Map Spoilers Below
Red Dead Redemption 2, for the most part, doesn’t track with what we might expect out of a Western, and the map reflects that. At the start of the game the gang is running from a job gone wrong in Blackwater, which you may remember as the final city of the first game. And while you come close to that place in an early mission that sees you rescuing a charming lad from some bounty hunters, that failed job is represented by the bright red “Wanted: Dead or Alive” indicator that looms over Blackwater in the Southwestern corner of your map. That, combined with the fact that the characters are constantly talking about how they can’t go West, gets the point across loud and clear: this is a Western, but we’re going East.
This is borne out through the rest of the game, which shunts you over to a stand-in for Louisiana, complete with the sprawling New Orleans-like metropolis of Saint Denis. After that we move up to coal mining territory in Appalachia before spreading out a little bit North and back West for the game’s conclusion. It’s not an unheard-of interpretation of a Western, but you definitely aren’t spending a whole lot of time with open plains and dramatic, jutting rock formations like we expect to see in a Western.
Don’t Keep Reading If You Want To Avoid Spoilers
Turns out that’s not entirely the case. Check this out:
You see Blackwater there? There’s a whole lot more after that. I first started to wonder about this when Rockstar debuted a guide to the wildlife in its world a few weeks back. One of the creatures it listed was a Gila Monster, which seemed awfully out of place in the game areas you spend most of the story in. Turns out it has a home here after all.
Once the game’s “main story” ends we start an extended epilogue that takes place “some years later.” Some years, apparently, is enough time for the law in Blackwater to ease up on the whole “Wanted Dead or Alive” concept, because that red indicator is gone. After one of the missions sent me down to Blackwater for a meeting, I got curious and started riding west. I kept riding, and riding, and riding.
As it turns out essentially 2/3 of the original game’s map is in Red Dead Redemption 2, updated with modern graphics and jaw-droppingly beautiful. From a square footage point of view we’ve got everything save the Mexico portions, and who knows? Those could come out later. It’s tough to explain the feeling I got when I first galloped back out onto those wide open stretches of desert: after so many hours in hazy swamps and cramped hillsides it was like I was back in a Western again.
It’s too bad that the game walls this stuff off until you’re done with the long, rough story mode. Many people, I’m sure, will never see it. But it’s a staggering moment when you realize just how far this thing goes, and I hope it’s put to good use in Red Dead Online. This is a game world that goes from Appalachia to Arizona, and I’m still sort of floored by that.
