OneRed Dead Redemption 2player points out that the in-game US Flag has 45 stars in 1899, which accurately accounts for the number of states at the time. It’s such asmall detail, which is an area thatRed Dead Redemption 2excels, but this yet again reinforces developer Rockstar Games' knack for accuracy. Some perhaps more cynical comments on the original post suggest other games would have just used a generic flag, not accounting accurately for the stars, but that’s obviously not the case here.
In October,Red Dead Redemption 2will turn five years old, but despite this, the game still has a very active community. This is almost unheard of for single-player games. Technically speaking,Red Dead Onlineis a multiplayer counterpart to the game, but its support has basically run dry. The base game has, much to many fans' dismay, always been the main attraction of the two.
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In1899, when most ofRed Dead Redemption 2takes place, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Oklahoma were not yet states, with this Reddit post by Flame_pup_27 drawing attention to this fact. The 1907 flag seen later in the game features 46 to represent Oklahoma’s addition to the United States. This flag carries over toRed Dead Redemption 1, but as claimed by Redditor ‘Stupid_Dummy_Idiot’, the epilogue ofRed Dead 1messes up the flag. It still featured 46 stars instead of the 48 that would have been accurate in 1914. However, other Redditors point out that this could be justified if the territories had not yet updated their flags.
This logically fits, as communication, production, and so on during this time were much slower than today. One could argue that this is some form of post-hoc justification and perhaps it is, but given Rockstar Games' pedigree for small details, it’s easy to believe this was intentional too. In fact, many fans (including some in the comments) were excited to seehow Rockstar Games applies its attention to detail toGrand Theft Auto 6.
Last year, Rockstar Games confirmedGrand Theft Auto 6was officially in the works (if also untitled) prior to a massive leak showing tons of early gameplay appearing online. It should be noted that, generally speaking, attention to detail isn’t as important inGTAas it’s not really meant to be a slow, hardcore, and heavily detailed game. Historical inaccuracies or otherwise wouldn’t undermine the experience ofGTA 5, for example, like it wouldRDR2. On the other hand,Grand Theft Auto 6is seemingly taking inspiration from Bonnie and Clyde, and it’ll be interesting to see how small details connecting the fictional protagonists to their real-world counterparts are realized.
Red Dead Redemption 2is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
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