Watch the first trailer for 'Red Dead Redemption 2'

By Gabe Gurwin October 20, 2016

Red Dead Redemption 2 Trailer

After officially announcing Red Dead Redemption 2 earlier this week to whet our appetites, Rockstar Games finally pulled back the curtain today with the game’s first trailer. If you were expecting a happy-go-lucky version of the Old West, you’re going to be in for surprise — this might be the grimmest game Rockstar has ever made.

Over ominous strings and piano, we see a forest littered with wildlife ranging from deer to rabbits. Though mother nature still appears to be in control of the region, humanity encroaches as several settlers huddle around a small campfire in the dark. Elsewhere, a rancher leads a horse through a field and two settlers in a kayak paddle down a nearby river.

Though it was speculated that the game would take place before a rail system had been built, and could thus see the return of several of the original game’s characters in a prequel, this appears to be incorrect: a train, with smoke billowing from the top, speeds down a track as buffalo walk past.

In a nearby town, which appears to be located next to an oil drill of some sort, we see our first hint of conflict in Red Dead Redemption 2. All buildings are set ablaze, and a lone man riding a horse over to investigate.

“Listen to me. When the time comes, you’ve got to run and don’t look back,” an unidentified man — possibly the same person — says. “This is over.”

Could this be the voice of John Marston, the protagonist from the previous game? It’s impossible to know for sure, because even though his voice doesn’t appear to be the same as Marston’s in Red Dead Redemption, voice actor Rob Wiethoff has effectively left acting behind completely and the role could have been re-cast.

Red Dead Redemption 2 will release for both Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in the fall of 2017. Rockstar Games has still not confirmed or denied that a PC version exists.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…

Gaming

Grand Theft Auto 6 is getting its first trailer sooner than you think

Trevor firing an assault rifle in GTA 5.

After a decades-long wait, Grand Theft Auto 6 is finally making its formal debut. Rockstar announced that the first trailer for the anticipated open-world game will drop in early December.

It's no stretch to call Grand Theft Auto 6 the most anticipated video game of all time. It's been 10 years since the mega-successful Grand Theft Auto 5 launched and fans have been itching for news on a sequel since. That impatience boiled over last year when Rockstar suffered a major security breach that saw early footage from the game leaking. Now the studio is finally ready to reveal the game on its own terms.

Gaming

Red Dead Redemption is coming to Nintendo Switch and PS4 this month

red dead redemption switch ps4 release date key art

The original Red Dead Redemption is coming to two new platforms, PS4 and Nintendo Switch, later this month. It'll retail for $50 on both platforms.
Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare Coming to Switch and PS4
Rockstar Games' open-world western game first launched in 2010 for Xbox 360 and PS3. It was critically acclaimed and a smash sales hit, creating a new franchise for Rockstar that could stand alongside the likes of Grand Theft Auto. It received a sequel, Red Dead Redemption 2, in 2019, but the original Red Dead Redemption remained stuck on older platforms outside of backward compatibility support on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
That's why fans got excited when a rating for the game from the Game Rating and Administration Committee of Korea popped up. We've now learned that this rating is for new Nintendo Switch and PS4 ports of Red Dead Redemption by Double Eleven Studios. Red Dead Redemption will release across both of those platforms digitally on August 17, with a physical launch to follow on October 13.

It will cost $50 and includes the base campaign as well as the zombie-infested Undead Nightmare expansion; the Red Dead Online multiplayer is not included. This is the first time Red Dead Redemption will ever be on a Nintendo system, although it doesn't look like the port will have much in the way of Switch-exclusive features. That said, a press release does reveal that this will be the first version of the game to include Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese localizations.
Red Dead Redemption comes out on PS4 and Nintendo Switch on August 17.

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.