Red Dead Redemption 2 May Come To The PC After All If These Settings Are Any Indication
Well, bust our britches, it appears that Rockstar Games will in fact release its highly anticipated and well received Red Dead Redemption 2 game to the PC platform, in case there was any doubt about that eventuality. While still not confirmed (drats!), digging through the code in the RDR2 companion app hints at a PC port in the making.
The consensus around these part is that the PC is the superior gaming platform. Unfortunately, Rockstar Games sees things otherwise, at least from a business standpoint. It's highly popular Grand Theft Auto franchise has a history of debuting on consoles first, then coming out on PC a long time afterward, as was the case with Grand Theft Auto V.
Red Dead Redemption is another story. The first game in the series never arrived on PC, instead debuting on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in May 2010. That is where it's stayed to this day. That has always been a tough pill to swallow, especially for fans of the Western genre. There are workarounds to getting the first RDR game to run on PC, but it's not available natively.
At this point, it might never see a port to PC. However, it looks like RDR2 will eventually release to PC. A user on GTAForums posted some lines of code from the companion app that seemingly point to a PC version. For example, the line "PARAM_HDStreamingInFlight" is present in the PC version of GTA V. In addition, there are a whole bunch of advanced graphics settings that are mostly applicable to the PC. One of them is NVIDIA's TXAA (temporal anti-aliasing) technology, also found in GTA V.
It's worth noting that back in June, Rockstar Games posted a listing on LinkedIn in search of an programmer. The listing mentioned RDR2, next to which it said "PS4/Xbox1/PC." Like every other bit of information to this point, there was no mention of when the port might happen.
Our best guess is that Rockstar Games is already working on a port, though it's difficult to know when it might arrive. Historically, the developer has taken anywhere from a couple of weeks (Max Payne 3) to around a year and a half (GTA V) to port a game over to PC after initially launching it on console.
For anyone who does not want to wait, it's either the PS4 or Xbox One for now. There is a bundle deal available for the latter, in which you can save $100 by picking up the console and the game at the same time.
