Classic FPS Remastered: Red Dead Redemption (Patreon)

Oh boy, this was a big one! Rich here, once again revisiting archive captures and this one *really* takes me back. Post-GTA4, Red Dead Redemption was the first BIG Rockstar game to emerge for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 - powered, of course, by the RAGE engine. I won't go over the quality of the game here - I think its legendary status is assured at this point - but there were hopes that PS3 could improve its showing after some technical drawbacks as seen in GTA4. That didn't really come to pass.

In terms of native resolution, RDR shipped at 1280x720 on Xbox 360 with 2x MSAA, while PS3 delivered 1152x640 with what we said at the time was quincunx anti-aliasing - a technique that provides improved edge smoothing at the cost of extra blur on surface detail. However, I was approached by a Rockstar developer in the wake of the original article, suggesting that it's also MSAA on PS3 - maybe it's simply the reduced resolution in play giving that blur-like effect.

Draw distance tweaks, missing shadows and the big one - reduced foliage - were also features on PS3. Reduced transparent elements were a typical PS3 cutback of the era: it reduces bandwidth requirement and memory bandwidth was at a premium on PS3. Something that wasn't really known at the time but was mentioned to me by the Rockstar source was that Red Dead Redemption's map was built around Xbox 360's memory allocation - the suggestion was that some of the cutbacks on PS3 were owing to RAM considerations. Maybe my memory is playing tricks with me here, but I dimly recall that the game was in development for such a long time that initially, there wasn't a PS3 version.

Performance? It's a pretty cut and dried Xbox 360 advantage here too, the exception being in cutscenes, where close-ups on detailed characters could see the Microsoft machine drop to 20fps, with PS3 running faster. With the benefit of hindsight, this would suggest a double-buffer approach on Xbox, up against triple buffering on PS3. 

So, when looking at these FPS videos of yesteryear, it's easy to recommend the PC version as the preferred way to play in 2021. Today's gaming PCs will absolutely monster the games of 2010 in performance terms and in most cases, you never had to deal with 30fps caps or resolution limits in the first place.  Red Dead Redemption is a rare exception though: a third party game that never received a PC port. 

That's where the Xbox One X enhanced version comes into play - full native 4K and solid frame-rate. You can see our original coverage here: https://www.digitalfoundry.net/2018-04-12-red-dead-redemption-on-xbox-one-x-the-4k-remaster-youve-been-waiting-for

As for this 'remastered' FPS comparison from the original May 26th 2010 assets? The download link is right here: https://www.digitalfoundry.net/2021-05-30-classic-fps-remastered-red-dead-redemption