Red Dead Redemption 2 Review

Perfect score, and I will say it plain: Red Dead Redemption 2 is the best western ever made in any medium, and it is not close. Rockstar built a dying frontier so alive that you can spend an hour just riding, hunting, and listening to the camp argue about coffee.

Arthur Morgan is the best lead Rockstar has ever written. You watch a loyal enforcer figure out, slowly and painfully, what his loyalty cost him. The story earns every big moment because the small ones came first: the fishing trips, the drunk nights, the quiet rides where nobody says anything at all.

The story earns every big moment because the small ones came first.

Is it slow? Yes. On purpose. The game walks at the pace of a man on a horse in 1899, and the controls carry the same weight, which turns some players off in the first hours. The mission structure can feel strict when the open world is this free.

None of that dents it for me. This is the one I measure other story games against. Ten out of ten, no asterisk, and I will argue it at any bar in America.