Red Dead Redemption II is without a doubt the best Rockstar game, the most mature, deep, heartfelt story set in the beautiful scenery of the Wild West that the gaming industry has ever seen.
Alpine forests, green hills, smoky cities and backwater outposts of turn-of-the-century America. 1899 to be exact; a turbulent period in the history of the young nation when the power of civilization had finally overthrown the lawlessness of the wild West, and power sought to destroy the gangs that had gone unchecked for so long.
Much of the game really does feel like the set of a cowboy western, even when you finally leave the mountains and the world opens up structurally. There's an incredible charm to its world, its complete openness and abandonment of modern short-term attention spans, allowing you as the player to take your time and just roam the wilderness looking for new missions to complete, new animals to hunt, and new secrets to find.
This is a thoughtful and philosophical game in which you collect items one at a time, each with its own individual animation, rather than collecting loot by simply looking at it like in other games. Here you hunt slowly and patiently, you don't have a bottomless inventory, you are able to carry a realistic amount of weapons and items. Fast travel is only possible here through certain points, and your horse is not an eternal, invincible creature. If she dies while you're in the mountains, you'll have to return to town to buy another one on your own - or find someone to rob. Every action has a consequence in Red Dead II, no matter how small, and while some players may not like the slow pace of the game, I think the pace is perfect for something so natural? realistic world.
A few words about performance and graphics: The game's performance itself is really solid, but for those with cheaper computers, it's worth noting that this is an extremely resource-intensive game. However, I haven't encountered any of the persistent crashes or errors reported online. So far, the only issue I've personally encountered is menu glitches when switching HDR from on to off, as well as a glitch when I decided it would be wise to increase MSAA to 8x at 4K resolution.
Moreover, the variety of different graphical and general customizable elements here is especially impressive. Everything from global settings - textures, tessellation, shadows, global illumination - to subtle, local ones: three types of anti-aliasing; several individual settings for far and near volume; increased resolution for clouds; individual settings for reflection and refraction of water; and separate switches for soft shadows, grass shadows and long shadows. In general, with the right skill, anyone with almost any system configuration can easily customize everything for themselves.
The height of technical ambition and creativity for a video game studio to make what it wants, how it wants, in as much time as it wants. Cold and hard statistics explain a lot for a thinking person: thousands of employees working on the game during eight years of development; 1200 motion capture actors; 700 voice actors; about half a million different individual unique animations; untold tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars in budget.
All of the above, even in itself, makes Red Dead Redemption II worthy of attention, if only to see how the smallest details smoothly transition into the grandest areas of the developer's vision. Because Rockstar delivers so much more than just a game—telling its most mature, heartfelt, and human story yet, in a world like no other. And the question isn't, "Is Red Dead Redemption II worth playing?" You simply MUST PLAY - because this is the most, THE MOST perfect and thoughtful open world game since at least The Witcher III...