2010 was, as probably most people don’t need reminding, a long time ago. At the time I was 21, in my final year of university, unsure of what career I’d like to pursue. The coalition government of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had just come to power in the UK. Lady Gaga and Beyonce were in the charts with their hit “Telephone”. And Rockstar San Diego had launched Red Dead Redemption on 18th May, their open world follow up to the rather mediocre Red Dead Revolver.
Slightly more than 14 years have passed since then, in which time not only has Red Dead Redemption 2 been released to essentially universal acclaim in 2018, but the PC version for the sequel also arrived in 2019. However, the original game languished for years purely on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, getting Xbox One backwards compatibility in 2016 and finally getting a Switch and PS4 version last year. And now, at long last, the PC has been graced with the original game, modernized with one or two bells and whistles but essentially, just a straight port of the Game of the Year Edition of the game from 2011, with the Undead Nightmare DLC bundled in, retailing for £39.99 (or $49.99).
In 2010, I remember looking at Red Dead Redemption with excitement. It was just the kind of game I had hoped Rockstar would be making after Grand Theft Auto; a western, a little more serious, and with a huge open world not constrained within a single city. I had never owned a console at that point growing up exclusively playing PC games, and I wouldn’t buy a PS3 until I moved out of my parents house a few years later. Judging from previous experience of how Grand Theft Auto IV had been released on PC six months after consoles, I thought we’d get a PC version of Red Dead Redemption by Christmas 2010. Let’s just say, I had a long wait.
In fact I gave up waiting somewhere around 2014; got a PS3, and played Red Dead Redemption the only way that was available at glorious 640×1152 resolution, locked at 30fps. I enjoyed it a lot, but struggled massively with the controls. Not having grown up with a console, the shooting with a controller always felt swimmy and imprecise, my control over the reticle not always lining up where I expected it and relying on the Dead Eye ability when hunting. I didn’t actually finish the game because the controls never felt natural to me.
I am now only a few months off 36, with my entire working life so far having taken place in the time between Red Dead Redemption’s original release, and the PC release. I’m not going to say it was “worth the wait” but thankfully, the PC version of Red Dead Redemption is a very proficient port. The game runs very smoothly and has a less than 10GB install size, which is great considering Red Dead Redemption 2 requires 150GB. The resolution of course has had a massive boost since the PS3/Xbox 360 era, and although the texture quality is now looking fairly dated, the aesthetics of the game remain immaculate. The desert plains around Armadillo or the rolling hills of MacFarlane’s Ranch are still gorgeous and populated with loads of wildlife (which you can shoot and skin, obviously). There is no added functionality (no in-game photo mode for example), but it’s still a well optimized port.
Since Red Dead Redemption 2 includes half of the entire map of the original game within it (although inaccessible for most of the game outside of multiplayer), players used to the lush graphics of the sequel may be slightly put off by such a significant graphical step backwards, but the style of the first game was an evolutionary step in the Rockstar formula, still relying on linear missions but with a greater variety of open world side activities as well as minor side stories, which were first introduced in Grand Theft Auto IV. You can see the through-line to Grand Theft Auto V, particularly in the variety of wildlife in the world and the little details added here and there.
There are some gameplay aspects I actually prefer in the original game compared to the sequel. In Red Dead Redemption 2, hunting allows you to craft a variety of better equipment, including better satchels and special outfits. In the first game, while you need to hunt various things to complete challenges, there aren’t loads of unlockables tied to it and more importantly, the concept of pelt quality doesn’t exist, meaning that you don’t have to be really careful about how you hunt. Kill the animal, skin it and you’re done. Controlling your horse is pretty much the same across both but the ability to keep pace with an AI rider is improved in the sequel, although it’s perfectly usable here.
The price Rockstar (and more broadly, 2K’s CEO Strauss Zelnick) are asking to enjoy Red Dead Redemption on your personal computer at the moment is far too high to recommend before a significant sale, but this port should hopefully open the door for more modding opportunities which have been enjoyed by the likes of Grand Theft Auto V, despite Rockstar’s best efforts to prevent it. Red Dead Redemption has certainly aged like a fine wine, still retaining its satisfying gameplay and an enormous, gorgeous wild west to explore. I just wish PC players hadn’t had to wait so long to see it on their computers.
Because hardly any of them will even buy or play it, even after 14 years.