I only recently got to the end of Red Dead Redemption 2, some four-and-a-bit years after it came out. I put that down to the fact that the game’s stunning world was far more engaging to me than the overly prescriptive cookie-cutter missions (which I wrote about a short while back). It was a game that, during the height of the pandemic, was a way for me to experience some semblance of nature and grand adventure, which me and everyone else was deprived of throughout 2020 and 2021.
But now that things have somewhat normalised, I’ve gone back to being an obsessive completionist (at least of a game’s main story) and finally got round to finishing Red Dead 2. I wasn’t massively compelled to keep going after the story ended and John was all settled in at Beecher’s Hope, but there was just one thing left in the game that really pricked my curiosity. That was the New Austin region – the setting where much of Red Dead Redemption 1 takes place, and which is teased as a place you can go in the sequel.
Bizzarely, the story never takes you to this sizable corner of the map. During one of the later missions in the epilogue with the wildest woman in the west Sadie Adler, the camera casts your gaze over the arid Cholla Springs area of New Austin, where in the distance through the shimmering desert heat you can just about glimpse the town of Armadillo – the wonderfully archetypal frontier town that’s the first major place you visit in the original game.
When I first started galloping towards Armadillo from Beecher’s Hope, I didn’t believe that the game would actually let me get that far. I assumed that there would be a sheer drop from a cliff that you couldn’t get down from, and that Armadillo was just an untextured cluster of buildings in distant, unreachable, untextured land designed to tease the setting of the first game while not actually letting you explore it.
It’s only once I got down into those dusty plains that I began to entertain the idea that maybe – just maybe – Rockstar had, for some reason, made New Austin accessible. As I approached Armadillo, I was awaiting a single bullet to end my foolish pursuit, or for my ‘Wanted’ level to suddenly shoot up. At one point, a pair of Mexican banditos stopped me in the road, and I figured this would be the moment where my journey to Armadillo came to an end. But after disposing of the miscreants with relative ease, the path was clear to my destination.
It was an incredible moment realising that Armadillo, along with the entirety of the original Red Dead Redemption map (outside Mexico), was here in RDR 2, even though it serves no meaningful purpose to the story. In fact, the entire region is so scarce that it almost makes you wonder if it was going to contain more content before Rockstar decided to reel in the scope of the sequel a bit.
But while it’s hardly fleshed out, some work clearly went into it. Armadillo is not in a good way in Red Dead Redemption 2, blighted by a succession of plagues and disease outbreaks that have left the town in ruins, while Tumbleweed, the town abandoned in Red Dead Redemption (which is set several years later), is plodding along just fine, and you can even team up with the local sheriff to combat the local Mexican Del Lobo gang. More intrepid explorers will even find recognisable buildings like the Macfarlane Ranch and the house of the gollum-like Seth Briars, as well as all kinds of curious little easter eggs.
Having this whole state in Red Dead 2 at all feels like one great big easter egg. By this point in the game, you’re well armed, levelled up in all the key skills, and don’t have the story looming over you any more. This makes exploring this area relatively stress-free – a trip down memory lane you get as a reward for completing the main game. As you set foot in this familiar but visually refreshed old land, suddenly you start remembering all these places that made an impression on you back when you played the first game (a long time ago, in my case), and you feel compelled to check in on them. I spent a good five hours lolloping around New Austin, revisiting the old towns and forts that I used to roam all those years ago.
The inclusion of this big and entirely out-the-way region can probably be attributed to the fact that it’s largely desert scrubland – classic Wild West territory with cacti, sandy ground, and smooth rusty-hued rocks sticking out of the undulating terrain. On a technical level, it feels less detailed and meticulously designed than other regions of Red Dead 2, which makes sense as the landmass is based on a game from 2010, when games had far less capacity for diverse terrain and landscapes.
New Austin may not be as visually spectacular as most of RDR 2’s other settings and states, but there’s something distinctly ‘Western’ about this region that you just don’t see in the rest of the game. It feels like the Wild West through the lens of 1950s movies and popular culture. Gallivanting around it with no ties or obligations to anyone other than whoever offers you a good price for the region’s bounties makes you feel like the classic western loner – Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name, whose true purpose and goals are a mystery.
While the scarcity of this region puts into perspective the massive progress made in the eight years between Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2, it also made me yearn for the original game’s more classical take on the Wild West. With Rockstar seemingly shelving their plans for a Red Dead Redemption Remaster, for now I’ll have to content myself with exploring gaming’s quintessential Western region in this small corner of Red Dead Redemption 2.
