There's been a gap of severl months since my last, so I thought I'd add an update. I am still playing Red Dead Redemption 2 with deep satisfaction. I completed the story long ago, and indeed all the by-the-way quests have been completed too, but it doesn't seem to matter. I'm treating the game as if it were a kind of holiday theme-park, which allows me to create the sequence of events. There's no great impetus to pursue any goal, now, including money - I must be the richest ex-outlaw there ever was, and can afford to buy anything available in the game-world. But no matter: the beauty of the thing is inexhaustible. The horses alone form one of the best reasons for playing - the beauty of their movements is a delight to control and watch, and they seem to have real character once you get to know them well.
Wherever I go in the game world, I'm conscious of a history - much as one experiences when pottering about anywhere in England in real life. Here in a forest in the far north-east is the clearing where I first met Charlotte Balfour and taught her how to hunt rabbits, and there in the west is the burnt-out shack where Evelyn Miller wrote his final book. Rockstar seem to have been aware of the game's potential in this regard, and if I revisit places where the gang once camped, ghostly remembered conversations of the gang members, or snatches of campfire singing, can be heard for a few moments.
In a lifetime of searching for the most rewarding works of art produced by humankind, I do not think I have ever found anything so engrossing, satisfying, and breathtakingly beautiful, as this. It has been the primary art-related activity in my daily life for nearly a year now, and I can't think of anything - any single work of art of any kind- that has been able to sustain that intensity, for so long.
