Red Dead Redemption 2 gameplay trailer: First look in-game teases a richly immersive experience

The game 'aims to create a living world that's not simply open, but deeper'

Captured entirely from in-game footage, Rockstar Games has offered a first 4K look at Red Dead Redemption 2's gameplay.

The trailer is so luscious the gameplay scenes could be mistaken for cut-scenes, and the storytelling and day-to-day life elements of the sequel are accentuated in the six-minute rundown.

The game is set in the late 1800s as new immigrants reach America and civilisation spreads, the age of outlaws coming to an end and modern America being born.

Traversing everything from "harsh mountain trails and dense forests to untamed swamplands and sweeping deserts, rugged livestock towns to modernising cities and much more," protagonist Arthur Morgan and his band of outlaws will try and stamp out a life in a crime profession that's fast becoming extinct.

(Rockstar Games)

The trailer emphasises the importance of setting up camps, where you eat, sleep, perform chores, play games and share stories. Where maintaining food and supplies is important in keeping morale high and spending time with gang members leads to missions and mischief. The bond with your horse, over whom you can sling weapons, supplies, and carcasses from a hunt, is apparently crucial and changes over time.

With RDR2, Rockstar seems to be trying to get away from the 'shoot on sight' style of gameplay first-person shooters are known for, and instead the player might choose to intimidate, escalate or rather diffuse a situation, threaten a passerby or flatter them about their horse. "[It] aims to create a living world that's not simply open, but deeper."

Further gameplay trailers have been promised by Rockstar in the coming weeks, which will detail missions, activities like fishing, enemy gangs, robberies, other things to do, and the overhauled sharpshooting system.

Red Dead Redemption 2 will be released on 26 October on Xbox One and PS4 and is available for pre-order now.