Far Cry 5's recent 60FPS patch has us yearning for another upgrade to an open world American epic. Yep, Rockstar's wild west romp Red Dead Redemption 2 has been one of our most wanted candidates for a next-gen upgrade for years at this point, so much so that we're trying our best to will it into existence in 2023.
You might be thinking, 'why now?". Well, believe it or not Red Dead 2 is five years old this year, so what better way to celebrate its fifth birthday than by properly introducing it to modern consoles? It's kind of hard to believe that Rockstar's sprawling American adventure is half a decade old this year - it only feels like a couple of years ago that we were frolicking around in Strawberry taking names and faking our own. Jim Milton you say? He'd want 60 frames per-second, if he had any idea what that was.
On that last point, we must admit, 60FPS is almost all this game needs to feel modern. RDR2 still looks superb, especially on Xbox Series X where the Xbox One X version shines in lovely 4K. Sure, Rockstar could probably add some other cowbells and whistles to the title — much like its recent GTA5 upgrade — but the game certainly doesn't need much else.
Smoother frame rates have become a massive selling point for us this generation and going back to 30FPS is just downright tough. It's doable, especially in a title that's quite slow to control like RDR2, but something just doesn't feel right playing at that lower frame rate target these days. Especially when in the back of your mind you know that this thing could, and maybe should be running at 60.
The prospect of a re-release does throw up other potential options, such as a brand-new expansion or some other noteworthy update to justify Rockstar inevitably charging for the game once again. But, considering Rockstar's general direction in recent years, we can't imagine that anything like Red Dead 1's 'Undead Nightmare' is in the works - the team seems to have deviated from single-player expansions these days.
To be honest, we'd like a simple frame rate unlock patch as much as anything else, especially when that'd mean we could keep the game and its gargantuan file size on an external hard drive. We're not picky Rockstar, we just want to see this amazing title fully updated for Xbox Series X and S!