Red Dead Redemption

The Red Dead Redemption series grew out of the earlier western game Red Dead Revolver, but it built its real identity with the 2010 entry that made Rockstar Games synonymous with an open world set in a dying Wild West. Protagonist John Marston, a former outlaw forced by the government to hunt down his own past, gave the story a moral weight that most open-world games of the time lacked – the quiet of the prairie, solitude and the theme of redemption mattered just as much as shootouts and horseback chases.

The second entry, Red Dead Redemption 2 from 2018, wasn't a sequel in time but a prequel following the Van der Linde gang and young Arthur Morgan during the era when the Wild West was finally giving way to modern America. It pushed wildlife, transportation and environmental interaction systems to a depth rarely seen before, and its atmosphere and pacing felt closer to an interactive film than a conventional action game. That depth and carefully told story are why the second game is widely regarded as the series' peak and one of the most ambitious projects in the history of the industry.

Although the series counts only two full entries, their impact on the open-world genre has been substantial – they showed that a sprawling world could carry mood and emotion rather than simply serve as a container for side quests. Spanning the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation through to PS4 and Xbox One let both games fully exploit the graphical and technical capabilities of their time, and among players and critics alike they rank among the most acclaimed titles on their respective platforms.