5 things we really hope Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2 reveal is tomorrow

In just a few short hours, Rockstar is going to make the traffic to its website spike an incredible amount by putting something related to the new Red Dead game on it. It’s probably going to be a trailer for Red Dead Redemption 2, which we’ve all been waiting for for a very, very long time, so in the spirit of opportunistic coverage, as well as being open about our hopes and dreams, here’s a listicle on what we’ve got our fingers crossed for tomorrow.

5. An actual Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer

Things have been quiet on the ol’ Red Dead Redemption front since the first teaser was revealed almost a year ago, although there was that blip where a bunch of people thought a screen from an MMO was a RDR2 leak because there was a cowboy in it. Red Dead Redemption, which is the first Red Dead Redemption game but not technically the first Red Dead game, came out in 2010, which means the time is now for a proper trailer, and one that’s more than a minute long. One that reveals who we’ll be playing as, whether it’s a prequel like everyone thinks it is, and what the story is, gosh darn it.

4. A Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer that’s just close ups of guns for four minutes

And you’d love it, wouldn’t you, because Rockstar has got itself into a position where it can put out one game every decade, or probably every 15 years now, and everyone loses their minds over it (and fair play because it’s worked hard for it). To be honest, it could probably close its doors and become the GTAV Online company.

A load of us who are excited for RDR2 are at least 50% excited because it’s a new Rockstar game, apart from anything else, because when Rockstar puts out a game it’s damn sure it’s ready to put out a game — like CDProjekt saying Cyberpunk 2077 will be out when it’s out. This means that we’ll lap up pretty much whatever it is that gets thrown down tomorrow, and if that’s just a lot of really slow zooms on the textures, just so we all know that an artist has spent literal years on the individual texturing on a pistol, so it has realistic wear and tear and little pit marks on the hammer — even if you can’t actually see this most of the time in the game — then by God, someone will do an analysis video about which gun could belong to what character.

 3. A Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer that’s actually GTA

Open on: a dusty, deserted main street in a one-horse town, which is a figure of speech because there are probably a couple of horses tied up at the saloon in the background (there is a saloon; bawdy women™ are peering from the upstairs windows). The impressively moustachioed owner of the general store makes a dash across the street into his house and slams the door shut — he’s wearing those old timey shirt armbands that keep his cuffs out of the way. We cut back to a long shot of a street again, at ground level, and a man’s spurred cowboy boots step into shot. Two men are squaring up for a good old fashioned duel. The camera cuts to other close ups: his hand, resting on his holstered pistol; the shiny buckle on his belt; his eyes, narrowed in the midday sun. A slow pan out reveals it’s… wait a minute… Carl Johnson?!

In this imagining, it turns out that Red Dead Redemption was basically Westworld all along, and you almost immediately bust out of the Wild West setting into what is basically GTA VI, thus enraging title purists even further than the name Red Dead Redemption 2 already has.

2. A Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer that reveals it’s a walking-simulator-meets-history-lesson, and a deep and nuanced look at the problems with the pop cultural depictions of the ‘Wild West’ compared to the real history of the region and era that often gets glossed over

Imagine how cross some people would be.

1. A Table Tennis 2 trailer

Technically speaking Rockstar hasn’t, at any point, said that whatever is happening tomorrow is anything to do with Red Dead Redemption 2; it’s just used the RDR font and colours that we’re all used to. They always do this, because they know their branding is so identifiable they can let everyone else do the hype for them. But it would be hilarious if, just once, they used our own predictable behaviour to f*** us all over.