RUNNING THE GAMUT

Red Dead Redemption has aged well visually, unlike many games of its era, and not only because of its lavish 4K overhaul on Xbox One X. We associate the wild west with a particular time and genre of film, and as such a muddy grain seems entirely appropriate. That won’t do in the era of 4K and HDR, and as such it’s no surprise to learn that Rockstar no longer sees cinema as a worthwhile point of comparison. “We are not holding ourselves to the aesthetics of film,” art director Aaron Garbut says. “In the pre-HD era it was a useful comparison as we were striving for higher levels of fidelity, but over the years we’ve moved beyond it. The medium of games has created its own aesthetic and visual language. We think of our approach as making a place, rather than a film.”