The Red Dead Redemption PC port isn’t a GTA Trilogy-style disaster, it’s now the best way to play the game

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There’s something almost eerie about playing Red Dead Redemption 1 at 120fps. The game, having been on the Xbox 360 for so long, has come to serve in my mind as something of an emblem for that entire era of consoles. Seeing John Marston completely dazzled in the latest DLSS and 4K HDR feels a bit like someone put a subtle but entirely new instrument into a classic song I know by heart. Not bad, but it creates a feeling as if you have quietly switched to an almost imperceptibly different branch of reality.

But as alternate universes go, this is a pretty good one. Don’t worry, folks, Rockstar has dealt with the tragedy of the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition. In the few hours I’ve spent with the game since launch (mostly on my PC, but a little on Steam Deck) this is by far the best way to play the classic.

Frontier spirit

I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of people reading this already know very well what Red Dead Redemption 1 is about, so I won’t spend too long going over the details. But if you’re brand new, this is a dressed up version of the 2010 game set after Red Dead Redemption 2. It’s 1911 and you are John Marston, former member of the outlaw Van der Linde gang, who has been blackmailed by the government into rounding up the surviving members. That is, when you’re not busy with one of well over a dozen side quests to become America’s greatest hiker, gambler, trapper, goalie, and a hundred other cowboy-flavored nouns.

Or, you know, it’s GTA with horses. It’s really much more GTA than the sequel, you know. This is the Rockstar of 2010: 2008’s GTA 4 was certainly an attempt at weighty, emotional storytelling, but it was still a studio you associated more with ridiculous pastiches – San Andreas, Vice City – than serious attempts to Storytelling with capital letters.

That’s one of the things that made RDR1 so surprising; John Marston was an interesting, layered character in a morally complex setting. He wasn’t Carl Johnson donning a jetpack and beating people to death with a dildo (although it’s on PC now, anything is possible with mods). But there still is some of them: crazy, offbeat characters that pretty much consist of one joke repeated anauseum, like your grave-robbing ally Seth or the pathetic racial scientist Harold MacDougal.

They are characters that fit perfectly into the most bizarre GTA story. That stuff is still there in bits and pieces in the sequel, sure, but it’s louder and more concentrated here. This is a rougher, less refined story than RDR2’s, but it’s still worth hearing.

The Lone High Dynamic Ranger

But enough about the story we probably all already know. How does the thing work? walk? The short answer is: like a dream. Rockstar and Double Eleven have taken the game lightly, in contrast to the disastrously thorough tinkering that Grove Street Games gave to the GTA trilogy for the Definitive Edition, and the result is a game that I think will run on just about any device. at hand. This thing runs on Switch, which produces about as many teraflops as an early modern water wheel.

But there are some nice fications. For starters, there’s now true HDR, which looked absolutely beautiful as I wandered the open plains around Armadillo. The sky turned such a lush orange that, when I had to turn the setting off to take screenshots for this article, the game’s colors, as they first appeared, seemed downright dull in comparison.

Plus, of course, the whole thing now runs at modern resolutions, avoiding the muddy, ugly experience we had with the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection before 2.0. John Marston is sharper than ever, luxuriously spread across every pixel of both my 4K TV and my 1440p monitor. At whatever framerate he wants, because this is still, at its core, a game designed for 2010 technology.

My only negative, and it is very minor, that I have encountered so far? The DLSS. Not even the whole thing. 95% of the time, keeping DLSS frame generation active (which in itself is a bit absurd to turn on for a game this old) makes the game run at even more obscene framerates, which is exactly what I want . But there are sometimes problems with the user interface, especially indoors.

I often noticed that the game would double the activity and player icons when I waved the minimap around, an issue caused by DLSS getting a bit confused about exactly which frames to generate. Like I said, a very minor issue, and not nearly as bad as I’ve experienced it in some games (looking at you, Jedi Survivor), but I’m nothing if not thorough.

As for the Steam Deck? Works perfectly even on high settings, as far as I can tell. I only spent about ten minutes wandering around my deck – maybe there’s a later mission or graphics thing that’s going to trip up Valve’s handheld for some reason, but I’m pretty sure I recommend it if you want to use it on the go. GTA Online may be arrestedbut who needs that when you have the classics?

Jailbreak

So yes, RDR1 is finally free (good this time) from console prison, and the best way to play it is now the best way to play pretty much everything else: on PC, which you’d certainly hope for considering how much they ask for it. It’s great to see, although it makes me even more grumpy about the still very mediocre state of the GTA remasters. You proved you can hit it out of the park with this one, Rockstar, feel like going back and making amends that one neglected classics? Don’t forget to put Video Killed the Radio Star back.