If you’re the kind of person who gets excited about game stuff, then here’s totally some game stuff to get excited about. Earlier today Rockstar released six minutes of in-game footage from Red Dead Redemption 2, and the trailer has the entire game world in a full-on tizzy. Does it have a massive open world to explore? Is it going to be richer, deeper and more detailed than ever before? Does it hope to capture the American frontier as it stood on the precipice between lawlessness and order, myth and modernity? I mean, yeah, of course, it’s a videogame trailer, it says all of that stuff. See:
So yeah: this looks like a follow-up to Red Dead Redemption, alright, at least mechanically and aesthetically. Will it have the relative thoughtfulness and emotional depth that made that game so memorable, though? Will is be able to reflect the racism and prejudice of the time period without indulging in it as gleefully as that game’s Mexican missions did? Will it do more than just pay lip service to the plight of the indigenous populations destroyed by our conquest of North America? Will it have a musical moment as unforgettable as that time Jose Gonzalez started playing as John Marston rode across the border? How many times will we hear the words “consarn it”? Will it make me want to watch McCabe & Mrs. Miller again as much as the first one did? All of those would be great, but it’s not like they’re all prerequisites to making this a good game, or anything. Rockstar will be releasing more trailers between now and the game’s release on October 26, so maybe we’ll get some answers to these questions before we actually jump back into Videogame Deadwood.