Streamer Crayator's first shot at beating Red Dead Redemption 2, live, without a single death, ended nine-and-a-half hours in when Arthur Morgan somehow hit his head at top speed on horseback, chasing after a train in true old west movie fashion. Replays don't really make clear what happened, but he died. The second attempt came to a halt at two hours when he was mauled, hilariously, by a grizzly bear as an NPC sat nearby doing nothing about it.
This might have made viewers wonder if this deathless run attempt, Crayator's attempt to beat Grand Theft Auto 5 with no deaths, would end in defeat. He'd attempted GTA 5 eight times before giving up on it.
As reported by our friends at GamesRadar+, streamer Crayator knocked it out on the third attempt. The third run took about 30 hours—pretty speedy for such a long game—capping off a week of streaming and 45 hours total over the three attempts to beat the game and its epilogue seamlessly, without dying.
WITHOUT DYING, we completed Red Dead Redemption 2, we played the 55 hour long game, without dying ONCE. Now to do the Epilogue! Here is a moment that will go down in history pic.twitter.com/sMsgmkhNDwNovember 7, 2024
It's no mean feat to accomplish because so much of it is down to luck. Do you get a bad spawn of bandits from nowhere that try to take you down and get a lucky headshot on Arthur, ending the attempt from things you can't control? Do you remember the missions well enough to take on any vicious gotchas that pop up, like surprise riflemen on high ground?
Either way, Crayator has made it through. He has now decided to 100% the game, gathering everything, exploring every special nook, and hunting every beastie—which will take a hell of a lot longer in the giant scale of Rockstar's fictional American West.
Red Dead Redemption's massive scale makes it the kind of game we'll be learning new things about for some time yet. Just this year, for example, motion actor Roger Clark warned us of the sheer pain his thighs were in for from all that crouch-running.