So instead, I'm going to focus on one brave, subverting, possibly unique choice, made early in the Rockstar writer's room, that, narratively speaking, makes this Red Dead unlike any other game I've ever played. It's why deconstructionists are often very little fun at parties. It is a film brought to life, a novel given legs, and to speak about any piece of it is to necessarily reduce it to a bunch of cogs and sprockets - how this piece fits with that one. It is, in the universe of video games, our Godfather, our Star Wars or Wild Bunch - the work that transcends its genre and, in this case, its medium. Enough, maybe, to say that it tells, over the course of 60-plus hours, an epic, bloody tale of betrayal and obsolescence. It is, in the universe of video games, our 'Godfather,' our 'Star Wars' or 'Wild Bunch' - the work that transcends its genre and, in this case, its medium.īut RDR2 is too big, too sprawling, too full for taking on in a piece-by-piece look at the story. It is a masterpiece in several different ways - the look of it, the feel of it, god, the sound of it, which is worthy of an entire essay all its own. It is undeniably gorgeous (as you've probably heard), representing uncountable hours of effort by hundreds of men and women responsible for, among other things, designing the way leaves move in gentle breezes and making Arthur's horse poop. This newest Red Dead, a direct prequel to 2010's original Red Dead Redemption, is big (as you've probably heard). Everyone who plays the game can, because RDR2 is a lot of things (a clunky shooter, a gorgeous art project, a love story between a man and his horse), but it is mainly an engine designed for the creation of stories - places where the competing strands of algorithmic AI and narrative benchmarking collide to make unique moments that are ridiculous, bloody, and sublime, often all at the same time. Big stories and small stories, loud ones and quiet ones.

I could tell you a hundred stories about my life as Arthur Morgan, gravel-voiced anti-hero and the poet's heart of Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption 2.

So we're running an occasional series, Reading The Game, in which we take a look at some of these games from a literary perspective. In Red Dead Redemption 2, you don't exactly level up.įor years now, some of the best, wildest, most moving or revealing stories we've been telling ourselves have come not from books, movies or TV, but from video games.

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