'Red Dead Redemption 2' has a confirmed release date and will be the best game in the world ever

Finally, after way too long, Red Dead Redemption 2 has a release date.

According to a new statement from Rockstar Games, the followup to the best game ever will be released on October 26th, 2018. That’s a Friday, which could be a lot worse - set a reminder on your phone right now for October 24th, to start sniffing a bit in work, or mumbling something about having diarrhoea. Then try to look as rough as possible on Thursday 25th, and tell ‘em not to expect you back until at least November.

The game was initially meant to come out in autumn 2017, then was pushed back to spring 2018, and now this. The thing is, everything Rockstar puts out ends up being era-definingly great, and if the people behind the GTA, Max Payne and Red Dead games (as well as the best table tennis video game ever made) feel they need more time, they need more time. They know what they’re doing.

Here is the full statement from Rockstar:

Dear All,
We are excited to announce that Red Dead Redemption 2 will be released on October 26th 2018. We apologise to everyone disappointed by this delay. While we had hoped to have the game out sooner, we require a little extra time for polish.
We sincerely thank you for your patience and hope that when you get to play the game, you will agree the wait will have been worth it. In the meantime, please check out these screenshots from the game. We look forward to sharing a lot more information with you in the coming weeks.
With thanks, Rockstar Games

Screenshots, you say? Yep!

red-dead-redemption-2

It looks ridiculously beautiful, doesn’t it? The first one is a pleasure to just go into and trot around, not even trying to achieve anything other than peace. It’s glorious. Like, the game itself is absolutely magnificent, but there’s a whole extra realm of Zen pleasure to be had just riding your horse through the wilderness.

What else do we know about RDRII, then?

• It’s actually a prequel to the first game, set before the railway made it all the way West. A lot of the same geographical territory is covered, plus a huge new area to the East.
• While you play as a new character, Arthur Morgan, some characters from the first game will return (or, as it’s a prequel, pre-turn). The Van Der Linde gang are set to feature heavily, Bill Williamson is thought to be in there somewhere, one of the characters in those screenshots looks a lot like Bonnie MacFarlane, and it’s not impossible we’ll get a cameo from a young John Marston.
• There are burning oil wells, a New Orleans-like town named New Bordeaux and at least one prison.

Oh, and there’s a trailer, of course:

October 26th. Can’t wait.

(The only niggly point about the whole thing is the titling: the first game in the series was Red Dead Revolver, which was followed by Red Dead Redemption. Why is this new one Red Dead Redemption II? Especially since it’s a prequel. Couldn’t it have been something like Red Dead Revenge, Red Dead Revolution, Red Dead Rampage (no, that’s a bit too similar to another game), Red Dead Ragamuffins, Red Dead Regret, Red Dead Reprehensibility (bit of a mouthful), Red Dead Renegade, Red Dead Rebellion, Red Dead Ruin, etc etc? There are loads of good R words. R is a great letter.)