In anticipation of Red Dead-related news coming later today, journalist and historian Holly Nielsen explores how the first game is one of gaming's best examples of historical atmosphere.

Red Dead Redemption is not historically accurate. Rockstar’s cowboy epic is set in the early 20th century not in a real place, but in a fictitious sprawl of American and Mexican states and counties. Yet it is one of gaming’s best examples of carefully crafted historical atmosphere. Not only is it relevant to the period it is based, but playfully acknowledges layers of cultural memory associated with the wild west.

You don’t see a horse in the opening of Red Dead Redemption. You are introduced to a world of smoke, newspapers, cars, streetlights and parasols before being shown the sun-scorched landscape speckled with parched wilderness that we traditionally recognise as the “wild west”. The outlaw protagonist John Marston is presented to us as a man out of time, lost in a rapidly modernising world. This opening is a masterclass in establishing a historical environment. Think this game will be a rip-roaring “yee-ha” filled frolic through cartoonish cacti while “Home on the Range” blares in the background? Wrong.