What a week for Rockstar fans it has been; the rumors, the build up, the confirmation, and now an official trailer drop for Red Dead Redemption 2.
Now that we have a trailer to pore over, it finally feels like we can see the game coming towards us across the barren wasteland of the next year. Right now the game is still just a hazy outline silhouetted against the sun; the trailer seems like more of an attempt to convey the atmosphere of the game world rather than show how we’ll play in it.
That said, Rockstar knows fans are going to be picking these trailers apart like vultures over a dead buffalo, so it’s likely everything they show will have some significance.
Bearing that in mind, here are 5 ways we think the new trailer is showing us how we’ll play.
Camping
A quick glimpse of a man at a campfire - under quite possibly the starriest sky we’ve ever seen - suggests Red Dead Redemption 2 will feature camping.
If the diverse landscape shown in the trailer is anything to go by, this game is going to have a large map and travelling at night in an open game world isn’t usually the safest idea.
Setting up camp is usually a seamless means of allowing players to restore health, craft and repair items. Marshmallows and singalongs are less likely.
Hunting
A man walking with a dead deer slung over the back of his horse is a fairly good sign that hunting will make a return Red Dead Redemption 2.
Whether or not you’ll be able to actually carry your kills is unclear, but it would make for a good way to realistically limit the amount you can carry and provide an interesting new inventory management tool.
Gathering gangs
The last shot of the trailer looks much like a Magnificent Seven scene. It’s a very safe bet to say that Red Dead Redemption 2 will feature some kind of gang mechanic.
This won’t necessarily be in the main game, it could just be a glimpse at something that will be possible in the planned online multiplayer mode.
Rockstar has brought gangs into GTA Online and made them work well, so it makes sense they would bring them to their latest online offering. Allowing players to gather up a posse of their friends and raise hell fits seamlessly into the wild west game world.
Trading
Trading, buying, selling - a shot of a general store suggests you’ll be able to do all these things in Red Dead Redemption 2.
Squinting at the storefront told us you can buy fresh fruit, whiskey, groceries, dry goods, cloth linen, meats, tobacco, and soap all of which are items players can commonly carry in open world games to restore health as well as craft and repair items.
Travelling
It also looks like there’s going to be more than one way to travel across the Red Dead Redemption 2 map.
In various shots of the trailer we see horses, carriages, a steam train and even a canoe all of which seem like perfect methods of travel to extend to the player and make moving across the game world fun and interesting.
Spending hours looking at a horse's backside does get pretty boring.
