Having pretty much spent the last few years relegated to the seventh generation of video game consoles, and only playable on modern hardware via Xbox 360 backwards compatibility, Red Dead Redemption is one of Rockstar Games’ titles that deserve to be enjoyed by new audiences of gamers. Well fortunately for those who own a PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch or PlayStation 5 (through backwards compatibility support), the ability to enjoy the game is not too far away – with the developer/publisher announcing and confirming the release of Red Dead Redemption on the PS4 and Switch starting Thursday 17 August 2023.
The development of this re-release is being handled by Double Eleven Studios, and is pitched as a ‘conversion’ rather than a ‘remaster’ or ‘remake’, implying that minimal if any work is being done on bringing the game up to the standards of the latest triple-A releases, which some would argue RDR deserves. It seems like vocal community sentiment is more on the negative side of things, oft coming down to the demand was there for releases on recent consoles + PC and/or at least offering a full remaster of the original game.
The PS4 and Switch ports of Red Dead Redemption offers the original base game and the Undead Nightmare expansion, an alternate story which reimagines the world of Red Dead Redemption as Marston fights to survive a relentless zombie horde and searches for a cure in a spooky twist on the retro genre. In terms of new content, there doesn’t seem to be much at all, although the game will come with new language options for the first time, including Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Korean, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, and Latin American Spanish.
