Do you bring a wayward daughter back to her father, or let her run off with her lover? Do you tie some ne’er-do-wells to the tracks and let the train enact justice, or are you more merciful? Image: Rockstar Games If you follow the LeClerk missions, you are put through a short campaign wherein you have to make the occasional moral choice. The player becomes LeClerk’s instrument of justice, and once unleashed on the frontier, it’s time to get right to work fulfilling bounties, killing robbers, and obtaining a stable of beautiful horses to brush. You escape, thanks to the efforts of high-class lady Jessica LeClerk, who has her own revenge mission in mind since she was newly widowed by scavengers trying to get her husband’s fortune. Red Dead Online begins with your character betrayed, framed for crimes they did not commit and due to be hanged as an outlaw.
Now that Rockstar has said it will no longer be focusing significant attention on the Western, it’s worth revisiting the frontier to judge the game on what it achieved since its 2018 launch.
It is both a fantastic experience that I’ve explored for hundreds of hours, and a game that will never meet its full potential, forever in the shadow of its bigger (and vastly more profitable) sibling, Grand Theft Auto Online. Red Dead Online has reached the end of its lifespan.
