I already knew it from playing days worth of the console version. It's hard to believe RDR2 is so deep and wide and is also a cohesive, playable thing. Like how my friends' characters flinch when I fire a gun near them, how animal carcasses decompose over time, how NPCs react to a muddy or bloody outfit accordingly, how busting through a doorway scares everyone on the other side. The mind-boggling detail making up the massive world of RDR2 speaks to the creative force of a development team with an acute, obsessive dedication to realism (and all the money and time necessary to make it happen). Anytime I pay attention and look closely, RDR2 rewards my curiosity. Some wolf tracks marked the snow in the same direction.
I heard the clap of a gunshot in the distance. Just hours before corpse-bowling I went on a solo hike through snowy forests, stepping in the long shadows cast across the snow by the rising moon. It's just about whatever you need it to be, and good at it too. Red Dead Redemption 2 can be the biggest, dumbest videogame ball pit for impulsive children, a harrowing story about the forced dissolution of community, or simply a serene and contemplative hiking simulator. Chen defends us, but doesn't make it back to the tracks. As the train comes around again, another posse tries to take us out. Die in Red Dead Redemption 2's shared open world and you'll respawn fast enough to carry your own corpse around. Red Dead Redemption 2, like GTA 5, has its own bowling minigame, we explain to Chen in a roundabout way, his horror inverting into blissful awareness. My posse got the idea to jump in front of the train after a few rounds of Lasso Your Friends And Toss Them Into The Sea with a couple friendly strangers. We're on round two of growing the recursive corpse pile.