With GTA 5 Expanded & Enhanced Edition set for a 2022 release, much to the delight of Grand Theft Auto fans, the re-release has sparked anger among some Red Dead Redemption players, who feel they are being ignored.
There aren’t too many places you can’t play GTA 5 these days, and with the release of the Expanded & Enhanced Edition in 2022, PS5 and Xbox Series consoles will join the long list of platforms.
Rockstar have made no secret of their desire to have the all-conquering sequel playable on anything with a GPU, but this latest remaster has already received criticism, with the official trailer receiving over 200,000 dislikes. It’s also sparked a furious reaction from some players of Rockstar’s other marquee title.
Red Dead players have slammed the publisher for choosing to drop a next-gen version of GTA 5, when Red Dead Redemption 2 is still using the PS4 / Xbox One versions on the latest consoles.
Despite GTA 5 launching in 2013, five years before RDR2, Rockstar picked the former to get a next-gen version first. This has left Red Dead players confused, as the western-themed title would need far less work to get it up to standard on new consoles. In fact, the visuals could be left untouched, while simply making use of the faster load times and new controller features.
The issue was raised in a post from Reddit user Extreme-Price-1175, who said that it was a “shame” that the publisher had decided to “neglect” Red Dead for another year. This started a long thread of replies.
Fans felt hard done by, seeing as though this will be the second time GTA 5 has been remastered for a new generation of consoles, while RDR2 remains the same experience as in 2018.
“It’s simple: they do not give a s**t about single-player,” argued one player. “GTA Online is bigger than RDOnline, so of course, they’d rather release the game with the online mode.”
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The most common accusation leveled at Rockstar was that their constant pushing of GTA 5 is fueled by money.
“Rockstars gotta get its cash cow rereleased on next-gen before we get anything else,” said one user. “They already made 1 billion off of GTA 1. Why they still gotta be greedy?”
Although Red Dead online didn’t become the smash hit that GTA Online did, fans have labeled it as “double standards” that Red Dead given the same attention as its sister series.
This debate comes just weeks after GTA Online received The Contract update, which also fuels Red Dead players’ complaints.
Rumors have been swirling about a possible remaster of the original Red Dead Redemption in development. So, once the Expanded & enhanced edition of GTA 5 hits stores, Red Dead players may finally have something to cheer about very soon.