Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 has received countless amounts of praise for its impressive graphics and immersive open-world environment. The sheer amount of detail that the developer put into the game is blazingly apparent, and it’s no wonder the company took almost a decade to develop the western-themed video game.
It’s easy to fall for the western stereotype that paints cowboys in a dusty, desert environment surrounded by cacti. But Red Dead Redemption 2 challenges that trope by providing an accurate depiction of what the world would’ve looked like at the turn of the century, complete with a variety of environments and terrains.
It’s obvious that Rockstar did a lot of research and careful consideration upon beginning development for Red Dead Redemption 2. The game tried its best to stay true to history, and that includes creating an environment that parallels the wild west to the very best of its ability. In fact, Rockstar took specific inspiration from a famous art movement – the Hudson River School – known for their romantic portrayal of the west in the late 19th century. The influence of the artistic movement is evident throughout RDR2’s expansive open world.
RDR2 Was Inspired By The Hudson River School
The Hudson River School refers to a group of landscape painters that were inspired by romanticism in recreating scenic images of the wild west, namely the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area. The images focused on natural beauty, such as mountains and water, and emphasized realism and attention to detail. The portraits were often idealized portrayals of nature, as the western landscape was changing rapidly with the onset of industrialization, but this was part of what made the artistic movement so attractive and mesmerizing.
Rockstar hasn’t been shy to confess that RDR2 is directly inspired by romantic landscape paintings, and more narrowly, the Hudson River artistic movement.“[We] looked to reality, we looked to the places that we were riffing from. [...] However, there were certain areas like lighting where there were some direct inspirations,” Rockstar North art director Aaron Garbut explained to Polygon. “Owen Shepherd, our lighting director, looked to the pastoral and landscape painters like Turner, Rembrandt and American landscape painters from the 19th century such as Albert Bierstadt, Frank Johnson, and Charles Russell.”
Rob Nelson, RDR2’s art director, echoed a similar sentiment when he specifically admitted the vistas are inspired directly by the paintings of Albert Bierstadt of the Hudson River School. “We were obsessed with it feeling natural or organic in every respect,” Nelson told Vulture, explaining the entire Rockstar team was onboard with using the artistic movement as their main inspiration.
What’s incredible about RDR2 is that players can hop on their horse, travel for a few minutes and feel transported somewhere completely new and unexplored. The environment is as diverse as it is in real life, offering countless areas for exploration that brings players as close as they’ll ever get to discovering unmarked terrain in the wild west. The detail and accuracy that Rockstar put into Red Dead Redemption 2 is testament to how ground-breaking the game truly is.