Red Dead Redemption 2 on PS5: 251 Hours, and I Still Stop at Chapter 2

The short version. There is still no native PS5 version. What you are playing on a PS5 or a Pro is the PS4 build running through backwards compatibility at 30fps. If you are on a Pro, go to Settings, Screen and Video, Video Output, and look for Enhance Image Quality for PS4 Games. It is off by default and most people have never found it. Two insiders disagree about when a real current-gen version arrives: one says 2026, the other says after GTA 6. Rockstar has said nothing. Buy it anyway, because the world is worth 30fps.

This shelf turns on one question: does the world stay open. Red Dead Redemption 2 answers it better than anything else I have played, and then does something stranger. It builds the most open world in games and hangs a story on it that closes every door it can find.

The result is that after 251 hours, I mostly do not play the story any more. I start a new run, the gang settles at Horseshoe Overlook in chapter 2, and I stay there. That is not a complaint about the game. It might be the highest compliment I can pay it.

What I actually saw

Weather that changes constantly and convincingly, without ever feeling like it is cycling on a timer. Mud accumulating on Arthur’s clothes. Horses filthy after a river crossing. Conversations that shift depending on what happened in earlier chapters, so the gang remembers.

Towns that feel like different places rather than reskins of the same template, which is rarer than it sounds. You can talk to essentially anyone, and the game has an answer for it.

And the things to do in that world are the reason I keep going back. Hunting is genuinely rewarding. Fishing. Helping strangers. Finding an abandoned cabin that no mission ever mentions. Sitting and watching wildlife, which is a thing I did not know I wanted from a game until this one offered it.

The thing that separates it from almost everything else, though, is simpler than any of that. Nearly all the land you can see, you can walk to. Point at a ridge on the horizon and you can be standing on it. There is no view in this game composed around somewhere you are not allowed to go.

That sounds like a low bar and it is not. Black Myth: Wukong, which is also on this shelf and which I also recommend, is the exact opposite: gorgeous vistas of buildings fifty metres below you that you cannot enter, with an invisible wall between you and the edge of the cliff you are admiring them from. Both games are worth your time. They are answering completely different questions, and knowing which one you want is most of the decision.

The clearest example of what makes Red Dead work is a chain I assembled entirely by accident. Loggers are cutting trees and ask you to deal with some wolves. Doing that turns out to connect to a job supplying them with food. Which connects to another supplying timber for a house being built somewhere else entirely. Nothing in the game lays this out. There is no questline UI drawing the lines for you. You find out that these things are related by turning up, and the discovery is the reward. Most open worlds hand you a map with icons on it and call that content. This one hides the structure and trusts you to notice.

What I have heard, and never checked

Red Dead Redemption 2 is the most mythologised game ever made. The same handful of facts get repeated everywhere, usually by people who read them somewhere else.

NPCs supposedly wake, go to work, eat, socialise, argue and go home on full daily schedules. Animals supposedly hunt each other independently of you. Rockstar supposedly invested enormously in physically based materials, volumetric weather, facial animation and motion capture.

I have never sat down and verified a single one of those. In 251 hours. They are probably true, and I am not going to pass them on as though I checked, because on this shelf the difference between what I saw and what I absorbed from the internet is the entire product. If someone wants that verified, that is a piece we could actually go and do rather than repeat.

Where it stops being open

The ending is devastating, and I mean that as praise and as a warning.

What follows is the problem. Once Arthur’s arc closes there is very little reason to keep going, and John’s arc is slow in a way that feels like homework after what preceded it. The cruellest part of the design is that the best horses only become available during that slow stretch, so the reward for pushing through arrives attached to the section you least want to play.

Which is why my saves cluster in chapter 2. The world is at its most open and the story has not yet started taking things away. If a game’s own best hours are the ones before its plot gets going, that is worth saying out loud rather than pretending the whole thing is uniformly great.

The money problem

You will end up rich and there is nothing to do about it.

Beyond camp improvements, which are capped, the game gives you almost nothing to invest in. And the camp upgrades themselves are gated behind Leopold Strauss’s loan-sharking questline, so the one money sink in the game is tied to the one storyline that most directly undercuts who Arthur is meant to be becoming. For a game this careful about everything else, the economy is the part that never got finished.

The version that does not exist yet

There is no native PS5 or Xbox Series build. On a PS5 or a PS5 Pro you are running the PS4 version through backwards compatibility, locked to 30fps, and none of the Pro’s additional hardware is doing anything for you. A game this beautiful is being held at 2018’s frame rate on 2026’s hardware.

The rumour has run since 2022, when reports of a cancelled or shelved upgrade first circulated. As of now two credible insiders are saying different things.

NateTheHate said in February 2026 that a current-gen upgrade is still targeting a 2026 release on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, with improved visuals and at least 60fps, most likely free for existing owners, and that his information had not changed from the previous year. Reece “Kiwi Talkz” Reilly said in January 2026 that he knows of eight developers on the project and that it exists, but expects it after GTA 6 rather than before, on the reasoning that Rockstar will spend 2026 building anticipation for Vice City and would not want to step on it.

Both can be right about the project existing and wrong about the timing. Rockstar has announced nothing. On our ledger this sits at Likely for existence and Unverified for any date, and we will move it when a first party says something.

If you cannot wait, PC players have had this for years and there is an unofficial mod route to 1440p60 on PS5, which we have not tested and are not recommending.

The Pro setting nobody turns on

There is one thing a PS5 Pro owner can do today, and Sony has hidden it well.

Under Settings, then Screen and Video, then Video Output, there is a toggle called Enhance Image Quality for PS4 Games. It is switched off by default and buried far enough down a submenu that most Pro owners have never seen it. Red Dead Redemption 2 is a PS4 game as far as your console is concerned, so it qualifies.

Two honest caveats. Sony’s own warning is that enabling it can cause unexpected behaviour during gameplay, and it only affects some titles rather than all of them. It has been reported to be a post-processing filter rather than a true upscaler, which we have not confirmed. If you switch it on and start seeing visual oddities, switch it back off.

My own experience is that Red Dead looked washed out to me before and does not now, and I cannot tell you with any confidence that this toggle is the reason. It might be. It might be my display, or a settings change I have forgotten, or simply my eyes adjusting. I am telling you the setting exists and where to find it, not that it fixed something. It costs nothing to try and it is one button to undo, which is about the strongest recommendation I can make for something I have not measured.

Testing that properly, same scene, toggle on and off, is a piece we owe you.

Red Dead Online

Still included, and effectively finished. Rockstar wound down major content updates and moved resources to GTA 6, so what you get now is a complete multiplayer sandbox rather than a live service that is going anywhere. Whether that is a loss depends entirely on whether you wanted it to grow.

Who it is for

Anyone who wants a world rather than a ride. Anyone who enjoys hunting, fishing, wandering, and the specific pleasure of finding something the game never told you about.

Not for people who need a game to respect their time, because it very deliberately does not. Not for people who want a smooth 60fps, at least not yet. And if you are the kind of player who has to finish things, know that the last stretch is where the enthusiasm goes to die.

Verdict: on the shelf. 251 hours across base PS5 and PS5 Pro, backwards compatible, 30fps on both, no score. The best world in games, attached to a story I would rather not finish. Crimson Desert, the other world that stays open

How the shelf works

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Sources

• NateTheHate: RDR2 current-gen upgrade still targeting 2026, 6 February 2026. PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, improved visuals, at least 60fps, likely a free upgrade. No Rockstar announcement.
• Kiwi Talkz: RDR2 Enhanced may not arrive until after GTA 6, 26 January 2026. Eight developers on the project, Switch 2 port also claimed, current PS5 and Series X limited to 30fps via backwards compatibility.
• Push Square: RDR2 PS5 version rumour, June 2025.
• Red Dead Online maintenance mode, reporting, not first-party.
• “Enhance Image Quality for PS4 Games” on PS5 Pro, setting path (Settings › Screen and Video › Video Output), off by default, Sony warns of possible unexpected behaviour, applies to some games only.
• Reported to be a post-processing filter rather than a dedicated upscaler, forum-sourced, unconfirmed by us.
• Play impressions and hours: PS5 via backwards compatibility, 251 hours logged.