Short Summary is an original series in which I write brief reviews of movies, TV shows, video games, books, and more. Spoiler alert, just in case!

The urge to go and play Red Dead Redemption 2 some more instead of writing this review about it should hopefully speak volumes. But that wouldn’t be doing the game nearly enough justice and would horribly oversimplify how incredible it really is.

Red Dead Redemption 2 was released in 2018, eight years after its predecessor, and it probably comes as no surprise that it took all eight of those years to develop the game. At the time, it was the most expensive title that Rockstar Games had ever made. It then went on to become one of the best-selling video games of all time and is often considered one of the greatest of all time, period.

If Rockstar is famous for two things in their games, it’s the broad scope of the worlds they create and, simultaneously, the attention to the tiniest of details. They proved it with the release of Grand Theft Auto V, taking place in a fictionalized version of Los Angeles, and they improved every single aspect for Red Dead Redemption 2, which takes place across a fictionalized version of the United States.

The year is 1899. The era of the Wild West is nearing its end. Outlaw gangs, like those of Dutch van der Linde and Colm O’Driscoll, are being chased by federal agents and bounty hunters alike, heading toward extinction. Maybe the gangs will just take each other out first, or much worse, they’ll be sabotaged from within. You play as Arthur Morgan, Dutch’s right hand man and a veteran member of the van der Linde gang. He’s one of the many enforcers of the group, the muscle. Dutch relies on Arthur to get a job done by any means necessary, and Arthur does it without question. Yet through all their trials, above all else, the van der Linde gang is a family, and they’ll do anything to protect it.

Red Dead Redemption 2 actually serves as a prequel to Red Dead Redemption, so while the protagonist of this game is Arthur, you get to interact with the protagonist of the first game, John Marston. As someone who – yes, I know – hasn’t played Red Dead Redemption before, I can say that you don’t have to in order to follow Red Dead Redemption 2, since it takes place beforehand. Each player can obviously make the choice to play the games in their chronological order or their release order. Believe me, I hope to play the first game now that I’ve played through the second multiple times. Both stories are beautiful and devastating, regardless of how much you know going into them.

I cannot tell you how many times I return to Red Dead Redemption 2 simply to take in the sights and enjoy the atmosphere of the open world the game has. I’ve seen a lot of the landscapes of America in real life, and this game captures many of them in extraordinary fashion. Do you want to grab the controller, ride a horse across stunning vistas, pick fruit from bushes, hunt for your own food, and camp by a fire to end the day? Perhaps you want to visit a town and frequent the saloons or shops, even stay at a hotel overnight? You can spend multiple hours doing that day-to-day kind of thing, and the game remains a feast for the eyes. Not only are the locations vast, they are also detailed and realistic to the time period. I also cannot praise the score and soundtrack enough and how much they contribute to the overall stellar experience.

I provided a summary of the plot and mentioned a bit of the story. I’ve actually decided to talk about them as little as possible so that, for anyone who hasn’t played any Red Dead game before, you can enjoy it on your own. Yes, there is the very first game that I haven’t brought up called Red Dead Revolver, but that’s a standalone title in the series. Will there be a Red Dead Redemption 3? In this day and age of sequels, prequels, reboots, and other reimaginings, it’s hard to rule another game out. Please just give us a remake of Red Dead Redemption first?

The one glaring flaw that Red Dead Redemption 2 might have is the sort of cognitive dissonance between the open world that I described earlier and the linear, rigid nature of the story missions. I can’t come close to explaining it as brilliantly as this YouTuber does, but it can be frustrating sometimes when Rockstar wants to have their cake and eat it, too. You can get some whiplash after bathing in the glorious open world for a long time, only to be ripped out of it in order to do this particular mission in this very specific way, and you can fail the mission if you don’t do it exactly right. You read that correctly.

Despite that, I adore Red Dead Redemption 2. Arthur Morgan is one of the most compelling, intimidating, biting main characters I’ve ever seen, and your estimation of him can change depending on how you choose to play him. You can make him the honorable outlaw with a moral code, or you can make him the hardened criminal who, well, needs to be redeemed, or a gray character somewhere in between. Arthur’s relationships with other characters, especially with John, can be as you make them as well, and every single one is complex and different from every other. You can literally live in the world of Red Dead Redemption 2 as though you’re a cowboy in 1899. And along the way, you can be part of one of the finest and most tragic stories in fiction.

I don’t know why it took so long for me to get to this review. Red Dead Redemption 2 is easily one of my favorite video games!