Red Dead Redemption 2's story mode campaign lasts 60 hours

The team lost a few bits of the game they loved and also removed a potential love interest for protagonist Arthur Morgan.

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The experience in Red Dead Redemption 2, as is the case with all Rockstar games, will vary wildly from player to player. The main narrative will set the foundation and guide players along, though, and we now have an idea of how long that story campaign will run at launch. Courtesy of a publication's deep dive into the development process, we've learned that Red Dead Redemption 2 features a 60-hour campaign.

The conversation about the game's length was framed around actor performances and one of the love interests of lead Arthur Morgan. As explained in the Vulture feature, the removal of one of two love interests and some technically unsound missions resulted in five hours being taken out of a 65 hour campaign.

Dan Houser, Red Dead Redemption 2's producer, stated that the team decided the additional love interest "didn't work". Regarding the other missions, “they were never going to work technically or be quite slick enough, or they felt superfluous," he said. "We removed a mission on a train where you had to deal with bounty hunters, because it was fun at first, but then it wasn’t. This part of the process is always about compromise and horse trading. Everyone always loses bits of the game they love.”

Is the story the main draw for you? Will it simply going to be a footnote on your Red Dead experience as you deviate from the beaten path as soon as you start? With the additional adventures that have been teased, like heists, mini-games, duels, and more, players will have a lot of distractions to indulge in or ignore as they work through 60 hours of story. Red Dead Redemption 2 launches October 26, 2018, on PS4 and Xbox One. In November, Red Dead Online will go live in beta test form. Stay tuned to Shacknews for additional updates.

Charles Singletary Jr keeps the updates flowing as the News Editor, breaking stories while investigating the biggest topics in gaming and technology. He's pretty active on Twitter, so feel free to reach out to him @The_CSJR. Got a hot tip? Email him at Charles.Singletary@Shacknews.com.

From The Chatty
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    October 15, 2018 9:15 AM

    Charles Singletary Jr posted a new article, Red Dead Redemption 2's story mode campaign lasts 60 hours

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      October 15, 2018 9:18 AM

      Holy crap that's awesome, at the pace I play games I'll be into that for a long time

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      October 15, 2018 1:22 PM

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        October 15, 2018 1:31 PM

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          October 15, 2018 1:36 PM

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          October 15, 2018 1:39 PM

          Yeah. Most of Mexico was a slog.

          I don't ever see length as equaling quality any more, especially not for action games. It's extremely rare when any campaign has sustained quality over that period of time.

          Hopefully they're including a chunk of the side missions and objectives with that estimate and aren't just referring to the main thread dragging out that long.

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            October 15, 2018 1:41 PM

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              October 15, 2018 1:44 PM

              Man it was even worse the second time for me. Only kept my sanity by using fast travel a lot, which I never did the first time through until that section finally broke me.

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            October 15, 2018 2:50 PM

            See God of War. Perfect length.

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              October 15, 2018 2:53 PM

              I don't really consider God of War open world though... it has a hub area with side stuff but that's it...

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          October 15, 2018 2:49 PM

          Yup.

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        October 15, 2018 2:59 PM

        I don't doubt that a lot of time will be padded by being on horseback across the country. That being said, if there's nice things to look at, I'm all in.

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        October 15, 2018 2:59 PM

        Rockstar has never learned that less is more sometimes. Every recent GTA and Red Dead were too long, full of boring/repetitive stuff wrapped up in different cutscenes.

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          October 15, 2018 3:19 PM

          Considering it might be another 8-10 years for the next game, I'll take what they give me happily.

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      October 15, 2018 3:26 PM

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