Rockstar Games has just announced a sequel to PS2's excellent cowboy-em-up Red Dead Revolver, set to release this autumn. Marked for release on PS3 and Xbox 360, Read Dead Redemption will feature open-world gameplay set at the turn of the 20th Century.

Above: Bet you use Triangle to steal horses

However, this isn't actually the first time we've seen it. Remember that infamous E3 2005 PS3 showreel? Well, just before Killzone 2's target footage was shown for the first time, there was an untitled Rockstar game that looked like this:

Above: A rather blurry screenshot taken from the 2005 E3 showreel

Now look at a similar shot from the finished game. Looks like yet another E3 2005 promise that's actually been delivered. Cripes.

Above: The actual game. Pretty epic, eh?

Just how big this sprawling landscape actually is remains to be seen, of course. But suffice to say we're very excited about this one. Especially if it includes multiplayer - imagine one team trying to protect a stagecoach from bandits, or shoot-outs around the towns at sunset.

The game will use Rockstar's Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE), and will feature frontier towns, rolling prairies teeming with wildlife, and perilous mountain passes.

 
Above: Could this sort of thing be included as a multiplayer element?

Along the way, players will experience the heat of gunfights and battles, meet a host of unique characters, struggle against the harshness of one of the world’s last remaining wildernesses, and ultimately pick their own precarious path through an epic story about the death of the Wild West and the gunslingers that inhabited it.

We can't wait. Expect us to be all over this as soon as we get the chance to see it. in the meantime, you can see the rest of the sunset-soaked screenshots here.

04 Feb, 2009