Red Dead Redemption 2 has a heavy emphasis on exploration, and one of the things you'll find while exploring the frontier are strangers. With this being the Old West, you'll find characters both good and bad - and there's a surprising amount of depth to each encounter.
Rockstar have made a big deal of the fact that you can interact with any character, but more importantly that you can choose how you interact with them too. Arthur can antagonise or calmly approach a given NPC, and some will even challenge him to specific battles. Gamespot noted how one encounter saw them enter a bet with a Mexican gunfighter - one they subsequently lost. The true depth of this encounter, however, is best shown by the fact that the game doesn't force you to hand over your dough - it has to be a voluntary transaction.
One can only speculate as to what would happen if you refused to fork over the cash, but exemplifies perfectly just how Red Dead's gameplay encourages players to make their own stories. Of course there's an overarching narrative to invest in, but as players explore the Old West, they're going to make their own adventures. That, more than anything, is what's so exciting about this prequel.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
