PHILADELPHIA—Assuring you that you’re tantalizingly close to being able to slough off the various horrors of the world around you upon the video game’s Friday release, a report published Wednesday stated that just two more days and you can forget all of this and vanish into Red Dead Redemption 2. “Less than 48 hours from now, you’ll be able to let your mind go blank, push all your troubles away, and immerse yourself in the sweet oblivion of the Old West,” read the Drexel University report in part, encouraging you to look forward to that blissful moment in your near future when you’ll be able to close your computer, turn off your phone, place your new copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 in your Xbox One or PlayStation 4, and spend as much time as you want exploring life as a gunslinger in an expansive, open-world environment. “Furthermore, you’re on the cusp of being able to focus 100 percent of your energies into the travails of the Van der Linde gang and ignore all of the terrible news coming out every day, not to mention your lackluster financial situation, unsatisfying employment, and stagnant love live. Just tune it all out and drift into the fantasy world of Red Dead Redemption 2, where you can shoot all your problems away. It’s so close, you can almost taste it. Only two more days and it’ll all be over.” The report concluded by recommending that you should sit back and bask in the inner peace that the game will bring you, and you should not rush through it, because you don’t even want to know the kinds of terrible things that await you once you’ve emerged from Red Dead Redemption 2 back into this cruel fucking world.

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