Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ video gives a master class in Wild West robberies

By
Red Dead Redemption 2: Official Gameplay Video Part 2

Red Dead Redemption 2 is Rockstar’s latest evolution of the open world formula, as it aims to deliver a living world that you explore naturally. In the latest gameplay trailer, we get to see just what kind of activities Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang will get to do in the Wild West.

Recommended Videos

As an outlaw, Arthur Morgan won’t be involved in the most legal of errands as he’s out and about in the open world. The trailer shows the various ways Morgan can rob the average citizen, including a train or bank heist, stagecoach robbery, or just by holding up a shop owner at the local store. You can even just sneak into a house to steal what you find, or “go loan sharking” — in this case, that seems to involve beating someone up until they give you the money you’re owed.

Related

Unlike in Grand Theft Auto V, where only the police chase after you if you’re “wanted,” in Red Dead Redemption 2 you’ll also have to worry about bounty hunters. They don’t particularly care about taking Arthur in alive, and they might ambush him when he least expects it. You can also chase down bounties yourself, if you feel like playing on the other side of the law.

As Rockstar previously mentioned, the “deadeye” sharpshooting system seen in Red Dead Redemption has been expanded in the sequel, allowing for even more badass moments. In addition to targeting enemies’ body parts to do more damage, you can slow down time after setting off an explosion to take out baddies in the aftermath.

Of course, if you’re not interested in theft or murder, there are still plenty of options in Red Dead Redemption 2. We get a taste of these in the video, including wood chopping, table games, fishing, riding a mine cart, dancing, and doing that dumb knife trick from Aliens.

We can’t wait to see if Red Dead Redemption 2 can deliver on the very lofty promises Rockstar has set. We’ll find out when the game launches for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 on October 26. No PC release has been announced yet, and it’s unclear if the game will come to the platform at all.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Gabe Gurwin
Gabe Gurwin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
How to get fuses in Dead Island 2
A group of survivors looking stressed and annoyed.

eThere are going to be tons of things blocking your progress when trying to escape LA in Dead Island 2. Aside from the, you know, hordes of zombies, you will find plenty of gates and doors that need power to open. Most can be worked around by installing a battery or circuit breaker, but some require something else. Fuses aren't required at any point in the main story, but instead are limited keys that hide away some of the game's best loot. If you've been spotting all these gates and garage doors taunting you to open them, but lack the fuses to do so, we'll tell you how you can get your hands on some in Dead Island 2.
Where to get fuses in Dead Island 2

Unlike batteries or circuit breakers, fuses won't be found anywhere on the map while exploring. Instead, the only way to get these electrical devices is to purchase them. Obviously, your local hardware store isn't open for business anymore, so your options are limited to the vendors you come across such as Carlos in Emma's house or Ezekiel on The Pier. No matter who you get them from, you're going to be paying a premium. Each fuse costs $1,500, and the sellers usually only hold a few at a time. Even if they had the stock and you had the cash, your character can only hold three fuses at a time before needing to spend them to get more.

Read more
Dead Island 2’s Amazon Alexa voice commands are novel, but limited
Dani lights a cigarette as zombies attack her from behind in Dead Island 2 key art.

I’ve always found myself interested in new technologies that could possibly enhance how we play or experience games. Whether it’s a computing innovation like cloud gaming or new controller features like the DualSense’s Haptic Feedback and Adaptive Triggers, I love testing those things out. That’s why I jumped at the opportunity to try Alexa Game Control during my recent hands-on preview experience with Dead Island 2.
When Dambuster Studios and Deep Silver’s Dead Island 2 finally launches on April 21, it will be the first game to support Alexa Game Control. By connecting one’s Amazon account to the game, players can use the voice-recognition capabilities of Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa to perform in-game actions like taunting zombies or equipping their best weapons. I was curious to see just how deep this went, but after some hands-on time, this first implementation of it proved to be little more than a novelty.

Hey, Alexa
Dead Island 2 players can toggle Alexa Game Control on when they first show up in Bel-Air after the game’s opening. It has a dedicated tab in the Options Menu where players can choose to enable or disable it, choose whether they want it to work automatically or with push to talk, set the voice capture threshold, and decide which microphone they wish to use.
After enabling Alexa Game Control, I immediately noticed a ring at the bottom-left corner of the screen. When I spoke, this lit up with blue and teal colors, like the top ring on an Alexa device, and text confirming whether it could do the action or not would appear. Not having to say “Hey, Alexa” also means it implemented itself into the game smoothly. At first, I tried to see if voice commands would work for basic things like walking, jumping, and dodging, to no avail. After this, I hopped to a save I had placed later in the game and opened its tutorial menu to see what Alexa Game Control could really do.
Reading its tutorials and lists of commands, the limits of Alexa Game Control became clear. It mainly provides quick shortcuts to save you a button press or two in the middle of playing. In Dead Island 2, Alexa Game Control has four main uses: setting waypoints, taunting enemies, triggering emotes, and switching weapons. The tutorial menus give a complete list of commands that work, although each wildly varies in its usefulness.
Oi, zombie!
The funniest use of this voice technology in Dead Island 2 is taunting zombies. Shouting something like “Hey, dude” or “Oi, zombie” to get the attention of enemies that hadn’t detected me always made me chuckle. It’s also occasionally useful; at one point, I got a bunch of zombies to walk into a large pool of acid and die after taunting them. While it takes the same amount of time as walking up to the zombie to get their attention, I see the potential in voice technology that lets you interact with the world like this.

Read more
Dead Island 2: release date, trailers, gameplay, and more
soak sunshine slaughter first dead island 2 gameplay screenshot 3

Believe it or not, Dead Island 2 is not only still real, but it's actually coming out. For those who've been following the troubled trajectory this title has had, you know this is a story almost 10 years in the making. Originally revealed in 2014, Dead Island 2 has died and been resurrected no less than twice, with a new development team taking up the project each time. The average person probably assumed the game was scrapped years ago, but for those who never gave up hope, your faith has been rewarded.

Leaks did take some of the excitement out of Dead Island 2's big re-reveal during Gamescom 2022, but it couldn't stifle what looks to be a game far better than its beleaguered history would lead you to believe. Since so much has changed over the course of development, let alone with the entire gaming landscape, plenty of people may be wondering what all the excitement over this zombie game is all about. Grab yourself a blunt object and get ready to smash some zombie skulls as we run through everything we know about Dead Island 2.
Release date

Read more