Red Dead Online updates may be as finished and dead as the legendary bear Arthur Morgan uses as a hat, but the superb single-player experience of Red Dead Redemption 2 is still being kept alive, thanks to this ambitious mod which aims to build out Rockstar’s western sandbox with new missions, characters, and cutscenes.
Life of Crime by CruelMasterMC is still a work in progress, but it already has a character creator, new heist and train robbery missions, and a fully realised introduction sequence which sees your customised cowperson break out of Siska Penitentiary, meet their contact, and embark on the eponymous life of crime.
The goal here is to diverge from the game’s main Arthur Morgan/John Marston storyline, and drop the player into the role of a different, struggling ex-con, trying to survive on the plains of New Hanover. Thanks to some of CruelMasterMC’s cutscene work, there are a few places where your anonymous gunslinger crosses paths with the Dutch van der Linde gang, but this is largely intended as a whole new single-player Red Dead experience.
The original version of Life of Crime launched last year, in the barebones format of an additional heist mission, played as Arthur. Version 2.0 however adds a host of new content, including missions, cinematics, and the ability to customise your own female or male protagonist. There’s work to be done, but CruelMasterMC has stated that they have plans to add a full story, complete with cutscenes and voice performances. Given the eight-year gap between the first Red Dead Redemption and RDR 2, and the fact Rockstar has all but confirmed it is abandoning Red Dead Online to focus on GTA 6, Life of Crime might be the closest thing to a true continuation of the series that we get for some time.
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It’s free now on Nexus Mods, and if you fancy some other Red Dead Redemption 2 newness, you can now play the whole single-player campaign like it’s Portal.