• Red Dead Redemption 2 Steampunk
• Red Dead Redemption 2 Steam

Bottom line: For those who have been living under a rock for the last week: a little game called Red Dead Redemption 2 has been getting a lot of attention. It’s a console exclusive, meaning some PS4 and Xbox One fans have relished the chance to get one over PC owners. But, like GTA V, could the best version of RDR2 be the one that arrives on our favorite platform?

2010’s Red Dead Redemption was also a brilliant game, and it too could only be enjoyed by PlayStation and Xbox owners—though it can now be played on PC using the PlayStation Now service. With GTA V holding the title of ‘best-selling game of all time’ in the US, and it proving especially popular on the PC, we expected Rockstar to announce that RDR2 wouldn’t have the same platform exclusivity as its predecessor, but so far there’s been no mention of it coming to PC. So, are we being denied what’s been called one of the best open-world games of all time? Or do we just need to be patient and wait for the inevitable?

Red Dead Redemption 2 Steampunk

Red Dead Redemption 2 Steam

Evidence of an in-development PC version arrived last June, when the LinkedIn profile of an unnamed Rockstar dev, who previously worked on GTA V and L.A. Noire, listed the PC as one of RDR2’s platforms.

Nov 21, 2018 - As fans wait with bated breath for any information on a PC release date for Red Dead Redemption 2, here's everything we know so far via leaks.

But the strongest indication of a PC version was recently discovered by Rockstar Intel, which reports that the game’s companion app contains files that reference the PC and its graphical settings. There are mentions of temporal anti-aliasing, water reflection resolution, and shadow and particle quality, along with files that include the words “pcversion.”

With such a massive market eager to snap up the game, it should be a matter of when, not if, RDR2 will move beyond consoles. It might be that Rockstar wants to squeeze everything it can from GTA online, which continues to make a fortune for the company, before bringing Red Dead 2 and its upcoming online component to the PC.

GTA V didn’t arrive on the PC until two years after its launch on the PS3 and Xbox 360. Hopefully, and more than likely, we won’t be waiting quite as long for Rockstar’s newest flagship product. But for the impatient among us, RDR2 is one of the best reasons to buy a console right now.

A great article by PC Gamer outlines a few issues you should note with the video, though.

'A couple of things do leap out at me and make me question the authenticity of the video, however,' the site notes.

'First of all, we don’t see anything beyond the menus, which would arguably be the easiest thing to fake, and we don’t really see enough of the graphics settings to compare it with Rockstar’s last PC port, GTA 5.

'One thing that’s notably missing is post-processing options. It looks like you can turn FXAA on, but there’s no sign of other anti-aliasing techniques, or things like ambient occlusion or anisotropic filtering.

'The missing options could be below, of course, though they often sit together, as they did in GTA 5. If this is real footage, it’s also unlikely finished. No PC version has been announced or even alluded to by Rockstar, so it’s unlikely that a build is ready to go. There’s no reason why a dev build would need a counter that shows how much VRAM you’re using, for instance, which might explain why it’s nowhere to be seen.'

We'll update you as soon as Rockstar announces anything official about Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC.