Red Dead Redemption 2 Announced

Forget Red Dead Retribution, Rebellion, Revenge, Reciprocation or even Redintegration... it's just "Red Dead Redemption 2". Yes, Rockstar could have used another word starting with 're', but "Red Dead Redemption" has greater brand recognition than "Red Dead", we guess.

Rockstar has officially announced Red Dead Redemption 2 earlier today. The announcement is a more detailed version of the second teaser image that was published in the past few days. Instead of being mere silhouettes, the seven cowboys on the poster are now a tad more detailed.

Naturally, players have already swooped in to attempt to identify who these seven bandits could be, and if any of them have been seen before in the Red Dead franchise. That said, chances of any character returning from Revolver are slim, as besides sharing the same basic theme and the first two words in the title, it has pretty much nothing to do with Redemption.

One user in the comments, "XxdoctorpurpxX", provided the best and most plausible list of characters, from left to right:

John Marston
Unidentifiable
Dutch Van Der Linde
Unidentifiable (possibly new protagonist?)
Bill Williamson
Unidentifiable (90% sure that's Landon Ricketts)
Unidentifiable

It's clear that Rockstar will be introducing some new characters in the sequel/prequel. In spite of the title suggesting a followup to 2010's Red Dead Redemption, the presence of John Marston rules that out, practically confirming this game as a prequel story (if it is indeed Marston). Either that, or the game will have two concurrent storylines running through different timelines.

Based on the post, the game will be released sometime during the fall of 2017 on the Xbox One and Playstation 4. The post tantalizingly fails to mention anything about a PC version for the game. On the one hand, based on the release model of GTA 5, chances are the PC port will be released further down the line.

However, keep in mind that the GTA franchise has always had a presence on PC, with every major installment having been released on that platform too. Red Dead, on the other hand, has never touched the PC before, so we're looking at the rather grim possibility that this won't change (we think/hope a very slim possibility though!). That said, some are saying that unless Rockstar throws out an RDR PC port to boost the marketing of RD3 RDR2, you may not be aiming your revolver with a mouse any time soon...

As things stand, information about the game is scarce, however this is poised to change later this week on the 20th, when Rockstar will release the first trailer for the game. Since this will be the first trailer of Red Dead Redemption 2 to surface, chances are it will be a vague teaser with little by way of concrete info — hell, it could be a cinematic trailer with zero gameplay.

This bombastic announcement came in after two days of teasing. Rockstar first changed its logo on every social media outlet to red on a black background, after which it released an image of the inverse separately. The company then published the poster with the sunset and the severn cowboy silhouettes, which was touched up for today's reveal.

In an interesting turn of events, the domain name "reddeadonline.com" was recently nabbed by Take-Two Interactive and currently redirects users to the Rockstar Games website. While the wording of the announcement seems to indicate that the multiplayer aspect will only be in addition to a traditional single player mode, fans have been fearing that the success of GTA Online will hurt the story mode of any upcoming Rockstar game.

Red Dead Redemption 2 will release worldwide in Fall 2017 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One systems.
An epic tale of life in America’s unforgiving heartland, the game's vast and atmospheric world will also provide the foundation for a brand new online multiplayer experience.

Because this is a AAA production and this is 2016, obviously you can already pre-order the game for the standard price of $59.99 via the official Red Dead Redemption 2 website. That said, there's a fair chance that there will be special editions up for grabs later on, so we'd suggest holding off on that pre-order.