As your main companion that you'll have for the entirety of the game, Red Dead Redemption 2 really brings home the point that your relationship to your horse is important. As your primary mode of transportation and storage (aside from being a loyal companion), your horse will also grow over time with Arthur as you bond with it and can develop its strengths further.

However, the world of Red Dead Redemption 2 is also the home to a number of interesting characters and folks that you'll meet along the way, whether randomly or as part of a side mission. Typically, other characters you'll meet fall into the category of "Strangers" -- side mission characters that you'll find on the map marked by a white question mark -- or Random Encounters, which usually will involve a character seeking assistance on the side of the road or while you are exploring town.

The first Call of Juarez game is a decent Westerns, but it's definitely a B-tier 'play it by the books' sort of shooters. Call of Juarez: Gunslinger not only shakes things up for the franchise, but for the genre as well. You play as the legendary bounty hunter Silas Greaves who recounts his many feats to his fellow bar mates. This may seem like a rote storytelling trope, but the amazing thing here is Silas’ unreliability. He may claim he faced off against a hundred bandits when a patron will call him out on it and the game will literally change before your eyes. The shooting is outstanding, and the cel-shading is like icing on the cake. At max, it’s only $15 too so go on Steam, PSN, or Xbox Live and grab it

Unfortunately, GTAV felt a little too cliché. This is where I get nervous that Red Dead Redemption 2 might lean too heavily on certain tropes. I would much rather see an American western tale that resembles a classic, opposed to a film that has been rebooted as of this year. I do not need a game with big set pieces, explosions and more ammunition falling than the leaves on the trees. I’m going to make one more recommendation of the west I envision opposed to the west presented by Hollywood: the Lonesome Dove series puts on the glitz of western tropes while also doing a great job explaining how people lived at the time. This is more in the style that would be preferred in Red Dead Redemption 2. A game where cowboys are cowboys, people are living by the land they’ve settled and getting along fine with the natives. Yes, there were some bad Tribes, but mostly few and far between.

Red Dead Redemption 2 's scope when it comes to depth and detail aren't just apparent in its Open world games guide and storytelling but also in its gameplay, as the game delivers just as much in action and combat as it does in bringing players a sense of place and immersion. Expanding on many of the systems that we saw from Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto V , Red Dead Redemption 2 's combat expertly delivers the kind of spectacle that its Western setting provides. Throughout the game, players will engage in a variety of missions alongside the rest of the Van der Linde gang ranging from bank heists to train robberies and more, and while I don't want to spoil any of the surprises in store at all, it's easy to say that Red Dead Redemption 2 features some of the most thrilling action sequences and set-pieces that I've ever experienced in a game; they're moments that truly make the game feel like a classic Western come to life.

Aside from the direct ways that you can interact with characters in Red Dead Redemption 2 , there are an even wider range of ways that Rockstar is truly aiming for players to really "live" inside this world by playing as Arthur. This comes down to factors such as eating, sleeping, taking Arthur to the local town barber for a haircut and a shave (if you want his hair or beard longer, you'll have to wait until it grows out), and even down to whether Arthur enters a town armed or unarmed. Naturally, holding your weapon while striding through a town will have its citizens on edge and wary of your actions, while holstering your weapon will make for more civil engagements. As one of the Rockstar reps mentioned as we entered a town, this even extends to the way that you enter a new location on horseback -- a calm trot into town will go over much better than charging headlong into town and (potentially) running over an innocent civilian.

The Red Dead franchise succeeds because it's playing into the most American fantasies of what the Wild West was, while keeping it grounded. It was a time were America was still getting its footing as a new nation. Things were being discovered by a people who had largely still never seen most of what the land had to offer, thus appropriately titled, the Wild West. It seemed like a hellish dreamscape where those from the east coast talked of savages and wild beast, men who idealized the same sort of lawlessness discussed among certain circles. Yet, it was none of these things, for a people having just arrived to a nation, it was much tamer than one might imagine. Instead, it was a place not overly populated and begging for people to settle its lands (I hope we see Natives in this game). The west was a place of opportunity and discovery, somewhere one could make their mark in a relatively easy way (for the time).