Red Dead Redemption 2’s world is breathtaking in new 4K trailer for PC port

By Taylor Lyles Published October 17, 2019

Rockstar Games has released a new trailer for the impending PC port of Red Dead Redemption 2. Not surprisingly, the new trailer highlights all the latest technical enhancements the upcoming port will bring, including the lush countryside and realistic fur textures.

The minute-long trailer does not highlight anything regarding the game’s main missions. The trailer instead focuses on one of the game’s most significant selling points — a vast open world with new technical enhancements to increase your immersion. You’ll be able to roam on your noble steed in the Heartlands plains, trot around the murky swamps of Lemoyne, and venture out on the cobblestone roads of Saint Denis. Even though Red Dead Redemption 2 has been out for nearly a year, Rockstar Games successfully manages to keep the game fresh for all players.

Red Dead Redemption 2 — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Of course, this is not just a direct port of the console versions with pretty 4K visuals and 60 frames per second. The PC version will also introduce new content to both the game’s story mode and its online option, Red Dead Online. Players will also find an increased draw distance, new bounties and horses, HDR support, unlocked resolution and frame rate, and much more. So, even if you have already sunk in hundreds of hours into the game like me, this version will still have plenty of new content you cannot experience anywhere else.

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Interestingly enough, the game’s system requirements are not as demanding as you may have imagined. But you’re going to need to clear out 150GB of free space if you want to run this Wild West adventure.

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Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC is slated to launch on November 5 and will be accessible on a few different digital storefronts, including the Epic Games Store, Steam, and Rockstar’s own games launcher. However, if you decide to buy the game on the Rockstar Games launcher and pre-order it by Tuesday, October 22, you will receive two free classic Rockstar Games titles, free of charge. These include Bully: Scholarship Edition, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and L.A. Noire: The Complete Edition. There are also in-game bonus items such as 50 gold bars for Red Dead Online.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Based out of Baltimore, Maryland, Taylor is a contributing writer for Digital Trends covering the latest news in the computer…

Gaming

Rockstar Games’ co-founder just formed an ‘absurd’ new studio

A man drives away in a boat with stolen money in Grand Theft Auto 5 art.

Dan Houser, a co-founder of Rockstar Games and one of the people behind the creation of series like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, has unveiled his new studio, Absurd Ventures.

Dan Houser was a stalwart figure at Rockstar Games since its founding and had a hand in the creative aspects of pretty much every game in the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series, along with other titles like Bully and Max Payne 3. Following an "extended break" following the release of Red Dead Redemption 2, as well as some controversy surrounding some reported issues with the game's creative development, Rockstar Games' parent company Take-Two Interactive announced that Houser had left the company in early 2020. He's had a relatively low-profile since then outside of serving on the board of a blockchain company, but now looks to be fully invested in Absurd Ventures, a company he technically founded in 2021.
Absurd Ventures is finally being revealed more publicly now, and Houser did so with an intentionally absurd announcement trailer and website with the tagline "Storytelling, Philanthropy, Ultraviolence." According to a tweet by Geoff Keighley, the actual main goal of Absurd Ventures is "building narrative worlds, creating characters, and writing stories for a diverse variety of genres, without regard to medium, to be produced for live-action and animation, video games and other interactive content, books, graphic novels, and scripted podcasts."
Absurd Ventures
It seems like Houser wants to make a creative think tank that can craft ideas that are then realized in a variety of creative mediums. It doesn't seem quite like any other game developer or movie studio out there, so it will be very interesting to see what the minds at Absurd Ventures are eventually able to come up with.

Gaming

Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2’s new trailer is frighteningly immersive

Senua looks into the water in Hellblade 2

During the Xbox Games Showcase today, we got a new look at Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 and learned that it will come out next year.

After a brief introduction from Senua actor Melina Juergens, we jumped into nearly four minutes of gameplay. We see Senua explore a misty, mysterious cave that seems to be shifting all around her. Senua continues to struggle with the voices in her head, which eventually lead her to look at her reflection in the water and proclaim that everything she's done has led her to this place. She then gets pulled into the water at the end of the trailer.

Gaming

Dead Island 2’s Amazon Alexa voice commands are novel, but limited

Dani lights a cigarette as zombies attack her from behind in Dead Island 2 key art.

I’ve always found myself interested in new technologies that could possibly enhance how we play or experience games. Whether it’s a computing innovation like cloud gaming or new controller features like the DualSense’s Haptic Feedback and Adaptive Triggers, I love testing those things out. That’s why I jumped at the opportunity to try Alexa Game Control during my recent hands-on preview experience with Dead Island 2.
When Dambuster Studios and Deep Silver’s Dead Island 2 finally launches on April 21, it will be the first game to support Alexa Game Control. By connecting one’s Amazon account to the game, players can use the voice-recognition capabilities of Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa to perform in-game actions like taunting zombies or equipping their best weapons. I was curious to see just how deep this went, but after some hands-on time, this first implementation of it proved to be little more than a novelty.

Hey, Alexa
Dead Island 2 players can toggle Alexa Game Control on when they first show up in Bel-Air after the game’s opening. It has a dedicated tab in the Options Menu where players can choose to enable or disable it, choose whether they want it to work automatically or with push to talk, set the voice capture threshold, and decide which microphone they wish to use.
After enabling Alexa Game Control, I immediately noticed a ring at the bottom-left corner of the screen. When I spoke, this lit up with blue and teal colors, like the top ring on an Alexa device, and text confirming whether it could do the action or not would appear. Not having to say “Hey, Alexa” also means it implemented itself into the game smoothly. At first, I tried to see if voice commands would work for basic things like walking, jumping, and dodging, to no avail. After this, I hopped to a save I had placed later in the game and opened its tutorial menu to see what Alexa Game Control could really do.
Reading its tutorials and lists of commands, the limits of Alexa Game Control became clear. It mainly provides quick shortcuts to save you a button press or two in the middle of playing. In Dead Island 2, Alexa Game Control has four main uses: setting waypoints, taunting enemies, triggering emotes, and switching weapons. The tutorial menus give a complete list of commands that work, although each wildly varies in its usefulness.
Oi, zombie!
The funniest use of this voice technology in Dead Island 2 is taunting zombies. Shouting something like “Hey, dude” or “Oi, zombie” to get the attention of enemies that hadn’t detected me always made me chuckle. It’s also occasionally useful; at one point, I got a bunch of zombies to walk into a large pool of acid and die after taunting them. While it takes the same amount of time as walking up to the zombie to get their attention, I see the potential in voice technology that lets you interact with the world like this.