and you are begging your horse not to get tired right now because this is not the time. I clipped something I never saw coming and was positive Arthur was finished. He wasn’t. Barely.
Want to see something wild? Push the camera all the way in during a ride like this. First person mode is so good in this game. Third person, first person, it doesn’t matter. Rockstar nailed both.
The gang ditches the horses and hides out in a barn, and here’s another little thing I love. The horses just know where to go. You send them off and they’re gone, and you can feel how much work went into making that world behave.
The barn goes up
You wait for night. Then Cornwall’s men show up, the farmer points them straight at the barn, and it turns into a full siege. Guards on every side. Shots coming through the walls. One round knocked the hat right off Arthur’s head. At one point I got set on fire. Then a lantern goes down and the whole barn starts going up around you.
The fire in this game is crazy. The flames crawl up the beams, the smoke fills the room, and you’re still trying to hold off waves of guards while the roof comes apart. When the gang finally breaks out the back and runs into the trees, the woods look insane. The chase turns into a quiet hunt, splitting up in the dark, picking guys off before they find you. When the last one dropped, I’ll be honest, I was hyped. That’s how it’s done.
The craziest part? I beat this game back in the day and I did not remember this mission at all. It played like brand new. That’s how much there is in Red Dead Redemption 2. You can come back years later and still find something that blows you away.
There are 2026 games that can’t touch this
I want to be clear about something. There are games that came out this year that can’t hold a candle to what Rockstar did with Red Dead Redemption 2 back in 2018. That’s not nostalgia talking. Look at the screenshots. Listen to it. The lighting, the fire, the sound of the woods at night, the way the camp lives and breathes around you. It’s stunning, still.
Some people talk about this game like it’s not one of the greatest of all time. I don’t get it. Why is it so hard to accept that sometimes a studio just makes a masterpiece? Because that’s exactly what Rockstar did here.
Are you going back to Red Dead Redemption 2 before GTA VI?
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What this says about GTA VI
Here’s what has me fired up. Rockstar made this on the Xbox One generation. Grand Theft Auto VI is Rockstar finally building for this generation, and from what Rockstar has shown, it’s on another level. People out there claiming they’re not excited for GTA VI clearly haven’t gone back and looked at what Rockstar can do. Play an hour of Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2026 and tell me you aren’t counting down to November 19.
And then imagine what a Red Dead Redemption 3 could look like on this hardware. I can’t even comprehend it.
I ended my session the way I always end Red Dead. Back at camp, in peace, horse parked, somebody singing a little too drunk by the fire. Arthur’s crew in the wilderness, trying to stay warm, trying to stay together. Some games you play. This one you live in.
Verdict: Play It Now
Red Dead Redemption 2 is legitimately one of the greatest games ever created. It was stunning in 2018, and it’s stunning now. The voice acting, the sound, the seamless camp, the way one simple robbery spirals into a chase, a siege and a burning barn, it all still hits like nothing else. This is Rockstar doing what Rockstar does, and it’s the perfect warm up before GTA VI lands.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is out now on Xbox One, plays on Xbox Series X|S through backward compatibility, and is available on PC. Xbox has also confirmed it’s coming to Xbox Cloud Gaming in the coming months as part of its new partnership with Take-Two. If you’ve never ridden with Arthur, fix that. If you have, go back. It’s even better than you remember.
What’s working
- Still one of the best looking games you can play, years after launch
- Sound design that pulls you in before anything even happens
- Voice acting so good every character feels real
- Seamless camp life that tells the story without a single menu
- Missions like An Honest Mistake that spiral from a stickup into a full blown movie
What needs work
- Coming back after a long break, the controls take a minute to remember (calling your horse included)
- Horse stamina can bite you at the worst moment in a chase
Platform played: Xbox (Xbox One X enhanced version; Xbox HUD).
Screenshots captured by OnPoint 4 Gamers from gameplay. Featured image: OnPoint 4 Gamers typography over official Red Dead Redemption 2 Steam art.
