The game's actual content is estimated between sixty to a hundred hours of gameplay, during which you can watch brilliantly executed cuscenes featuring performance capture and graphic clarity heretofore unrivalled in the video game industry. Or, you can jump right into the bang-bang-shoot gameplay Rockstar Games is known for, heedless of the high drama that propels it as you pursue wealth and hyperviolence. You can also simply take your time to study each and every plant and animal, bond with your horse (or, horses), meet intriguing and entertaining strangers, or participate in one of the most in-depth fishing mechanics ever made for a game ostensibly NOT about fishing. And I haven't even TOUCHED the clothing and hair customization systems yet. The real kicker is, most people do a little of all of this. There's no RIGHT way to play this game. Each and every detail is so well thought out, each contingency accounted for, it feels like you can actually do anything in this game. There's an honor system implemented into rdr2 where each action you take will either put you into the shoes of a good-hearted but misguided outlaw trying to save his family and redeem himself for his checkered past, or a man so convinced of his own evil there's no other way he knows how to interact with the world outside of violence. There's so much nuance in everything about this game that it's managed to keep me riveted after over 5,000 hours and (at time of writing) seven years. I STILL haven't gotten all the story mode achievements for my ps4 version.

All of this is NOT to say that you should be intimidated; far from it. Red Dead 2's introduction to its world doesn't hold your hand, but features are introduced organically in the gameplay itself, so when you saddle up and head into the world outside of story missions, you're already well equipped to handle it.

Its narrative is divided into six chapters and an epilogue, with the opening chapter working to orient you in the world, and introducing you to playing the role of Arthur Morgan, the "enforcer" in the Van der Linde gang. The game opens in a howling blizzard, into which the gang has fled from the law after a heist gone wrong. We don't get many details except the group is composed of a surprising hodgepodge of misfits, including women and a child. Everyone is struggling to survive, and as you progress, you learn to ride your horse through waist-high snow to meet up with your other gang members and find shelter. You learn bits and pieces here through conversations on horseback, the chapter progressing slowly as you rescue a newly widowed woman, Sadie Adler, from a rival gang, go hunting with a mixed race native/black man, Charles Smith, and make plans to rob said rival gang before departing from the harsh snowy mountain. The chapter is one long tutorial that serves the dual purpose of introducing you to the game's controls and features as well as the context that the rest of the narrative is about to unfold from. Chapter one ends in a train heist, with a nod to the classic western "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".

Chapter two begins immediately after, with the gorgeous scenery passing slowly by as the gang members hold conversation with each other in a way that feels so naturalistic as to make you forget you're playing a game in the first place. Arthur and his fellow gang members establish their new hideout camp at Horseshoe Overlook, a plateu with a sprawling view of the Dakota river valley below. It's when this chapter begins that the game really hands you the reins. You can explore camp, interact with everyone, craft tonics and ammo at a campire, jump immediately into a few story focused missions, or saddle up and leave as soon as you like.

I'm not going to go too far into the plot, but Red Dead's story is a notoriously heart-wrenching tragedy interspersed with moments of genuine thrills, laughs, and awe that are difficult to explain without seeing for yourself. It's a meditation on mortality, the ephemeral nature of life, and the hole you leave in other people when you're gone. Over the course of your game, you're with Arthur for every moment, you watch him as the story changes who he is, forces him to confront the things he's done and the things he's going to do, and you watch him decide to choose love and kindness over loyalty. You watch this man as he gets news that changes his perspective on EVERYTHING, and no matter your playstyle, his story only has one end. (Metaphorically. The game has two slightly different endings.)
And that's really the heart of the story right there; the end. As soon as you get that news, you know how this ends. The moments in between, your adventures lose their lightheartedness and whimsy and the tone shifts to a deep melancholy and existential introspection. You can choose to let Arthur extend the hand of mercy and help the people you encounter, trying to ease the weight of his past sins, or you can choose to save the effort and focus on helping Arthur and the few in his inner circle. You can decide if he takes that news of his imminent death and makes the last of his days worth it, or if he's going to keep going as he is until the very end, a victim of the same violence that he enacted on an innocent stranger.

Red Dead's gut-punch narrative wouldn't be possible without its absolutely incredible character acting. Protagonist Arthur Morgan, played by Roger Clark, is the obvious standout. His performance had to walk a fine line for such a massive title; his personality had to be expressive and distinct enough to be believable as his own character within the narrative, but fluid enough to allow for player autonomy in decisions that account for honor level. In the end, I think the writers and developers managed to pull off the honor system and its interplay with Arthur's personality almost flawlessly. Regardless of playstyle, Arthur Morgan FEELS like Arthur Morgan; sarcastic, rough-and-tumble, loyal to a fault, but with an intriguingly low sense of self worth. His journal also offers a fascinating glimpse into his inner thoughts; reading through it as you progress in the game, you can see his internal conflicts about the people around him, the decisions he has no choice but to work with, his past romance, his deep regrets, and his wavering loyalty to his father figure/mentor Dutch Van der Linde.