Being a big fan of Red Dead Revolver, I jumped at the chance to watch a gameplay demo of the Rockstar’s upcoming Red Dead Redemption when I attended PAX this year.  Despite an impressive inital showing which highlighted a huge open world (even larger than San Andreas), the state of the early build I saw had very little to offer in the way of things to do outside of the mission structure.

In the most recent trailer released, actual gameplay footage shown indicates that there may be a veritable stampede of gameplay elements present in the current-gen iteration of the spaghetti western IP.

Also, the technical and graphical elements were significantly improved from the PAX gameplay demo. Pop-in, rough textures, and other blemishes look to have been smoothed out dramatically.

Activities like hunting buffalo, lassoing and hog tying bandits, and taming wild horses, among others, seem to promise a varied offering of gameplay for aspiring digital high plains drifters. The prospect of viable horseback-to-horseback combat alone was enough to get me excited for what the final game may have in store.

I will, of course, reserve judgement until I get the final build in my hands, but I can’t help it if my inner Man With No Name is anticipating this title just a little bit more now. What do you think? Good, bad, or ugly?