Red Dead Redemption 2 has proved widely popular with both critics and players.
RDR2 is an epic in every sense, with some estimating it requires at least 60 hours of non-stop gaming to complete.
Developer Rockstar has boasted their latest title features an enormous landscape featuring a “range of America’s heartland and frontier” areas from the 1800s.
So how does the Red Dead map’s scale compare with that of Rockstar’s other successful game Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA 5)?
READ MORE: Red Dead Redemption 2 reviews
Red Dead Redemption 2 game world is the largest Rockstar has ever made – even bigger than the gargantuan GTA 5 map.
This is both in terms of sheer scale and the fact that characters primarily travel on horse-back in RDR2, as opposed to the plane, trains and automobiles featured in GTA 5.
It is only by bearing this in mind can player begin to comprehend the amount of playtime that Red Dead Redemption 2 offers.
Because the RDR2 map is so huge, some items, such as treasure stashes, will be harder to find.
Because of this, Rockstar is providing an in-game treasure map pin-pointing all the locations of the loot stashes.
READ MORE: Red Dead Redemption 2 gameplay: 4 things to know before beginning the game
The vast open-world map sprawls from the town of Saint Denis – based on an early New Orleans – to an coal mining territory in Appalachia.
Red Dead Redemption 2 includes most of the map from the 2010 original – covering everything north of the San Luis River.
It is estimated to be a mind-boggling four times larger than the original’s map.
And it is not only the size which has been improved.
The 2010 version has been upgraded with gorgeous graphics which give it a hyper realistic feel.
Unfortunately, much of the map will only be available once the epics story mode has been completed, meaning many players may never fully enjoy it.
Comparing RDR2’s scale with GTA 5 is a little trickier.
However, the developer’s Rockstar Advanced Engine has been in use since Grand Theft Auto IV, allowing rough comparisons to be made, as assumptions scale stay consistent.
For example, all of GTA 4’s boroughs are a little larger than the Los Santos area, indicating how much larger Grand Theft Auto V is than GTA 4.
Rooster Teeth producer Alanah Pearce took approximately 14 minutes at a fast gallop to cross the Red Dead Redemption 2 map from edge-to-edge.
And this expedition doesn’t even represent the entire RDR2 map, as all of it has yet to be unlocked.
In comparison, Red Dead Redemption 1’s world fits into a third of the GTA 5 map.
For example, in this Legendary Animals Map, the portion from the first Red Dead Redemption is dwarfed by the new regions in Red Dead 2.
Redditor ppguy323436 estimated the first Red Dead map to be 12 square miles, while the 2018 prequel weighs in at an incredible 29 square miles.